Nordic Museum extends ‘The Vikings Begin’ exhibit

The Nordic Museum has decided to extend their popular The Vikings Begin exhibit for two more weeks and offer more lectures and events to accompany the exhibit.

The Vikings Begin has been the most popular exhibit in the museum’s history, which in its five-month run, has so far amassed 32,000 visitors. The exhibit will be on until April 28, and will include three Viking scholar lectures, some additional kid’s programming, and Viking reenactors.

The exhibit features dozens of early Viking artifacts from Uppsala University in Sweden, including Viking helmets, swords and other weapons, jewelry, glass, bowls and more, dating as far back as the 7th century. It’s divided into themes of Viking culture: warfare, maritime trade, a ship burial, Norse gods, the Baltic Sea, and geo-political relationships to other cultures.

“We are delighted to extend this magnificent exhibition,” museum CEO Eric Nelson said in a release, “…and we hope everyone will take advantage of this opportunity to see these rare artifacts which have never been outside of Scandinavia before.”

The upcoming lectures are the following:

• Saturday,  April 6, 1pm: The Search for Olav Tryggvason, by Historian Øystein Morten, Oslo University
  Cost: $10 for members; $15 general admission
  Historian and author Øystein Morten has traveled in the footsteps of Norwegian King Olav Tryggvason, who is depicted in Saga tradition as bringing Christianity to Norway and Iceland, founding the oldest City in Norway, and sending an expedition to the Americas, before disappearing in the Baltic Sea in the year 1000. He takes the old Nordic and foreign sources about Olav and brings them to life, putting them in a whole new context.
• Wednesday, April 10, 7pm: Viking Warrior Women: Debating a Swedish Grave & Its Implications, by Neil Price, Distinguished Professor of Archaeology at the University of Uppsala, Sweden 
  Cost: $10 for members; $15 general admission
  In September 2017, the announcement that a famous Viking warrior grave was in fact the remains of a woman warrior went viral across the internet. Professor Price leads the 10-year research initiative that reassessed the warrior grave using DNA analysis and other new techniques. This talk presents the discovery and its reanalysis, addresses the controversies and considers our attitudes to gender in the Viking Age.
• Saturday, April 20, 2pm: How to Build a Viking Ship, by Thomas Finderup, Danish Boat Builder
  Cost: $10 for members; $15 general admission
  Danish boat builder Thomas Søes Finderup has devoted 18 years to building Viking and medieval ships, imitating the ships from these eras down to the smallest detail using Viking working methods and exact copies of the Vikings’ tools. Most recently, Finderup has participated in the reconstruction of the Saga Oseberg, which dates to 830 and is the most spectacular Viking ship ever found. His lecture will focus on the work with the Saga Oseberg and will include a discussion of how the Vikings built their ships and what working methods they used.

There will also be some family-friendly events and activities coming up:

• Thursday, April 4, 6pm: Guts & Glory: The Vikings by local author Ben Thompson 
  Free
  Thompson will be giving a kid-appropriate, discussing his book, Guts & Glory: The Vikings.
• Saturdays March 30, April 13, April 27, 10am to 1pm: Vikings in the Gallery
  The Museum will host its popular Vikings in the Gallery program, featuring Viking re-enactors in highly-detailed Viking garb mingling with visitors in the Museum’s second-floor Nordic Journeys permanent exhibition.

For questions about these and any other programs or exhibitions, call the Nordic Museum at (206) 789-5707.

Photo Courtesy of Gustavianum, Uppsala University Museum.