The clang of hammer on metal rings out across the Danish fjord as sweating blacksmiths work to painstakingly recreate an anchor that once hung from a Viking longship 1,000 years ago. Their efforts are part of a project to seek out the seafaring secrets of those Scandinavian sailors by reconstructing the boats they crossed the seas in. In the heat of their raging forge, the team from the UK’s National School of Blacksmithing is helping to rebuild the “Skudelev 5,” whose remnants are on display in nearby Roskilde’s Viking Ship Museum.
“As close as possible, we’re exploring the techniques that would have been used at the time,” blacksmithing lecturer Rowan Taylor told AFP over the sound of his students banging away at red-hot iron. Along with four other boats, the “Skudelev 5” was found in the Roskilde Fjord in 1962, almost a thousand years after it was sunk while trying to protect the town from invading marauders. The archaeologists believe the sleek and slender ship was once part of a larger war fleet.
At 17 meters long, it is dwarfed by the largest Viking longship ever unearthed, the 37-metre-long “Roskilde 6” found nearby. Roughly half of her oak hull survived, but her iron anchor did not. For their reconstruction, the blacksmiths have had to model their work on another anchor dating from the same period.
That anchor, which was found in Ladby in central Denmark, measures 1.26 meters long by 0.83 meters wide and was lashed to its boat by an 11-metre-long.
