Viking fever has broken out in Denmark, with museums, exhibitions and high-tech installations. At the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen, ‘The Viking Sorceress’, directed by Kasper Holten and with set design by Steffen Aarfing, brings to life ‘Volva’, the fearsome seer of Viking society. Impossible not to mention the imaginative Yggdrasill, the ‘Tree of Life’ that held the fate of the Cosmos and whose arms were a tangle of branches rising from the earth to reach the Heavens. Odin, the supreme god of Norse myth, was infused with the wisdom of this tree, and at the foot of its trunk the Nome weaved the destiny of gods and men. The Volva was a figure with legendary traits, leader of a female cult who, through the practice of ‘seid’ (Norse magic), had achieved a position of power in Viking society, to the point that Odin himself turned to her for advice. Researchers are certain that the Viking Witch’s eternal resting place is at Fyrkat Castle, near Hobro (North Jutland): in the tomb she lies with a magic stick and the seeds of a powerful hallucinogen. In Roskilde (30km from Copenhagen), thanks to the marine archaeologists of the Viking Ship Museum, lovers of stormy seas can experience sailing aboard typical Nordic vessels, discovering the mysteries of the more than 20000 wrecks that lie on the seabed of Denmark’s eastern waters, from the Stone Age to modern times. 9000 years ago, the sea surface was 30m below today’s: in the long run, the titanic forces inhabiting the fjord and sunlight could damage the five original ships of Skuldelev, a fjord town near Roskilde, sunk over 1000 years ago for defensive purposes. The New Ship Museum plans to protect them: the architectural design is by ‘Lundgaard & Tranberg Arkitekter A/s’ and will house the five Skuldelev ships in 2030. Meanwhile, interest in the Viking cultural heritage is also on the rise in architecture: the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen from 7 October returns with an expanded edition of the permanent exhibition ‘So Danish!’ on the history of Danish architecture from the Viking Age to the present time.
