The Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde, Denmark

The picturesque town of Roskilde was the center of the Danish kingdom at the end of the Viking Age.  Today busy shops line the cobblestone streets filled with pedestrians and cyclists, all centered around the Domkirche, (Les look up history) the cathedral where all the Danish monarchs since Sven Estridssen (dates) are buried.  The Domkirche sits at the highest point in the town, overlooking the head of the fjord which was the site of the royal harbor in viking times.

According to the Roskilde chronicles, recorded by the monks at the cathedral, in the year ___the harbor was in danger of attack by the Swedes or the Norwegians, and so the (soldiers?) took drastic measures, blocking the major shipping channels here with five sunken ships. In (year) they were recovered and their remains rest now in the main building of the Viking ship museum on the shore of the fjord. 

Unlike the Oseberg, gokstad and Tune Viking ships, which have been dramatically restored now reside in the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, these five so-called Skuldelev ships (named for the location up the fjord from Roskilde where they rested for nearly 1000 years) are still in fragments, displayed on beautiful iron frames, giving them the impressions of ghosts.  In the words of curator Louise Henriksen,...they should be displayed as they were, the ones at Roskilde displayed how they are.  Philosophies of how to exhibit such things has changed over the years.  We can certainly imagine how they looked, now they are ghostly in their iron frames.  Louise showed us the bars on which the shields rested on the smaller longship, the distinctively Danish "staircase stem" and the 

Like sugar frosting, it's snowing tonight in Copenhagen

...but only after a wet, gray day.  Even in the middle of the day the winter sky here is as dark as I have seen, thick and wooly.  You've got to admire the Danes, though.  They have stuck it out here for millenia - more than stuck it out; they have made a home for themselves, marked by their strength and their sensitivities, and a very artistic sense of how to live.  Their antique buildings are grand but human in proportion and character, painted in the hopeful hues of apricot and peach and sunshine, roofed with terracotta, lovingly ornamented in stone and plaster, and topped by bronze statuary and soaring copper spires.  These architectural gems seem to look out onto the cobbles and canals through their brightened windows, gazing thoughtfully at their people who throng the sidewalks and squares despite the spitting wind.   Yes, the Danes have made a home for themselves here in the dark and cold, their shops strung with lights and their outdoor cafes boasting huge umbrellas, heaters, and a blankets hung on the back of every chair.  

Even on the wide thoroughfares, overseen only by sharp-angled modern buildings, the Danes bicycle fearlessly into the wind, present-day Vikings astride the small spit of windswept land that guards the gentle Baltic from the cold North Sea.