Viking ship

On our journey home from the mountainside above Oslo last night (near the most terrifying ski jump in the world) we realised we knew nothing about the Vikings. Or, more accurately, what we thought we knew, we didn't really know. So today we visited the Viking Museum here, which is on a peninsula at the bottom of the city. It's a dull dark day in Oslo, and although the trees are covered in acid yellow leaves, everything feels quite flattened by the oppressive cloud cover.

The Viking Museum is a delight though; just enough to keep you interested, not enough to exhaust you. And then these amazing ships, built around 800AD and preserved in turf until their discovery in the early 1900s (at which point they were reburied for some time). Hence the immaculate preservation of this one. It's truly a thing of beauty (and speed and stealth in its day).