Roar Ege: The Lifecycle of a Reconstructed Viking Ship

Abstract

In 1962, the remains of five late Viking Age ships were excavated from Roskilde Fjord, near Skuldelev on the Danish island of Zealand (See Figure 1: Crumlin-Pedersen and Olsen, 2002). Twenty years later, the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde began the process of building its first full-scale Viking ship reconstruction, the 14 m long coastal transport and trading vessel, Skuldelev 3. Over the next two years, Roar Ege was built at the Museum boatyard and the Roar Ege Project marked the start of a process that would form the core of the Museum’s research endeavours: the experimental archaeological reconstruction of ship and boat finds.

Keywords

• boat / ship
• (re)construction
• viking age
• denmark