The longest Viking ship has been reconstructed in Roskilde

The Vikings Ship Museum in Roskilde is reconstructing the worlds longest Viking ship. The original ship (1025 A.D.) is about 36 m at length and almost 4 m at width. The ship "Roskilde-6" had room for 78 broad-shouldered Viking-oarsmen, and now it is being reconstructed, but off coarse without them.

First of all the ship builder Morten Gøthche is making a model of the ship, consisting of 220 parts, in scale 1:10. After that all details of this vessel will be again gathered.

"The purpose is to be able to recreate the initial form of the ships hull so that the National museum can preserve the find. The form of each unique board is very important. Each separate parts will be frozen, and when this process is ended  it will be  impossible to change its form", - says Morten Gøthche in the press release.

Before Gøthche begun working on the cardboard model, many hundreds hours have been spent for taking and describing all remains which are now kept in a three-dimensional file-format.

The shipwreck was found out in 1996-97 when the Museum established the  nowadays existing museum island. When the hull shape is established and the boards have been preserved,the plan is, that original parts of the find will be exhibited in full in a reconstructed hull shape, and in 2012 the ship becomes a part of the Vikings exhibition on the National Museum.

«Roskilde-6» is the one of nine remained ships of times of late Vikings and the early Middle Ages.

Source: DR.dk