A Viking Ship

In Christiania, capital of Norway, is to be seen a real Viking Ship more than nine hundred years old. This rare treasure has a wooden building to itself in the grounds of the University. The ship is eighty feet long and sixteen wide. Larger ships are built to-day, but in many particulars none better.

This ancient war vessel was exhumed in 1880, not far from Christiania. Not only a veritable Viking Ship, but many other relics were found in the barrow. The burial of the ship was in accordance with an ancient custom. When any great sea king died, a tomb was erected in the center of his ship and his body placed in it with solemn ceremony. The ship was then disposed of in one of three ways: taken out to sea and sunk, or set on fire, or else buried under a huge mound of earth in his native land. To this period belongs the earliest Runic inscriptions, which still puzzle antiquarians. In the sides of the vessel are sixteen port-holes, showing that it was manned by thirty-two oarsmen. The barrow had evidently been opened and robbed of the most valuable articles; but such as remained, with the large number of animal bones found--twelve horses that had been offered in sacrifice--go to prove that this Viking was a man of importance and power.