Mighty Viking ‘war machine’ takes shape for British Museum exhibition

The fragile timbers of the mightiest Viking warship ever found are being tenderly pieced together at the British Museum, where it will be the spectacular centrepiece of the biggest Viking exhibition in a generation.

Reconstructing hundreds of surviving timbers, and the steel cradle which holds them and completes the ship’s long sleek outline, is considerably more straightforward than when it was built almost 1,000 years ago. In 1025 it is estimated to have taken more than 30,000 hours of work. This time, lead curator Gareth Williams received “an enormous Meccano set” from Denmark, flatpacked in several large containers.

Williams said the ship, which will launch the museum’s new exhibition space in March, was “a war machine”, a troop carrier which would have spread terror wherever it sailed.

Although most of its timbers rotted over the centuries it was sunk in the silty water of the harbour at Roskilde, Denmark, the entire length of the keel survived. It is almost 37 metres longer than ships built centuries later, including Henry VIII’s flagship, the Mary Rose.

The ship may have been built for Canute, the Viking king who ruled over large parts of Scandinavia and England.
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