EXCLUSIVE: Recreated Viking longship to sail to Wirral on maiden voyage

May 25 2011 by Lorna Hughes, Birkenhead News

A RECONSTRUCTION of a Viking longship claimed to be the biggest ever built will sail to Wirral on its maiden voyage.

Construction work on the 35 metre Draken Harald Hårfagre – Dragon Harald Fairhair in English – started last summer in Haugesund, Norway.

After a series of test sailings it will embark on its first real voyage in summer 2013, following the path of the Vikings from Scandinavia via the British Isles to Istanbul.

Wirral will be one of the first stops and organisers are now looking for 80 volunteers who can help row the boat into harbour.

The patron of the project is Norwegian businessman Sigurd Aase.

Project manager Marit Synnøve Vea said: “To construct the ship we are using the knowledge found in Norwegian boat-building traditions and supplementing this with the results of archaeological investigations and information in Old Norse literature.

“The Dragon Harald Fairhair will be the largest Viking ship built in modern times, but in the Viking age that size would have been quite typical.

She added: “This time the Vikings will come in peace!”

Vikings are thought to have arrived in North West England over a millennium ago.

After their expulsion from Dublin in AD902 the Wirral Vikings, initially led by the Norwegian Viking Ingimund, would have landed in their boats along the North Wirral coastline.