Vikings Of The North Sea

The cruise begins in the heart of Copenhagen, where Ocean Albatros is moored. After embarkation and mandatory safety procedures the lines are cast and the captain sets a northbound course out of the Sound. You will be shown to your cabin, and the mandatory security procedures are carried out. While dinner is served in the elegant restaurant, we will pass the castle of Kronborg, made famous by a certain Hamlet!

Ocean Albatros will moor in the important fishing port of beautiful Skagen. Skagen is known for its fantastic sunlight, vibrant city life, characteristic yellow houses and white sandy beaches. We start the day with a coach tour to Grenen, the pointed peninsular marking the northernmost point of Denmark. Join the tractor-bus called ‘Sandormen’ and see where the waters of Skagerrak and Kattegat meet in culminating waves. Always a popular excursion for Skagen visitors. After the visit, we take a leisurely city walk, which includes Skagen Art Museum, where visitors will see the permanent collection of works by the famous Danish painters, Anna Ancher, P.S. Krøyer, Holger Drachmann and others. In the 19th century, these world-renowned artists created works of art in the artists' colony, which primarily consisted of Scandinavian painters, known as “the Skagen Painters”. After experiencing the "top" of Denmark, we return to the port of Skagen to re-embark our ship for a late lunch – and for the continuation into the North Sea onwards to Norway. The seafarers known today as Vikings, consisted of people from the Nordic countries of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Their expeditions aboard the famed longships took them all over the known world, where Viking settlements were established and thus impacted on the history of western Europe quite profoundly. As we brave some of the routes the Vikings sailed, we delve into their history and quite possibly debunk some romanticized views of these folk along the way.

The home of the first Norwegian Viking king Harald Fairhair, Haugesund is located between Bergen and Stavanger in southwestern Norway. Here, nestled among small islands and mountains is where this wonderful old town by Kamsundet can be experienced. The strait itself, which protected the passing ship traffic, was also a source of massive herring fishing, which was the city's growth engine. “Sildebyen” (literally translates into “Herringtown”) also offers a distinctive pink town hall from 1931. The history of shipping and shipbuilding is clearly seen and manifested itself as Norway's 4th largest shipping town back in 1913. The waterway also gave many of the inhabitants the opportunity to explore the world, and many captains and sailors have embarked from here on their first long voyages around the globe. Norway is still a great seafaring nation, with hundreds of thousands of Norwegians working on the oceans every day (Ocean industries count for about 70% of Norway’s export earnings). Many Icelandic sagas tell us stories of the first Viking king, where the Orkneyinga and Heimskringla sagas specifically recount a military voyage to the Hebrides. Here the king fought to clear the islands of dissident pirate Vikings, who were raiding the Norwegian coasts. The expedition later continued to Scotland, much in the same way as our route takes us.