I could say that I'm just playing with the method. It's like Pulp Fiction. I'm allowing the reader to piece the story together. It makes you do more of the work, but don't worry. You're all the more enriched!
With all due apologies to Quentin (and Brick for that matter), the reality is that I'm horribly lazy and only blog when I feel like it. And now I feel like it! So lucky for all of those that were just itching to hear about my trip to Roskilde with Emily and her parents. Over a month ago.
Roskilde is best known for its Cathedral, the Viking Ship Muesum, and the Roskilde Festival. A co-worker told me that both Pearl Jam and Nirvana played it circa 1990-1991. My brain nearly melted.
This year we'll have to settle for half-Dane Lars Ulrich's band, Rhianna, Kendrick Lamar, Henry Rollins spoken word, Suicidal Tendencies, The National, and others. Many, many, many others.
And Miike Snow!
Holy crap do I love this song. Thanks Sweden. You're good for so much more than just ABBA.
Our trip did not include seeing groundbreaking bands. It did include a tour of the cathedral and the Viking Ship Museum.
The cathedral is essentially the Danish Royal burial ground. Think Westminster Abbey-of-Denmark.
This is the door that is only used by royalty.
And this is our friend Christian IV.
Maybe it was just a sign of the times, but Christian's casket was - comparatively - decidedly simple. I should have taken an appropriate picture. It is black - most likely velvet - adorned with silver and some gold. Not nearly as over-the-top as I had expected. Here's some stock footage - stolen from here. Sorry about that.
You can see the "gates" in the background, here are some close-ups.
You were totally waiting for this. A ceiling picture.
This room has a surviving period-painted mural. You can see bits of it behind these statues. For some reason I imagine them as being members of Poseidon's royal guard. I am weird.
From here it was on to the Viking Ship Museum. Roskilde is at the end of a long channel / fjord that connects it to the sea. This channel snakes along the coastline, this way and that. As such, Roskilde proved to be a relatively protected port city for much of the Viking era.
There are three deep channels - deep enough for sailing - in the section of the fjord nearest Roskilde. During the height of the Viking age, two of the channels were filled with ballast - old ships, junk (but that's also a ship!), etc. The third, easily the most difficult to navigate, was left open. The idea being that local sailors who understood the channel could handle it. Alien invaders could not.
This proved to be excellent for the Vikings. It might have been nearly as excellent for 1950s Danish archaeologists. In one of these channel-blockades, pieces of four different ships were found - relatively preserved - in the mud and sand.
What followed next was the painstaking process of coffer-damming off the salvage area, finding fragments, keeping them wet, cataloging them, sending them to Copenhagen, preserving them, and putting the pieces together. The thing about ancient submerged wood is that it will, when exposed to air, quickly disintegrate. Every-single-piece was preserved through a sort of glycol-water exchange. The pieces were submerged in glycol and the water in the wood was slowly replaced / displaced by glycol. Imagine a dialysis that could take years.
The other issue was putting the ships back together. Remember, this was an era - for the most part - without computer assistance. After many years, the ships were reassembled. They are now displayed at the museum.
It is a very cool museum. Just imagine sailing one of these from Scandinavia to Greenland or - in one case - to Newfoundland.
We were privileged to have an English-speaking tour provided by a history student currently earning her doctorate at the University of Copenhagen. She mentioned that - for long journeys - the Vikings would bring cows and other animals with them on the boat. They would actually cook the meat on the boat. With a fire built on rocks.
Today, the museum has recreated several Viking ships using - to the best of their knowledge - period technology / craftsmanship. It's really impressive.
I'll finish with this statue / sculpture near the Roskilde S-tog station.
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