Lars Bill on the Saga Farmann ship when it was docked in Kent. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Guardian View image in fullscreen Lars Bill on the Saga Farmann ship when it was docked in Kent. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Guardian Experience Life and style I sail the world in a replica 10th-century Viking longboat Every year I spend six to eight weeks on board – it has brought new friendships and showed me how generous people can be
Prefer the Guardian on Google W hen I was a teenager in Denmark in the 1980s, my older brother drove me to Roskilde, a city with five original Viking ships. We started working with the Viking Ship Museum of Roskilde as volunteers to build one of the first replicas. Since then, Vikings have been in my life.
Until my retirement four years ago, I worked at an IT company , and on the side volunteered for the Oseberg Viking Heritage Foundation, in Tønsberg, Norway, which promotes Viking ships and handicrafts. I became chair in 2023.
Read more With help from volunteers, the foundation started building the Saga Farmann ship in 2014: it’s a 20-metre-long replica of the Viking Klåstad ship, excavated in 1970 from a farmer’s field. Archaeologists figured out it was a trading ship from AD998.
To build the ship, we used traditional Viking methods: chopping wood from the forest with axes, and building with replica tools. Our blacksmith made thousands of rivets, one-by-one. It’s hard and slow, but we wanted to showcase how they did it.
Because it was a cargo ship, we decided to sail a Viking trading route, from Tønsberg to Istanbul, which they called Miklagard – “the great city” in Old Norse. It set off in April 2023; I joined two weeks in and was on board for around half of the 16-week voyage. Comfort is nonexistent on the ship. The crew of about 12 volunteers sleep on the deck, often in a tent to avoid getting wet. There is a cabin but it gets smelly quickly because seawater bilge causes rot. They join for a two-week stint – most have never seen the ship before. They start out as strangers then quickly become close.
It can be tough. That spring was cold. Some nights the temperature was freezing, and we would awake to ice on deck. We sailed up the Rhine and down the Danube rivers, where Vikings had travelled.
In London, Tower Bridge opened as we passed through with the wind in our sail. Crowds gathered to watch us go by View image in fullscreen Lars Bill in the Viking longboat, near Tower Bridge. Photograph: courtesy of Lars Bill I learned how to sail on Viking ships years before the voyage, but most of the crew were learning from scratch. Viking ships don’t have a keel, and drift if you don’t know what you’re doing. The ropes are thick and heavy. It’s tough work and takes a lot of muscle. The best part is using techniques from 1,000 years ago, but the Vikings would laugh if they could see our incompetence.
One hot day, we sailed through a lightning storm, but because it’s a wooden boat, the bolts hit the sea instead. It was amazing seeing lightning all around and feeling rain on our toes. The water current was fast and it felt as if we were flying.
Crossing the Black Sea was a challenge. When we had the right conditions, we took our chance, setting off from south Bulgaria at 2am. A big wave breaking into the ship would have sunk us – but thankfully it was remarkably steady. If water enters a Viking ship, it must be pumped out immediately. We sailed for almost 24 hours continuously into the Bosphorus Strait, heading…