Viking Excursions

For my Nordic Mythology class we got to go on a couple of excursions the first of which was through Denmark. We went to the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde where they had complete replicas of all of the ships they have found that you are able to go out on and have been used to test known viking sailing routes. Our next step was Trelleborg which is an old viking fortress though no one is entirely sure what it was for. It has four entrances and the buildings, mapped out in stone, are entirely symmetrical to one another. It is also not the only one of it's kind with a few others having been found in both Denmark and Sweden of varying sizes. The last stop was to a viking ship grave which was very interesting. Again not a lot is known about the grave specially since it was robbed around 50 to 60 years after the ship was buried. As a result the only skeletons left are that of 11 horses and 2 dogs. Despite not knowing who exactly was buried in the ship, and whether or not it was just one man, from it's size it is obvious that they held power and wealth. At the museum near the burial site there are also a group of people attempting to rebuild the ship using (mostly) traditional viking methods.

__________________Trip Two________________

The second excursion was to sites within Sweden and as you can see from the photos the weather was not quite as pleasant. Copenhagen is connected to Sweden by the Øresund bridge. Southern Sweden used to be ancient Danish land so our lecturer told us that the bridge is part of the Danish plan to reclaim that land back. It was most certainly the oddest feeling of driving for not even an hour and being in another country. In Sweden we visited a stone ship burial, which is simply a burial where instead of using a ship, rocks have been laid out in the shape of one. Unfortunately the site is yet to be excavated so no one knows what is underneath. The second stop was to a viking graveyard, most commonly thought to have been for non warriors (commoners). Like with the first stop the remains have been buried under a shape created with rocks though in this instances it is not only ships. The last stop was to see some runic stones and one of the most extraordinary aspects of these stones is that they have not been moved, like most others.