Visiting the Vikings.

The vast majority of the pictures in this post are credited to the most wonderful Mr Magic who has managed to take over 4GB of photos in a short span of our weekend escape to Copenhagen.

Ever since I've studied Vikings for my A-level History course, I've been in love with the Vikings. There is something extremely captivating about those men and women who traveled all across Scandinavia, into Britain and even further afield to North America. For this reason a trip to Copenhagen was a real highlight of my summer holiday. Finally I got close to the history of the Vikings. And it was brilliant.

On the way to meet the Vikings!

If you want to follow in the footsteps of the Vikings, I wholeheartedly recommend Vikingeskibsmuseet (The Viking Ship Museum). It's located in Roskilde, in zone 8 of the Greater Copenhagen and is easily reachable by a train and a 25 minute walk across the town.

If I were to describe the museum in one place I would say incredible. Mr Magic said that I looked like a child in a sweet shop and this is really how I felt for half of the day when I was at the Vikingeskibsmuseet.

There are remains of real Vikings ships in the museum building, you can try on a Viking outfit, but the real attractions were all outdoors. You could try your luck in Viking games, board a reconstruction of one of the ships on display, have a go at using an axe, listen to a story about reconstruction works in Roskilde and try traditional weaving. It also turned out that I'm really good recognising types of trees. But the real highlight was a trip on a reconstruction of an 18th century ship modeled on Viking ships. It was made entirely of wood, with a rough wool sail finished with horse hair. We even had a chance to experience first hand how hard it was to sail this ship: each of us on the boat was given an oar and we had to row back to the harbour. It was tough, but real fun and I could really feel like a Viking. I felt like a little girl who was given a present which she wished for for ages.

Throw Thor's hammer.

Here we go!

6 out of 8 on the wood knowledge test

Waiting for the rowing expedition.

The trip wouldn't be complete without buying some appropriate gifts. Mr Magic got me a pair of earings with Freyr, a Norse god of fertility, which is a lovely addition to my collection of quirky earing. I've also got a Viking keyring to ensure the Viking inside of me has a companion nearby at all times. As a more interactive gift, we got a Viking Attack card where you can rub in the Vikings, Saxons and their weaponry yourself where you want. I'm yet to do this one, saving it for a quiet evening with some wine.

Little Freyr earings.

Viking attack rub down fun

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Next time: my ordeal at the canal swim. Keep an eye out for it!