Climb Aboard

For more than 20 years, the trading ship and warship moored at the Museum's indoor jetty have provided the backdrop for teaching, play and fantasies of ships returned from distant shores. Now the mooring lines have been cast away and the ships will finally set sail.

Climb Aboard, the exhibition at the Viking Ship Museum, is a story of voyaging across open sea. All that you see, hear, feel and sense with and within your body, while the day goes from clear, bright morning to an all-encompassing darkness. Changes in weather from blinding sunshine and calm breeze, to storms, thunder and high seas. How the atmosphere shifts from boredom-induced stupor to one of dramatic energy.

A cinematic projection of a distant horizon brings the walls around the ships and sail to life and follows the hulls rhythm in the waves. Light from 30 LED lamps create a vault of changing colours above the room and beams of light meets in a floating night sky. Authentic recordings from Sea Stallion and Ottar's voyage is composed into a soundscape of creaking masts, the noise of the wind, the skipper's command and waves beating against the ship's sides.

The two ships are stocked with equipment and trading goods, which underline their function and invite for exploration; guests can open barrels and chests, have a look below deck, take a rest in the soft skins beneath the ship's tent or try their hand as helmsman.

A curated collection of objects, printed quotes, images and illustrations covers one end of the room.They tell stories of the objects and life on board the ships.

The exhibition is supported by: Kraks Fond

Design and production: The Viking Ship Museum in collaboration with scenographer Sarah Piyannah Cederstrand and the digital design agency Yoke.
Print: Vangsgaard A/S
Illustrations: Marianne Bloch Hansen
Epoxy floor: Perssons Gulvteknik
Lighting: Yoke and Instalight
Forging: Smedesign
Electrical work: Bøttcher:FOG

WARNING: The exhibition contains light that may trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy.