Viking World ( is, Víkingaheimar ) is a museum in

Njarðvík Njarðvík () is a town in southwestern Iceland, on the peninsula of Reykjanes. As of 2009, its population was 4,400. History In 1995 it merged with the town of Keflavík and the village of Hafnir to form the new municipality of Reykjanesbær. T ...

Reykjanesbær Reykjanesbær () is a municipality on the Southern Peninsula (''Suðurnes'') in Iceland, though the name is also used by locals to refer to the suburban region of Keflavík and Njarðvík which have grown together over the years. The municipality ...

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

. The museum opened on 8 May 2009,Víkingaheimar - Viking World to be opened
EFLA-Engineers.com, April 2009.Víkingaheimar opna á morgun
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Víkurfréttir ''Víkurfréttir'' is the main newspaper of the Icelandic town of Keflavík Keflavík (pronounced , meaning ''Driftwood Bay'') is a town in the Reykjanes region in southwest Iceland. It is included in the municipality of Reykjanesbær whose ...

'' 7 May 2009 followed by a formal opening on

Icelandic National Day Icelandic National Day ( is, Þjóðhátíðardagurinn, the day of the nation's celebration) is an annual holiday in Iceland which commemorates the foundation of The Republic of Iceland on 17 June 1944. This date also marks the end of Iceland's c ...

, 17 June. The director was Elisabeth Ward; the building was designed by Guðmundur Jónsson. Viking World has on permanent display the ''Íslendingur'', the replica of the

Gokstad The Gokstad Mound (Norwegian: Gokstadhaugen) is a large burial mound at Gokstad Farm in Sandefjord (formerly Sandar municipality) in Vestfold County, Norway. It is also known as the King's Mound (''Kongshaugen'') and is where the 9th century Go ...

Viking ship which in 2000 was sailed across the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

L'Anse aux Meadows L'Anse aux Meadows ( lit. Meadows Cove) is an archaeological site, first excavated in the 1960s, of a Norse settlement dating to approximately 1,000 years ago. The site is located on the northernmost tip of the island of Newfoundland in the Ca ...

Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...

, for the celebrations of the millennium of

Leif Ericsson Leif Erikson, Leiv Eiriksson, or Leif Ericson, ; Modern Icelandic: ; Norwegian: ''Leiv Eiriksson'' also known as Leif the Lucky (), was a Norse explorer who is thought to have been the first European to have set foot on continental North ...

's voyage and then to

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. The ship was returned to Iceland and placed on exhibit in the open air until being transferred to the new museum in autumn 2008.Jeff Blumenfeld, ''You Want to Go Where?: How to Get Someone to Pay for the Trip of Your Dreams'', New York: Skyhorse, 2009,
p. 29
She is suspended one and a half metres in the air so that visitors can walk underneath her hull and see the workmanship. There are also stairs and a walkway into the ship, enabling visitors to climb aboard and sit or walk around. The museum also houses the exhibition ''Vikings — The North Atlantic Saga'' from the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

Kremena Nikolova-Fontaine
Visiting the World of Vikings
''Iceland Review'' 13 July 2009. On 1 December 2010, a 2-year temporary exhibition with materials on loan from the

National Museum of Iceland National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

opened with a heathen reburial ceremony for a body excavated at Hafurbjarnarstaðir in 1868."Heathen Buried in Iceland, 1,100 Years Post-Mortem"
''Iceland Review'', 2 December 2010. The exhibits include materials from recent archaeological excavations."'Víkingaskipið Íslendingur einhver fegursti hlutur á Íslandi'—segir Sveinn V. Björgvinsson framkvæmdastjóri Víkingaheima"
''Víkurfréttir'', 20 July 2015 . The museum came under new ownership in June 2015, with Sveinn V. Björgvinsson as managing director and Björn Jónasson as business manager.Ágúst Borgþór Sverrisson
"Heillandi Víkingaheimar suður með sjó"
''

Dagblaðið Vísir ''DV'' (''Dagblaðið Vísir'') is an online newspaper in Iceland published by Torg ehf. It came into existence as a daily newspaper in 1981 when two formerly independent newspapers, Vísir and Dagblaðið, merged. Early on it was one of the la ...

'', 2 October 2015,
archived
at the Wayback Machine on 4 March 2016. The museum at that time had four employees, two full-time; the new management hoped to expand it to attract travelling exhibitions and possibly to add a café.

References

External links

Viking World museum website

Photograph
on

Panoramio Panoramio was a geo-tagging, geo-located tagging, photo sharing Mashup (web application hybrid), mashup active between 2005 and 2016. Photos uploaded to the site were accessible as a layer in Google Earth and Google Maps. The site's goal was to a ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Viking World Museum Museums established in 2009 2009 establishments in Iceland History museums in Iceland Viking Age museums Keflavík Buildings and structures in Southern Peninsula (Iceland)