Vikings are having a great year!

In March a blockbuster exhibition opened in the new BP Gallery at the British Museum and tens of thousands have flocked to see the largest collection of Viking treasure ever to be displayed in the British Isles. The centrepiece of the exhibition is the Viking longship known as Roskilde 6. This was excavated from the edge of the Roskilde fjord in Denmark in 1997, during construction of an extension of the Ship Museum, being built to house the previous ships to be found. The curators must have felt they were in a Catch22 dilemma, with each attempt to enlarge the museum unearthing yet more potential exhibits. Their solution has been to flat-pack the largest longship, IKEA-style, and to send it round Europe in a travelling exhibition. It started its journey in Copenhagen in 2013, before coming to London; in the Autumn it will travel to Berlin.