Scholars Debate Viking Ships’ Fitness for a 3-Mile Journey
OSLO, Dec. 24 — The University of Oslo has decided to move three grand Viking ships, probably by truck and barge, to a new museum across town despite dire claims that the thousand-year-old oak vessels could fall apart en route.
A retired curator of Oslo’s Viking Ship Museum said the delicately preserved ships, two of which are nearly 80 feet long, were almost equal in archaeological importance to the Pyramids.
“Even if I have to live till I am 100, I will go on fighting this move,” the former curator, Arne Emil Christensen, 70, said in an interview. “The best way to stop it is still through diplomacy, but, if necessary, I will be in front of the ships, chained to the floor.”
The university’s board of directors voted 8 to 3 this month to move the sleek-hulled vessels over the objections of Dr. Christensen and several other Viking Age scholars, including the former director of the British Museum, David Wilson, and the director of Center for Maritime Archaeology in Denmark, Ole Crumlin-Pedersen. The board wants to transport the popular ships from a remote Oslo peninsula, where they have been housed for more than 75 years, to a large, multifaceted museum in the center of the capital.
Read entire article at NYT
A retired curator of Oslo’s Viking Ship Museum said the delicately preserved ships, two of which are nearly 80 feet long, were almost equal in archaeological importance to the Pyramids.
“Even if I have to live till I am 100, I will go on fighting this move,” the former curator, Arne Emil Christensen, 70, said in an interview. “The best way to stop it is still through diplomacy, but, if necessary, I will be in front of the ships, chained to the floor.”
The university’s board of directors voted 8 to 3 this month to move the sleek-hulled vessels over the objections of Dr. Christensen and several other Viking Age scholars, including the former director of the British Museum, David Wilson, and the director of Center for Maritime Archaeology in Denmark, Ole Crumlin-Pedersen. The board wants to transport the popular ships from a remote Oslo peninsula, where they have been housed for more than 75 years, to a large, multifaceted museum in the center of the capital.