Lindsey's semester abroad!: There's more than just the MN Vikings?!

Yesterday, Hilary, Chris, Colleen and I went to Roskilde (the former captial of Denmark) and visited the Vikings museum. It took us about an hour to get there as we traveled through the countryside by bus. It was really nice, living within Copenhagen we don't see much land...but it's true Denmark does have rolling hills too! Here's a couple remakes of Viking warrior ships we saw outside the museum.

And, look...Denmark has lakes too! Well, technically its a fjord but close enough...reminded me of home!

Roskilde had three channels that ran by it where Vikings used to block it off from attackers by setting up blockades of ships....these ships were found sunk in the fjord somewhere in the water beyond these windows. That's the actual wood they found under the water...we watched a video on a special process where specialists created a hole in the water basically (they blocked it off and pumped all the water out) and they had to dunk the wood in something so it wouldn't fall apart after being under water for so long. I'll have to check on the dates again, but I'm pretty sure these were sunk in the 1100s and weren't excavated until the late 1950s.

After watching a video and checking out the rest of the museum we came to the part that was, in my opinion, the best part--the interactive room! Check out my chainmail...no swords getting through that!

Ahoy mate! I don't think the Vikings really said that, but that didn't stop me! The chainmail was really heavy and I could feel my shoulders sinking more and more the longer I wore it!

Then, there was the dress up corner...and Chris found this great helmet!

The Vikings did the Can-Can, right?!

After the museum, we walked around and quite a ways uphill (quite the hike, I must say) to get to their Cathedral. There are old tombs in here that we really wanted to see but we got there 5 minutes after they closed, so the outside had to do....which was quite impressive in itself!