Roskilde

Sunday, September 18 

We left our sweet apartment in Fredericia and headed back across the Great Belt Bridge to the city of Roskilde in Denmark’s Zealand region, where we did some sightseeing before heading to Copenhagen, which will be this trip’s final destination.  

We thoroughly enjoyed the hours we spent at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde.  The museum was developed after five Viking ships were found submerged in a fjord near the town about 60 years ago.  An enormous effort to excavate, understand, preserve and partially reconstruct over 100,000 wooden pieces of the ships was undertaken over several decades and the results are on display in the specially-built Viking Ship Hall at the water’s edge.  The ships, both warships and trading vessels, were deliberately filled with rocks and sunk in order to construct a defensive barrier against attacks on the city, which was a commercial and political powerhouse. We were able to take an interesting guided tour that helped us understand some of the historical, archeological, and technical aspects of what we were seeing.

Another section of the museum was located on what’s referred to as the Museum Island.  Craftsmen and tradesmen work at constructing new ships based on the designs of Viking-era ships, using only the materials and techniques of the Vikings.  Their results of their efforts were to be found tied up along the museum’s docks, or being rowed by groups of visitors on boat tours.  The new ships are also used in the museum’s experimental archeology studies; they are actually taken on voyages along the routes the Vikings traveled in order to learn whether the assumptions about building techniques and seaworthiness hold water.

While in Roskilde, we also visited its cathedral, a massive brick construction housing the ornate sarcophagi of centuries of Danish kings and queens.  The tombs were ornate and opulent, as were the side chapels housing many of them, but our own lack of knowledge/interest in the royals’ family tree meant that their significance was pretty much lost on us.  The church itself was lovely, with the gilded King’s Box, pulpit, frescoes, and organ, caved choir stalls, and animated clock.

From Roskilde, we made the short drive to Copenhagen airport, where we dropped off out rental car -- and discovered what yesterday's refueling fiasco was going to cost (not as much as we'd feared).  We took the Metro 20 minutes to a station five minutes' walk from our apartment and settled in to spend four nights in Denmark's capital city.