Vikings in Canada

Notes on my trip to the ROM

Sunday I took a trip, with friends, up to the wild, winter, wasteland that is Canada to the Royal Ontario Museum to visit their Viking exhibition. It's running, at the ROM, only until April 2nd. I highly recommend that if you can get to Toronto, go see this exhibition.

We took a lovely trip via the Go Train to Union station.

They don't make building like this, anymore. This isn't the museum, this is the train station in Toronto. We had a nice lunch and then we headed out to the ROM, stopped only by an unexpected St. Patrick's Day parade. Complete with DeLoreans.

And a short cut through the University of Toronto.

Finally, we made it to the ROM and walked down the "Stairs of Wonder" to see the Vikings.

Silver pedants, about 1 inch in size. My only complaints with the exhibit was 1) it was crowded (but I didn't shove anyone out of my way) and 2) very little information was listed for each item. Most of the items on display (95%) were original. The copies were plainly labeled as modern. They had two boats (copies) on display; neither of which I took a picture of. One was a 4 man row boat and the other was a 32 foot masted boat. Both was very nicely made.

Belt. The leather is modern, but the fittings are original. I am impressed with the construction: the ring (center of the image) connects the length of the belt with a shorter section of leather that is the tongue of the belt. What a great idea. If you rip apart the tongue, you just need to replace a short bit of leather.The buckle is on the far right-hand side: I didn't take a clear picture of the buckle.

Drinking horn. The silver is original, the horn is modern.

A ceramic pot. I might use the pattern as a border for a scroll.

Silver broach pins, about 3 inches long. Look at the detail work on them. I am impressed not only by the work, but that these have managed to survive 1000 years without breaking or being melted down.

Look! Forks! Now, these are not table forks, they are cooking forks, or "flesh hooks". And they are designed with the right-angle bend. They aren't like a carving fork, which is used with the hand right-above, or at a slight angle above the thing you wish to carve. And they aren't designed to stab say a port loin cooking in a pot like a kitchen fork. They were attached to long handles, to keep one's hands away from the fire, and they were at a right-angle so that the cook could reach under meat and lift it up like a hand. The smallest one (above) is about two inches long; my guess would be for small game or birds.

This will be part 1 as I have a lot more pictures to go through. Including diosaurs.