Goodbye Viking Ship Museum, For Now

Last week was the final stretch of my 5 week research trip to the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde. What I did on my last day, sums up quite nicely how I spent the past few weeks at this institution. The day started off with finishing up gathering relevant literature for my PhD project, followed by reading a couple of papers on Viking Age shipbuilding, I then spoke to the boat builders at the boatyard and finally had a last supervision with Anton Englert during which we outlined a detailed structure and preliminary table of content for my thesis.

My first impression of the library at the museum (see my blog post of 10 February 2014) as a treasure trove proved to be practically an understatement. It is almost as if it was tailor-made for my PhD subject. Also the expertise, critique and advice of Anton Englert, head of research, has proven to be invaluable.

On the 3rd of March, I had the opportunity to present my research to the boat builders, archaeologists and staff at the museum. I prepared two separate presentations, one explaining the concept and preliminary research questions of my PhD research and one on the ideas my colleague at the University of Southampton Juan Pablo Olaberria and I have developed on Viking Age shipbuilding from a conceptual point of view.

Juan Pablo and I studied the applications of rules of thumb and ‘mental templates’, specifically in planking the hull of a Viking Age ship. One of the points we try to get across is that it is necessary to carefully define what building ‘by eye’ means in the archaeological literature on Viking Age ship construction. In the majority of the literature today, building ‘by eye’ seems to imply that clinker builders base most of their design decisions on a visual appreciation of the shape as it is being built. Tools and rules of thumb appear to preform a secondary role. We would argue that the ‘rule’ and the ‘eye’ are inseparable and were both important parts of building a Viking Age ship and deserve to be on equal footing. Furthermore, we believe it is important to look at shipbuilding on a deeper level and study the knowledge behind the techniques.

The Viking Ship Museum, the world-leading institution for Viking Age shipbuilding, is of course the ideal platform to test these ideas with the opinions of both traditional boat builders and archaeologists. An interesting discussion followed the presentation during which rightful criticisms were raised, new questions posed and insights offered. The basis of our ideas however, in our opinion, passed the test with flying colours.

There are a couple of people that deserve a special mentioning and thank you for making this trip such a success. First of all, Anton Englert for his willingness to invest the time to act as an external supervisor for my PhD project and his useful advice. Also Vibeke Bischoff, ship reconstructor at the museum, for her rightful critiques to my presentation and her help in dealing with these. Finally, also Morten Ravn, member of the research team, for fruitful discussions and a lot of good advice.

Fortunately, this is only goodbye for now. Over the next 2,5 years, I will make frequent 5 to 6 week long visits to the museum and try to take full advantage of the peaceful but stimulating environment, library, and expertise of the staff.