Viking World museum

Viking World Museum

Viking World (Icelandic: Víkingaheimar) is a museum in Njarðvík, Reykjanesbær, Iceland.

The museum opened on 8 May 2009,[1][2] followed by a formal opening on Icelandic National Day, 17 June.[3][4] The director is Elisabeth Ward;[5] the building was designed by Guðmundur Jónsson.[1][2]

Viking World has on permanent display the Íslendingur, the replica of the Gokstad Viking ship which in 2000 was sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, for the celebrations of the millennium of Leif Ericsson's voyage and then to New York. The ship was returned to Iceland and placed on exhibit in the open air until being transferred to the new museum in autumn 2008.[6] She is suspended one and a half metres in the air so that visitors can walk underneath her hull and see the workmanship.[7]

The museum also houses the exhibition Vikings — The North Atlantic Saga from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C..[2][3][6] On 1 December 2010, a 2-year temporary exhibition with materials on loan from the National Museum of Iceland opened with a heathen reburial ceremony for a body excavated at Hafurbjarnarstaðir in 1868.[5]

A Viking village is planned to be constructed near the museum.[3]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Víkingaheimar - Viking World to be opened, EFLA-Engineers.com, April 2009.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Víkingaheimar opna á morgun, Víkurfréttir 7 May 2009 (Icelandic)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Kremena Nikolova-Fontaine, Visiting the World of Vikings, Iceland Review 13 July 2009.
  4. ↑ "Víkingaheimar formlega opnaðir á þjóðhátíðardaginn", Vísir 18 June 2009 (Icelandic)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Heathen Buried in Iceland, 1,100 Years Post-Mortem", Iceland Review, 2 December 2010.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Jeff Blumenfeld, You Want to Go Where?: How to Get Someone to Pay for the Trip of Your Dreams, New York: Skyhorse, 2009, ISBN 978-1-60239-647-0, p. 29.
  7. ↑ Skipið, vikingaheimar.is (Icelandic)

External links

Coordinates: 63°58′34″N 22°31′42″W / 63.97602°N 22.528469°W