Qualla: Skuldelev ships

Skuldelev ships: Introduction

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Toxophilus, CC BY-SA 4.0. Around the year 1070, somebody sank five ships on purpose. They were dragged into the Peberrenden, the most important of the winding natural channels through Roskilde Fjord near the harbour of Skuldelev, and put on the bottom to close the fairway against attack from the sea. It was an act of destruction that turned out to be an act of preservation. Nine centuries later, between 1957 and 1962, archaeologists from the Danish National Museum lifted the pieces out of the mud and discovered that the barricade had been assembled from five completely different kinds of vessel, every one of them built in the 11th century. A barricade had accidentally become one of the richest sources we have on the shipbuilding traditions of the late Viking Age.

Read more: Skuldelev ships on Qualla

Image: Toxophilus | CC BY-SA 4.0

Skuldelev ships: The Ship That Never Existed

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Knak, CC BY-SA 4.0. There is a small confusion built into the names, and it has never been tidied up. When the timbers first came out of the fjord, the excavators counted six ships and numbered them accordingly. It emerged later that the wreckage catalogued as Skuldelev 2 and the wreckage catalogued...

Read more: Skuldelev ships on Qualla

Image: Knak | CC BY-SA 4.0

Skuldelev ships: Working Boats

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Slaunger, CC BY-SA 4.0. Three of the five were built to carry things rather than fight. Skuldelev 1 is a sturdy ocean-going cargo vessel, possibly of the knarr type: 15.84 metres long, 4.8 in the beam, drawing a metre, built in Sognefjorden in western Norway around 1030 from thick pine planks and repair...

Read more: Skuldelev ships on Qualla

Image: Slaunger | CC BY-SA 4.0

Skuldelev ships: The Long One From Dublin

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Niels Elgaard Larsen - (WT-en) Elgaard at English Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Skuldelev 2 is the ship that changes the story. It is an oak warship, a longship probably of the skeid type, roughly 30 metres long and only 3.8 in the beam, drawing about a metre with a maximum crew of 70 to 80 — a hull shaped for nothing but speed, driven by an estimated 112 sq...

Read more: Skuldelev ships on Qualla

Image: Niels Elgaard Larsen - (WT-en) Elgaard at English Wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 4.0

Skuldelev ships: The Odd One Out

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Skuldelev 6 refuses to fit the pattern. It measures 11.2 metres by 2.5 and carried both oars and a sail, and its purpose has been argued over since it was raised. It was built in Sognefjorden around 1030, mostly from pine, like Skuldelev 1 — the two may have come from the same tr...

Read more: Skuldelev ships on Qualla

Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Skuldelev ships: Built Again

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Superchilum, CC BY-SA 4.0. All five are exhibited at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, which has now reconstructed every one of them, and others have been rebuilt by groups elsewhere in the world. The first replica of Skuldelev 5 came from outside the museum entirely: Sebbe Als, built in 1969 at Augusten...

Read more: Skuldelev ships on Qualla

Image: Superchilum | CC BY-SA 4.0