Friends of the Viking Ship Museum


The Association of Friends of the Viking Ship Museum is currently being built up year by year under the guidance of its President, Court Steward Søren Haslund Christensen. The Association provides its members with free admission to the Viking Ship Museum and other museums, including Orlogsmuseet in Copenhagen, Handels- og Søfartsmuseet at Kronborg and Den Antikvariske Samling in Ribe. In addition one of the Viking Ship Museum's recent publications is sent each year to the members, and relevant excursions and lectures are arranged.

For the first six months of 1996 the provisional programme of lectures is as follows:

Thursday 29.2.96, 19.30:

Jan Skamby Madsen: The Leidang harbours in the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages

During the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages the Danish war-fleet consisted of up to a thousand ships, and for much of the time they lay moored in harbours or in some form of storage around the country. There is every reason to believe that the remains of these early war-ship sites could still be found, if only one knew where to look. Place-name research can possibly be of assistance here. The name snekke, which occurs frequently in the lists of field names in the 1688 land register, seems in many cases to bear witness to activities connected with the Leidang ships.

Thursday 28.3.96, 19.30:

Tinna Damgård-Sørensen: The Vikings in Ireland

Over the last decade the long-ship from Skuldelev, also known as Skuldelev 2+4, has given rise to a number of surprises. The most recent of these was sprung when the National Museum's Natural Science Unit put samples of the ship's timber under the microscope to study the year-rings; this work led both to the dating of the ship's construction to the 1060s, and to the identification of the place of building as the Irish Sea, or more precisely Dublin. These results offer fascinating scope for speculation and research, and have brought into being a new area of cooperation with the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin; in 1996 a large quantity of archaeological material from the excavation in recent years of the Viking town under present-day Dublin will be lent to the Viking Ship Museum by the National Museum of Ireland. This material will form part of the exhibition 'The Vikings in Ireland', which will open on 29 March 1996. The exhibition - and the lecture - will throw light on the Vikings in Ireland, with the focus on the Dublin area, and there will be special emphasis on relations between the Scandinavian and the Celtic cultures.

The lectures will be held in Danish in the Viking Ship Museum. Admission will be free to the 'Friends', and open to others subject to an entrance fee. Membership of the Association of Friends of the Viking Ship Museum is available on application to the Viking Ship Museum, tel. +45 42 35 65 55, fax +45 46 32 21 15.