Millennium-old Viking ships shored up for Oslo move

Protecting the wooden ships (two of them dating back to the ninth century, and the third from tenth century) is essential. They are vulnerable to temperature fluctuations and humidity in the museum's current environment.

However, vibrations from construction can also pose a danger to ships that are so fragile that their weight alone could cause them to collapse. To protect them from the upheaval, engineers have built steel girders.

"If we continue to display them as they stand today, they will end up broken," Haakon Gloerstad (director of the Museum of Cultural History), who also owns the Viking Ship Museum.

Some of the artifacts taken from the three ships were stolen by looters, who named them Oseberg Gokstad, Tune, and Gokstad after the locations where they were found. Many items survived, however, including textiles, animal head sculptures and three unique sleighs.

Gloerstad stated that the Viking ships were similar to Tutankhamen’s grave and the pyramids of Egypt.

The ships will be lifted into their metal cases while the sleighs will be moved along a track centimetre by centimetre to a safety chamber. The first sleigh was moved 70m (230ft) in 17 hours.

"This wood is now extremely fragile: you could make little crumbs out of it, but it would just crumble between your fingers," David Hauer, head engineer, said. He is overseeing the move after years of careful planning.

In 2026, one hundred years after the ship's current home was opened, the new museum will open. It will eventually attract ten times as many visitors than it was intended for.

It received approximately 500,000 visitors annually until it was closed in September 2013 to make way for the move.

Despite this, Oslo's tourists remain disappointed.

"We had heard a lot about it, and we were really looking forward for a look at," Shalin Patel, a US tourist, said.

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