Denmark, spidsgatter heaven

Every harbor, every boatyard, every sail club has them! Spidsgatters, the pointy-ended, double-ender designs that captured my heart like they have so many others all over the world. They were developed as a racing class in the 1930s, evolved from North Atlantic fishing boats but with cabins and very tall masts. Today, the term covers many varieties of double ended designs and they were everywhere I visited in Denmark this month. Designs included gaff-rigged open boats still in use in club sailing programs (at least 3 hauled out and ready for winter maintenance at Frem and KAS this month); racing class boats (Bel Ami and Skarven in the yard near KAS); unclassed beauties (countless boats from Gilleleje to Dragor and including Svendborg, Walsted Boatyard and the Danish Yacht Museum in all range of condition) as well as fiberglass models used for both fishing (no mast) and cruising (with mast and with or without motor). Ancient in concept these beautiful double enders contine a tradition of sea-going people all over the world (think dug out canoes, Viking ships, Inuit kayaks). The Danish word for harbor is Havn and every time I followed those signs, I was thinking "heaven".

Meet your elders today. MidSummer may be too late.

This morning I received news that Ole Crumlin-Pedersen, the passionate, energetic and visionary founder behind the Roskilde Viking Museum in Denmark passed away. When I visited the museum for the first time in 2009, I was struck, as everyone seemed to be, by the sheer size, the unexpected familiarity and the relatively easy access to to these boat skeletons made possible by the dedication and creativity of the museum supporters and staff. Like dinosaurs if you own a lizard, I felt immediate connection owning a Danish double-ender, to these giant pointy-ended boats and walked around them in awe at the fact that they had been both preserved through ingenious Viking methods thousands of years ago and today. I'm on my way to Denmark again next week and while I missed meeting Ole, I am hoping to meet some of the elders who built, sailed and exported my spidsgatter to the US. It's not the best season to travel to Scandinavia, but MidSummer may be too late. Tribute to Ole Crumlin-Pedersen as announced by the Viking Ship Museum:

He was a pioneer, who through his professional engagement and an almost unbelievable capacity for work developed an entirely new area of archaeological fieldwork. He changed our view of the world of the past, and gave us new glasses with which to view history. The Viking Ship Museum at Roskilde stands as the most striking trace of what he leaves behind. Ole’s remarkable career began with the five Viking ships from the Roskilde Fjord, and the construction of a museum around them. This was a pioneering job, which demanded ingenuity, new thinking and co-operation across disciplinary borders. The result was worthy of admiration, and the methodology became the model for work with archaeological ship-finds throughout Europe.