Denmark: Land of the Vikings

Everyone thinks Vikings are cool. Everyone. Being in their homeland is really interesting, for the Danes it's not some far off ancient peoples; it's their ancestors and their history. My Nordic Mythology class is probably the most interesting and fun class I've ever taken, I actually enjoy all of the readings. We've had two field studies so far, one to the National Museum which has the largest collection of Viking Age artifacts in the world, and another one around Zealand, looking at a bunch of different things from the Viking Age and before.

On our Zealand trip yesterday we first went to the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde. Roskilde was the main port before Copenhagen existed and 50 years ago they found 5 ships underneath the fjord there. They took the pieces and put them back together to get an idea of what the ships were like. Some were large and built for trading, others were small and meant for the warriors.

Burial mounds are all over Scandinavia and only a small number of them have been excavated. This one is from the Stone Age and it's about 5000 years old. Oh yeah, we got attacked by a bat.

Heorot hall, also known as Hleiðargarðr, is the biggest and most famous hall of Viking times. It's the main hall in Beowulf and it's what Tolkien modeled Meduseld (Theoden's hall in Edoras) after. Not much to see now mostly just the ridgeline of the foundation, but still interesting. My teacher is pretty much a Viking.

Probably looked like this at one point:

This is a round fort which was a base for a few hundred Vikings. They would carry out raids and then return here to the barricaded walls. The original mounds for the walls are still in tact and the foundations for the building have all been recreated.

Runic stone at a Christian church. They still used runes after the Viking age, as it was part of their tradition.

Pretty cool.