Viking extremes
Judith Elen embarks on a Scandinavian odyssey in the wake of those vehement voyagers of the north
October 15, 2005
YOU could say the Vikings were extreme tourists, hitting the high seas in search of
adventure and glory, setting out as traders and evolving into consummate souvenir hunters
once they knew what sumptuous treasure chests the English monasteries were.
They settled in France, England, Ireland and Russia, traded in the Mediterranean, ravaged
settlements along the Rhine and put down roots in Newfoundland, a shortish sail from their
colonies in Iceland and Greenland.
Here in the museums of Norway, Denmark and Sweden there are jewels -- gold, amber, and
lapis lazuli -- with the look of the Arab world, Russian icons, peacock feathers, all retrieved
from the funeral ships.
VIKINGS IN SYDNEY
THE Australian National Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour, Sydney, is planning an
exhibition, Vikings, to open at the end of November, with historical objects and replicas
borrowed from collections across Scandinavia (including Roskilde) and Britain.
Weapons and objects relating to Viking social organisation, religious beliefs, family life
and personal qualities will be on display. Development of the wooden, double-ended and
shallow-draft Viking ships, powered by oars and sail, will be examined, and a 9m
Australian-built replica will be moored at the Museum Quay and sailed on special occasions
during the exhibition.
Two of the Lewis Chessmen, the world-renowned Viking-age figures carved from walrus
ivory and found on the Scottish isle of Lewis in the 19th century, will be part of the
exhibition.
Vikings, November 30-April 26, 2006, is being produced by the Australian National
Maritime Museum and sponsored by Abloy and SAS Scandinavian Airlines.
 More: www.anmm.gov.au.
In the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, a brass-bound bucket made of strips of yew has a handle
secured by -- of all things -- a cross-legged, enamelled Buddha. The "Buddha bucket" was
among the finds in the Oseberg ship and burial chamber, excavated in 1904 on a farm at
Slagen in Norway (powerful people, their goods and artefacts, were laid out in burial ships).
The bucket is believed to have been made in western Europe but no explanation can be
found for the Buddhist art.
Sniffing out Viking treasure along the byways of their northern strongholds takes me into
chapel-like museums of glass and whitewashed walls, but also out on the blue waters of the
fjords and traipsing around the autumnal countryside, echoing with unfamiliar bird calls.
There are 2500 runic stones in Sweden alone, standing sentinel on roadsides -- 1000-yearold Viking roads, not motorways -- memorials for somebody's brother, father, daughter, or a
warning of the man who holds power over the surrounding lands.
Some of these evocative stones stand in their original spots, at human height, carved with
entwined serpents and runic messages and rubbed with red or black pigment. Many have
been moved, some stacked inside churches or used to supplement medieval building stone.
I feel the bones of the Viking world everywhere here -- roads, metres down, covered by
layers of time, burial mounds, runic stones studding the landscape; buried or sunk with the
elegant longboats that have resurfaced to lie enigmatically in Viking museums in Norway,
Denmark and Sweden; even hidden at the core of our languages, Scandinavian and English
alike.
These "bones" trace out a world of a different shape from our own, with complex and
shifting alliances -- southern Sweden belonged then to the Danes, but the Swedish Vikings
looked east towards Russia for trade and strategic marriage; Novgorod in north-west Russia
was Viking.
The Danes, on the other hand, were the leaders and instigators of the notorious expeditions
around Europe, into England, along the Rhine, the Swedes and Norwegians signing up to
bring home some of the gold and the glory. Swedish runic stones name a son or brother,
who was "with Canute [or Hakon] in Britain", "and took Dane geld twice".
On a crisp, clear Saturday I take the train from Stockholm Central to country-quiet Marsta,
about 30 minutes away, where my guide meets me for the short drive to Sweden's oldest
town, Sigtuna, between Stockholm and the university town of Uppsala (there's a local bus
and Arlanda airport is nearby).
Sigtuna is village-sized, with 6500 residents. Busy and immaculately preserved, the shops
lining the main street are mostly 18th century. Tant Brun, the rustic, low-ceilinged cafe
serving espresso and warm fruit crumbles, is a 17th-century farmhouse.
But as we stroll in the sun down Stora gatan, Sigtuna's main street, the width of a generous
laneway between the painted wooden shopfronts, my guide tells me we are treading a road
in use since AD980. Several layers beneath the paved surface, following this exact path,
straight on and hooking to the right at the end of town, is the Viking road.
A rich trading town at that time, it is believed to have been the seat of Christian Viking
kings. The wealthy and powerful, chieftains and merchants, came to foster their influence,
trading and giving gifts, at the hinge of the ancient Viking age and the Christian Middle
Ages.
Excavations around a small wooden building known as King Olof's Mint have unearthed royal
coins made here, and we see them -- irregular and battered -- in the town's intriguing little
museum where Viking jewellery and artefacts share space with the bones of a bishop, his
remarkably good teeth grimacing up at us, his curled stave resting impotently at his side.
And here in the Sigtuna Museum, I see eastern portraits, like heads in a Byzantine icon, of
the Viking princesses, later Orthodox Christian saints, Olga and Ingegerd, who married
Slavic princes.
An aroma of caramelising pastries wafts on the air as we pass the bakery, a few metres
away beside the lake is the two-storey mayor's house, now the stylish Sigtuna Stads Hotell
in gleaming grey and white, and with an excellent restaurant. But the bones of the town
are pure Viking and the bones push through -- a runic stone stands in somebody's front
garden, and in the surrounding fields are the royal burial mounds. Iron Age "pyramids" of
mounded, grass-clad earth, they dominate the landscape at the edge of town, sheltering
their ancient bones and burial objects, taking my breath away.
Arne Goth, a just-retired history teacher who has lived and taught in Sigtuna since the
1960s, conducts tours here. His depth of knowledge opens my eyes to the ancient
background culture. The village is only the shiny shopfront, I discover.
In the surrounding streets, there are three crumbling grey granite towers, ruins of three of
the seven churches that stood here in the 1100s, built as private chapels by guilds or
wealthy individuals.
The 13th-century red-brick church of the Dominican friars, who brought with them the art
of brick-making and taught it to the locals, is the modern town church. In the grounds, a
formal herb garden is still maintained and, in the churchyard, two or three heavy
headstones, aggressively appropriating Viking design and dating from the 1930s, show that
history must be critically interpreted and kept in context.
The most entrancing church interior in the district is Odensala (Odin's hall, the earlier name
of the small, then separate community). Odensala's white walls and ceiling are overlaid
with painted decoration -- from a distance a medieval Laura Ashley's dream -- close up,
each Biblical scene encoded with a unique record of a culture so recently Viking.
Steinthor Olafsson of Stockholm Excursions also offers a tour of some fascinating sites in the
region -- a Viking bridge (Jarlabankes bro) at Vallentuna, the runic stones, Viking road, and
stone circle of a Viking parliament at Arkils Tingplats, Sigtuna and the burial mounds of
Gamla Uppsala, plus some medieval sites. With a Stockholm pick-up and travelling by small
bus, the slightly eccentric tour lasts all day and costs 800 Swedish kroner ($136), excluding
food and extras.
Later, back in Danish territory, I wake early and reluctantly leave the multiple treasures of
Copenhagen to take a 30-minute train ride to the other side of the narrow waist of
Denmark, to the ancient capital of Roskilde, on the Roskilde Fjord (trains leave Copenhagen
Central every 20 minutes or so).
We glide past grain fields stalked by seagulls, fog hangs low touching the ground, and
everything is Sunday-deserted. As I walk from my taxi along the wooden bridge at the
Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, the bells of the Domkirke ring out from the crest of the hill
behind me. The first Danish queen Margrethe (who died in 1412) rests there beneath her
white and gold sarcophagus, in the company of multiple members of the Danish royal
family, ancient and modern. The intricate red-brick church, replete with tombs, frescoes
and artefacts, is alone worth the trip, but I'm hot on the trail of the Vikings.
A remarkable discovery was made here in 1957, 20km along the fjord, near Skuldelev.
Locals had long known there was an ancient block at that narrow navigable point, even that
it might be a ship. In fact five ships were found, strategically placed across two channels,
one on top of another, a deliberate barrier.
In 1962, with iron sheet piling driven into the sea bed isolating the ships, the area was
drained and they were painstakingly recovered. Years of research and hard work has since
preserved the five 11th-century ships, blackened, decayed and powerful in their beauty,
now housed in their own small, modernist museum on the water's edge.
And out in the museum's tiny harbour, the five ships live again, complete, functional and as
close as modern humans can make them to their first incarnation.
Original tools, materials and methods have been scrupulously used. Thin planks, split with
axes along the lines of the wood-growth, strong and flexible, recreate the method shown in
the Bayeux Tapestry (in the Bayeux Museum in Normandy), William the Conqueror's story
stitched out in woollen thread.
Now I have an unrepeatable treat in store. The largest of the ships, the 30m Sea Stallion
from Glendalough, the last to be built, and launched in September 2004, is setting out on
an expedition with museum staff and volunteer crew, in training to sail to Ireland (where
the ancient ship was built) in 2007.
This is the last sailing day before the season closes for winter, and I have been invited to
join the ship's company. The crew takes turns rowing the 22-tonne ship (while I sit, face to
the sun, idly scribbling notes and taking photographs); then the beautiful, 118sqm woollen
sail is set.
The Sea Stallion does not normally take idlers like me, but visitors can sail in other museum
ships all through summer (daily, June 18 to August 26; weekends from May to October).
Trips of 50 minutes, with a minimum four people, include hands-on experience.
Earlier, at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, I see the Gokstad, Tune and Oseberg ships,
intact and striking, fragile and unmissable. The Oseberg ship, built in 820 and buried as a
funeral ship for a prominent woman in 834, contained the Buddha bucket among a wealth
of intriguing objects. The museum also has a fascinating collection of 9000 years of
Norwegian cultural history.
The Vikings and their addiction to travel have given 21st-century voyagers rich reasons to
set sail for the north -- if the evocative Scandinavian countryside and waterways are not
reason enough.
 Judith Elen travelled courtesy of MyPlanet Australia and Scandinavian Airlines.
CHECKLIST
 Scandinavian Airlines flies from Bangkok, Singapore, Shanghai or Tokyo, connecting with
Qantas, Thai, Singapore Airlines and United Airlines from Australian airports; SAS offers the
fastest connection direct to Copenhagen, economy extra class in a separate cabin and a
bathroom with a view in business.
 The Viking museum at Birka, in Sweden, with a fleet at anchor, reconstructed Viking
settlement, children's activities and workshops, and accessible by boat from Stockholm,
opens daily from May to September. More: www.raa.se/ birka.www.scandinavian.net.
 Sigtuna guides: arne.goth@folkbildning.net;
 info@stockholmexcursions.se.
 www.myplanetaustralia.com
 www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk
 www.visitcopenhagen.dk
 www.khm.uio.no
 www.stockholmtown.com
 www.sigtunaturism.se
 www.slh.com/sigtuna