The Vikings are conquering new territory as soon as extra: within the Danish metropolis of Aarhus, the place plans are afoot for a brand new Viking museum; in Roskilde, Denmark, the place development is to start on a brand new residence for Viking ships; and in Norway, the place Oslo’s huge new Museum of the Viking Age is taking form.
These expansive plans mirror the fashionable day’s enduring fascination for a individuals who resisted Christianity and explored new frontiers as far afield as Newfoundland and Baghdad, says Mads Kähler Holst, the director of Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus.
“The Viking Age was a time of discovery,” Holst says. “It was additionally a time of transition, the place the previous world met the brand new after which lastly got here to an finish with the introduction of Christianity. The Vikings left a powerful mark on Northern Europe, and that a part of our cultural historical past fascinates each our native and worldwide guests.”
Along with the town of Aarhus, the museum final month proposed a brand new Viking museum within the coronary heart of the previous city, not removed from the cathedral, the town’s most distinguished landmark. At current the Moesgaard Museum, whose most important constructing is round 10km south of Aarhus, operates a small underground Viking museum on the city-centre web site that has been proposed for the brand new establishment.
An evaluation has proven that such a museum may entice between 320,000 and 390,000 guests yearly. The subsequent stage is to organise an architectural competitors; archaeological excavations on the deliberate web site may start in 2028 and the museum, which might deal with the interval from 700 to 1100, may very well be accomplished by 2032, the proposal says.
“Aarhus has an unusually deep historical past, however it’s surprisingly unknown,” Holst says. “Unusually, the town has preserved its authentic location from the 700s, so that you actually stroll within the footsteps of the Vikings whenever you stroll across the metropolis centre.”
The deliberate museum would add to a vary of Viking establishments already working in Denmark: one in Ribe, the place archaeological finds from 2017-18 have prompted a rewriting of the city’s historical past within the eighth and ninth centuries; a department of the nationwide museum at Jelling that tells the story of the Viking kings and the transition to Christianity; and the Viking Ship Museum at Roskilde.
Storms within the fjord at Roskilde have turn into extra extreme and frequent because of local weather change, that means that the 5 Viking ships on present there have every now and then needed to be secured after storm warnings. A brand new residence for them, to be constructed by Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects, “will lie on the highest level on the museum web site, at a secure take away from the ability of the ocean,” Tinna Damgård-Sørensen, the director of the museum, stated in a press release earlier this yr.
In the meantime in Oslo, the brand new Museum of the Viking Age at the moment underneath development is an enlargement of the present Viking Ship Museum, residence to one of the best preserved Viking ships on the planet. Not solely will it triple the out there house, it can additionally provide improved conservation situations for the ships, the museum says on its web site.
