Large donations ensure a safe and future-proof home for Roskilde’s Viking ships

24.06.2022 l More news

With private donations totalling 135 million kroner from VILLUM FONDEN, Augustinus Fonden and Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond, as well as a grant of 150 million from the National Budget and 25 million kroner from Roskilde Municipality, financing is now in place to secure the five Viking ships in Roskilde for posterity. This will be done by constructing a new exhibition building, which will protect the irreplaceable ships from storm surges, rising water levels and damaging daylight.

With the combined donations, the Viking Ship Museum can now look forward to the creation of a new, future-proof exhibition building for the five Viking Ships, which are an essential part of Denmark’s cultural heritage. Here, visitors will be met with the grand and sweeping narrative of how the Vikings changed the world with their ships – and how the world they encountered changed them. The Museum will also build a separate entrance building and new outdoor areas, to ensure a coherent museum experience.

VILLUM FONDEN is supporting the project with 60 million kroner, Augustinus Fonden with 50 million and Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond with 25 million kroner.

“With this donation, we’re pleased to be able to continue supporting the Viking Ship Museum – an involvement which goes all the way back to Aage Kann Rasmussen, brother to the founder of VILLUM FONDEN. This project will create secure surroundings for an important part of Danish and European history and give visitors the chance to experience new perspectives on the Vikings, their impressive craftwork and rich seafaring culture”, states Chair of VILLUM FONDEN Jens Kann-Rasmussen.   

I’m not just happy. I’m extremely relieved that we can now begin protecting the ships from the recurring threat from storm surges. I’m deeply grateful for the generous support we have been given to secure our irreplaceable cultural heritage in completely new surroundings and with entirely new possibilities for their dissemination”, tells Museum Director Tinna Damgård-Sørensen.

The Viking Ship Museum has been working on plans for a new museum for several years. In 2019, a prospectus was presented, which had been developed on the basis of the Minister of Culture’s de-listing of the Viking Ship Hall and a grant from the state towards the protection of the original Viking ships. A prerequisite for the prospectus was the idea that the five original Viking ships would still be exhibited in a large, naturally-lit room, in the same location and with the fjord as a backdrop – but in a new building, which could protect them from rising water levels and storm surges.

Since then, the requirements for the exhibition of the ships have been restricted further. Investigations into the ships’ state of conservation have shown that the product used to conserve the ships gets broken down by light and UV. The ships must therefore be exhibited in a Black Box. The new requirements have changed the premise for the new Museum and as Erik Christian Sørensen’s idea of exhibiting the ships with the fjord in the background cannot be continued, it no longer makes sense to build the new exhibition building at the water’s edge. 

The Viking ships are classified as being of unique national importance. They also represent a common Nordic cultural heritage, of significance for the entire world. The Viking Ship Museum was one of the many Nordic institutions, which in 2021 succeeded in getting Nordic Clinker Boat Traditions inscribed on UNESCO’s list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.

Read the entire story at the Viking Museum website:

The Viking Museum