These optimistic words were served up with a certain irony by Sea Stallion skipper, Carsten Hvis, after one of this spring’s many planning meetings at the Viking Ship Museum. He had probably not completely forgotten the record-wet, exhausting, yet successful trip out to Dublin last year.
At the meeting, project leader Preben Rather Sørensen had just reported on a decision by the local authority. Roskilde City Council is making the exceptionally fine gesture of granting 356,000 DKK for a really big welcome-home celebration on 9th August.
Up until now there has been a “Task Force” with responsibility for planning events around the Sea Stallion’s homecoming. The Task Force included representatives from the City Council, the Viking Ship Museum and a number of local business people.
At the council meeting, council officials proposed that the Task Force be strengthened, expanded and turned into a real planning group with the city’s Department of Culture taking responsibility for project leadership and administration.
This proposal was passed. This means the City Council has taken on a big job, which the minutes of the council meeting describe in the following way with reference to the Viking Ship Museum:
“The whole planning of the city’s welcome for the Sea Stallion and its crew will take place in close collaboration with the Viking Ship Museum’s own celebration”.
Roskilde’s culture coordinator, Marie Berthelsen, can already say something about the council’s preliminary plans for the celebration:
“First of all, we are going to spend quite a bit of the money on decorating the city for the big event – to create the right atmosphere for the hopefully many visitors on the day.
"We will decorate the city with flags and banners, and in collaboration with restaurants we will get Irish and Danish folk music out on the streets. When the celebrations down by the water and the museum are over, people will be able to walk up through the City Park decorated by artists in an exciting Celtic style”, says Marie Berthelsen.