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
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