Relaxing Saturday

After a lovely sleep in this morning, we went for a walk around the area in which we are staying. Robert had suggested to walk to the end of the street and walk around the cemetery as ‘Its really lovely, lots of nice flowers…’. We thought this was a little strange but went there anyway, and he was right! The cemetery is more like a park with gravestones, and talking to Ela later, she was saying that people will go and sit on the grass to read etc, basically treating it like a park! It was lovely to be out in the fresh air, without raincoats and umbrellas, and most of all, without getting wet.

After walking around the cemetery, and then the nearby lake, we headed back to Robert & Ela’s for a yummy brunch of fresh bread, ham, cheese, pickled herring, curried pickled herring, honey etc. Very much the ‘continental breakfast’. We tried the herring – both varieties – and were surprised at how sweet the meat was. It didn’t taste very fishy at all. Oh, and Danish ham really is the best ham we have ever tasted.

In the afternoon, Robert had to get some work done, so Ela, Andrew and Alison headed to Roskilde to see the Viking ship museum. Roskilde is about 30km from Copenhagen, so it didn’t take long to get there. The museum complex is quite large, with archaeology rooms, ship building, blacksmith etc actually working to learn more about Viking ship building. They have built a number of boats there, using authentic tools partly to learn about how the tools were used, and partly to learn how the ships were actually built.

They also have 5 Viking boats all found in the harbour of Roskilde. They believe they were sunk to block a sailing channel, as protection from other Vikings, but the find was very unusual, and provided a lot of information about the people and happenings of the period. The ships are a large cargo ship built in Norway, a badly built small war ship built using materials from other boats, a large war ship from Dublin, a fishing boat built locally and a small cargo ship also built locally. We had a guided tour through this part of the museum, which was great – lots of interesting information.

The museum has also recently launched a replica of the large war ship, which is currently on its way to Dublin with a 65 person crew, to see how the Vikings would have sailed, what they would have experienced etc. One of the things they want to find out is how they slept as there is no evidence of having a cabin of any sort on any of the ships.

In the evening we visited another friend of Robert and Elas for a barbeque. This time, it was more of a dinner party with lots of lively discussion about Europe, politics, education etc. It is really interesting to hear about differences in policy of government around the world, and the role of the European Union from real people, not the media. We had a great time