Around the year 1070 the people of Roskilde deliberately sank several old ships in a narrow channel of their fjord – as a barrier against attackers from the sea. Almost nine hundred years later they were raised again: five very different Viking ships, from the bulky ocean freighter to the slender warship. The Skuldelev ships are still our best window into the shipbuilding of the late Viking Age.
The Peberrenden channel near Skuldelev, about twenty kilometres north of Roskilde, was the main approach to the town. It was here, around 1070, that several old, worn-out ships were sunk, filled with stones and turned into a barrier – an early form of “blockship.” Enemy fleets were meant to run aground on the obstacle. For centuries the wrecks lay in the mud, until divers found them again.
From 1957 to 1962 the Danish National Museum recovered the remains. The climax: in 1962 the site was enclosed by a cofferdam and pumped dry, so the timbers could be salvaged on dry ground. Today the five ships stand in the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde.
The numbering still causes confusion. At first it was thought there were six ships. Then it turned out that “Skuldelev 2” and “Skuldelev 4” belonged to one and the same ship. Rather than renumber everything, number 4 was simply dropped – leaving five ships numbered 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6.
And these five could hardly be more different. Skuldelev 1 is a sturdy ocean freighter, probably of the knarr type: about 16 metres long, of thick pine, built around 1030 in the western Norwegian Sognefjord. With it one could cross the North Sea and the North Atlantic. Skuldelev 3, by contrast, is a small oak coastal freighter, built in Denmark around 1040 – with 75 percent of its substance preserved, the best-kept of the five.
Then the warships. Skuldelev 5 is a small longship of the snekkja type, about 17 metres long; its top plank has holes for the straps of the shields. But the star is Skuldelev 2: a warship about 30 metres long for 65 to 70 men, demonstrably built around 1042 in the Dublin area from Irish oak. It is one of the longest Viking ships ever found. Skuldelev 6, finally, a smaller boat from western Norway, probably first served for fishing, later as a coastal freighter.
Together the five make a strikingly varied picture. There is no single “the” Viking ship, but a whole range: heavy freighters for ocean and coast, slender fast sailers for war, a fishing boat. And two of the ships were not even Danish – Skuldelev 2 came from Viking Dublin. This one find alone shows how far the nets of the Viking world reached. About the great warship itself we say more in our piece on the longships.
“Praise the day at evening, a wife on her pyre, / a blade when it is tried, … a ship when it has made the voyage.” Hávamál 81, after Karl Simrock (public domain)
The Roskilde museum has built accurate reconstructions of all five ships. The most famous is the “Havhingsten fra Glendalough” (The Sea Stallion from Glendalough), the reconstruction of Skuldelev 2. Made in almost forty thousand hours of work, it sailed in 2007 from Roskilde to Dublin – back to the city where its thousand-year-old model had once been built. A ship sunk as an obstacle thus became the best teacher of the art of Viking shipbuilding.
The five Skuldelev ships were recovered in 1957–1962 from Roskilde Fjord (the Peberrenden channel near Skuldelev); in 1962 the site was drained with a cofferdam. All date to the 11th century and had been sunk around 1070 as a barrier. They are five types: ocean freighter (Skuldelev 1, western Norway, c. 1030), coastal freighter (Skuldelev 3, Denmark, c. 1040, best-preserved), small longship/snekkja (Skuldelev 5), large warship (Skuldelev 2, ~30 m, Dublin c. 1042) and a fishing/small freighter (Skuldelev 6). They stand in the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde; all five have reconstructions (Skuldelev 2 = “Havhingsten fra Glendalough”).
The Skuldelev ships are not a fleet sunk in battle but deliberately scuttled old ships – a barrier. And there is no such thing as “the” Viking ship: the find shows five very different vessels for trade, war and fishing. That two of them (Skuldelev 2) were built in Irish Dublin refutes the image of purely Danish ships and shows how widely the Viking world was connected.
The longships · Boat burial – the burning ship · Ragnar's sons · Thyra Danebod – Denmark's mightiest woman.