Bodies at sea

This chapter focuses on bodies at sea: ‘water’ as interface in Viking heritage communication. Despite the fact that there are numerous signs and markers at museums and heritage sites instructing bodies to ‘stop, look and listen’ the embodied choreography of the museum/heritage encounter remains relatively underexplored. Haldrup addresses this gap by focusing on the visitor experience at the Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde, Denmark. Here, Viking culture is enacted and experienced through the corporeal and ludic performances of bodies at/on the sea as the visitors learn to sail and to row a Viking Ship, resulting in a profoundly embodied experience of ‘becoming Vikings’.