This film shows the Canadian forests and their importance to the entire rest of the world.... 

special dedication to Ruth who's doing archaeological work RIGHT now RIGHT there...
go visit her blog to hear about it.

wild chronicles podcasts are free...

the Viking Ship Museum


This museum was built for five fairly intact ships found in Roskilde Fjord.
They were sunk  sometime in the second half of the 11'th century.
They were sunk deliberately, filled with boulders, to block one of three navigable canals
 through the low waters of the fjord to protect Roskilde from enemy ships.
Roskilde was the capital before Copenhagen, and kings and queens were and still are buried here.

 
The ships are amazingly well preserved
- considering they've been on the bottom of the fjord for about a thousand years.
They are also very different styles.
The front one  in the picture at the top of the page is an ocean going trade vessel.
It had a crew of 6 - 8 and could carry 24 tonnes of cargo.
It was built in Norway ca 1030.

The one right above here is a great longship, a slim, fast, maneuverable war ship that could take 70-80 men.
It was built in Dublin in 1042.

The one below is a small broad coastal trade vessel,
which would have 5 to 6 men on board and carry 4.6 tonnes of cargo.
It was built in Denmark ca 1040


The museum is a working museum. They reconstruct the ships.
They try out all the tools and techniques of the age and also sail the ships to find out how everything really worked.
The reconstructed Sea Stallion sailed to Dublin last summer and should come home this summer.

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Here's a finished ship.



They also have a whole setup for kids to try being vikings for a moment... we obviously had to try it too:

Denmark is a lot of interconnected islands - so we have a bunch of big impressive bridges to cross.
This is the Great Belt Fixed Link.
Storebælt (Great belt) is a bit of the baltic sea that lies between Fyn (Funen) and Sjælland (Zealand).
The fixed link consists of two bridges.
A low bridge between Funen and the tiny island Sprogø and then a high bridge between Sprogø and Zealand.





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Before the bridges, long ago, Sprogø, the little island in the middle only had a lighthouse and a "home for wayward young ladies". That's the little white houses with red roofs. This was where better society sent their knocked up or otherwise misbehaved daughters...  and had them re-educated away from society.

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Horse chestnuts were flowering.


Fields of yellow everywhere. Rapeseed fields flowering.

Zealand, where I recently moved to, is a lot flatter than Jutland,
 where most of the Danish "mountains" are and where I grew up.


To finish this random road post,
 here's the moon rising over the beach in front of my new house.

Den gamle by
(the old town)

This is a place I feel very attached to.



It's an open air museum - a museum of houses! in the middle of the botanical garden in Århus, my home town.
I grew up right next to the botanical garden, so I played here a lot.
When I was a kid the museum was open - like it was a real village.
You could just walk through it take a drink from the fountain, feed the geese
There used to be a mean old gander (male goose) by the pond.



When I was a kid, you had to buy tickets to individual houses to see the workshops or shops inside (each house is a museum of its own). Only a few weekends each year would some crafts expert come and explain the tools of the trade of each house. Now, the village is fenced in and you pay an entrance to get into the village, but then you can walk in and out of all the houses... and there are people dressed up like 150 years ago selling old books in the bookshop, oldfashioned cookies in the bakery etc. - but they don't show you how to make rope or buckets anymore.


This is the pharmacy.
Inside is the shop with a bazillion drawers in old dark wood with names of medicines in latin hand-painted on the front.
There's also a stuffed "mermaid"/monster on the window sill and a crocodile hanging from the ceiling.
In the back is the laboratory with mortars and glassware and equipment for rolling pills.


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Behind the house is the pharmaceutical garden... where they grow all sorts of toxic and spicy herbs.
They keep loosing the halucinogenic herbs....


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In th middle of the village there is a square with a well / fountain. This is where the BIG buildings are. There's a big merchant's house and then there's the ginormous mint master's house.

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This dude had issues... or maybe he just really really liked windows

On the outskirts are a few less show-off-y buildings a red woodstorage house and a white mill.
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Each of these buildings was "preserved". They were built several hundred years ago - most of them somewhere else originally. They were moved from all over the country and restored here. Every stone is numbered and every nail is recorded. Plaster and paint has been kept the way it was - or dug out from under layers of more modern paint. Interiors, furniture, tools were all collected and preserved with the houses. It's really a neat place. There are several small museums inside the village with clothes, toys, fine china, bicycles, and fancy clock-works.

Iron age market with falconry and "spontaneous" sword-fighting


Yeah, I know, it's not a falcon, but this lovely owl was trained and worked just as hard as the falcons.



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They had three different species of birds... The owl is a Bubo africanus and the striking falcon below is a Falco cherrug.


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They hunted in very different ways, so it was very interesting to see the difference in how they flew and how they struck their prey. This falcon struck birds from above, diving a million miles and hour. The falconer explained a lot about how they live, hunt, digest... and how relatively stupid they are.


After the falconry, camp was suddenly attacked by a band of christians trying to force baptize the pagans... "spontaneous" fighting broke out.

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Christians were defeated... Odin worship continued and peace was restored in the village.


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We continued to the actual market where crafts were shown off and shoppers strolled around and had bread with raw onions, goat cheese, smoked meat and honey (not bad actually - except for the vegetarians...).


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They sold all sorts of things... sheep skins, wooden spoons, armour, jewelry, clothes, tools, and food. All iron age style.

 





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Nothing to do with Denmark in particular.... 


but we visited this little newborn foal - one day old !
IN Denmark - Island of Funen to be more specific.

He was put out on grass for the first time.
His mom had obvioulsy seen grass before.


Mommy wasn't entirely happy with all the paparazzi humans...
and curious other horses and... leave baby alonez!

While she visited me Panemma scaled the highest mountain in Denmark: Ejer Bavnehøj.
She valiantly refused the oxygen offered at base camp,
and fearlessly proceeded to climb all the way to the very top within hours of landing on Danish soil.

Here's the view from the top:

There's a strange building at the top, and a stone with the exact height over sea level engraved:
170 meters and 98 cm
(= 560.96 feet)

I would like to point out that Denmark is not entirely flat.
There are these lovely rolling hills, however, none of them get very high up.

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.....and chaos was restored!


Much happened in the meantime, some of it was reported over here on Panemma's blog..  (photos are here).
The short version is:
- packed my home into boxes,
- new job, too many things happening at the same time, meetings and meetings and clunky old computer programs that can't be changed because they're on a national level decided by some politician so they can measure the productivity of universities.. 
- Panemma came to visit on her birthday... and then left on my birthday... during the week she was here, we visited:
    - Denmarks highest point (all of 170.98 m above sea level - that's 560.96 feet to you foot fetishists)
    - Den gamle by = the old town (open air museum of old houses)
    - J & H, some of my bestest friends,
    - a newborn foal who was put out on grass for the first time (the grass wasn't for him, but he had to go outside with
        his mom)
    - the iron age market with falconers...  and three sp. of birds! (cool), some armoured fighters, lots of craftmanship,
        iron age food and schtuff!
    - one of the worlds longest bridges across the baltic sea from Funen to Zealand.
    - Viking ship museum
    - Copenhagen in general,
    - Tivoli in particular
    - oh, and we saw the new Indiana Jones movie on opening night
- Waved goodbye to Panemma, packed the cats and went back to my old apartment
- took down the lamps and curtains and packed the last bits.
- MOVED
- screwed the bed together and a closet before I conked out.
..... and got back to work for the next row of meetings in the homepage committee.
The cats are staying with my mum this week, so tomorrow I go back, clean the flat hand in keys on monday and drive the cats back here....

I will get around to getting up to date with everybody's blogs eventually.... but there are a few things that need screws screwed in and boxes that need emptying etc... so have patience for a bit longer.