For more than ten years, experts have been painstakingly planning to move three 1,000-year-old vessels—the “Oseberg,” “Gokstad” and “Tune”—about 115 yards to their new home in Oslo.
By ELLEN WEXLER
First, the Viking ship’s prow emerged: a serpent’s head curved into an intricately crafted swirl. The vessel approached an audience of workers in yellow safety vests at a speed of ten inches per minute.
“That moment showed how beautiful, majestic and proud the ship truly is,” Aud Tønnessen, director of the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, tells the Norwegian News Agency. “It’s almost like it was sailing toward you, very slowly. It left us all a little speechless.”
But there were no waves, and the Oseberg, known as the best-preserved Viking ship in the world, was not sailing. Instead, it was gliding.
On September 10, researchers secured the 71-foot-long vessel inside a large, vibration-resistant crate, which was attached to a track mounted on the ceiling. Between 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., it inched along to its newly constructed home, about 115 yards from its previous location.
This was the ship’s first journey in nearly a century. The Oseberg hadn’t been moved since 1926, when it was placed in a small building at the Viking Ship Museum (one of the institutions that makes up the Museum of Cultural History). Two other Viking vessels, the Gokstad and the Tune, arrived six years later.
But in 2012, officials found that all three ships were deteriorating. “They’ve been subjected to humidity, vibrations,” Tønnessen tells Agence France-Presse (AFP). “Over time, the strain became so intense that they started showing signs that they would eventually collapse onto their supports.”
Museum officials decided to build a new home for the three ships. In 2015, they announced an international competition to select a design for the climate-controlled building, which would be located beside the existing museum. It would need to protect the vessels from additional damage for generations to come.
Discovered at three burial sites in southeastern Norway, the ships are all more than 1,000 years old. The Tune, the first to be excavated, was unearthed in 1867. Unfortunately, much of the wood had fallen victim to the elements, leaving behind only a large section of the vessel’s bottom. Archaeologists also found the remains of a man and a few grave goods, though these were mostly destroyed in the dig.
The Gokstad, the largest Viking ship ever discovered in Norway, emerged 13 years later. At roughly 75 feet long, it was built to be crewed by 32 rowers. It was found with the remains of a man and numerous grave goods.
But these finds were both eclipsed by the Oseberg, which the museum bills as the “world’s most significant discovery from the Viking Age.” Excavated in 1904, the vessel was found in remarkable condition, with about 90 percent of its original wood. It had been buried in the ninth century alongside two elite women; about two dozen horses, two cows and six dogs; and artifacts such as sleds, textiles and furniture.
After carefully reconstructing the Oseberg, researchers put it on display at the Viking Ship Museum in 1926; the wings housing the Gokstad and the Tune opened in 1932. The facility was designed to host 40,000 annual visitors, but the Viking Age vessels captivated the country. By the time new cracks appeared in the Gokstad in 2019, the museum was welcoming half a million guests each year.
The ships mean “the same to our part of Europe as the tomb of Tutankhamun does for Egypt,” Håkon Glørstad, then-director of the Museum of Cultural History, told the New York Times’ Henrik Pryser Libell and Richard Martyn-Hemphill in 2019. Without intervention, he’d previously said, the situation was a “catastrophe waiting to happen.”
Officials realized they needed to act fast. Near the end of that year, the Norwegian government announced that it would fund the construction of a new building—and the complex preparations needed to move the ships.
“There is something deeply moving when you think that these ships—with their long history and all the voyages they have undertaken—will embark on their final journey,” Tønnessen tells AFP.
The Viking Ship Museum closed to begin work on the project in 2021. In addition to AART Architects, the firm that won the design competition, the museum brought in the offshore oil company Imenco, which has experience working with high-precision moves. David Hauer, the conservator in charge of the relocation, explains to AFP that the project’s complexity is akin to moving “electron microscopes in hospitals.”
Now that the Oseberg has been safely relocated, museum officials can turn their attention to the other two ships. They plan to move the Gokstad this fall, with the Tune scheduled to follow next summer. The new building—called the Museum of the Viking Age—will open in 2027.
In the meantime, project leaders are relieved that the Oseberg’s relocation was a success. When the vessel was finally lowered into its new home this week, the team clapped and cheered.
“There is no doubt that this is a significant event, and I have been thinking about this move daily since 2015,” says Hauer in a statement. The ship will now be protected “for at least a century ahead,” he adds. “After that, future generations will take over the baton.”
This article was first published in the Smithsonian on September 12, 2025.
