The test pieces

From April - September, our full-scale specimens were the centrepiece of a special exhibition in Hjemsted Oldtidspark about the Hjortspring find, along with some of our weapon replicas and tools.
At Easter, we participated as working Iron Age craftsmen in one of the "Iron Age houses" on the park grounds. Hjemsted Oldtidspark was a museum for the early Iron Age and an adventure park. Unfortunately, it is now a thing of the past.

Saturday 30 April was the day we were going to Simrishamn with the rendezvous piece. We (Jørgen Kjær Rasmussen, Knud Andersen and Jørgen Jessen) started at 7.00 am from Nordborg and had to catch the ferry at 8.00 am. The trip across Funen, Zealand and Skåne went well, there were three of us and there's not much difference between Denmark and Sweden. At 3pm we arrived at the museum in Simrishamn, where we were greeted by Martin Stoltze, who welcomed us and offered us coffee and cake. Then we drove a little outside the city where we saw rock carvings. Back in the city, we found out where we were going to sleep. The hotel was right opposite the museum, so it was easy. At 6.30pm, the three of us met up again, went out for dinner and went for a walk around the city. Even though there was a torchlight procession ending with a bonfire, we went back to the hotel to sleep. We had been on the road since 7am and had travelled 345 km.

On Sunday morning we met with the director of the museum, Lena Alebo, who showed us around the museum and told us a little about the city. It was a Hanseatic city and had its heyday in the days of sailing ships. After the tour, we said goodbye to Lena and invited her to Holm to see our shipyard. At 10 o'clock we started the trip home and by 6 o'clock we were back home after a successful trip - and what did we learn from it? Already in Fynshav, Danish and German tourists came to see what we were doing, so it was good that we didn't have to take more ferries, otherwise we probably wouldn't have reached Sweden in one day. On the ferry, there was talk that it was a boat from the Viking Age. It made you tingle a little, but you can't interfere in other people's conversations. That's a little bit about the Sweden trip.

Jørgen Jessen