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Roskilde |
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Roskilde, located 20 miles west of Copenhagen, was founded in the year 998, and was Denmark's capital until 1536. Construction began on the cathedral or Domkirke in 1170, and it took three centuries to complete. Jørgen Brinck drove us to Roskilde and gave us a guided tour of the cathedral. He showed us the dozens of royal tombs, statues, the big clock, and a column marked with the heights of many of the kings. After our tour of the cathedral, we walked down to the Viking Ship Museum on the waterfront. Here, a collection of five Viking merchant ships and longboats are on display. The boats were purposely sunk in the fjord during the eleventh century to block the channel from invaders. Recently the remains of the boats were salvaged and restored. Although the boats are not as large or well preserved as those we later saw at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, they are impressive and the museum has good displays of Viking culture, and a great hands-on model of a Viking ship. Outside the museum are workshops where new boats are built in the same style as the old Viking ships. We saw a quite a few of these boats in various stages of construction. (For more pictures of sights in Roskilde, see the web site http://www.roskildeinfo.dk/ -- click on the "museerne" button to find the Domkirke and the Viking Ship Museum, called "vikingeskibmuseet".) |
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