Hello again!

As you may have seen in my previous thread, I am currently in the Munich area and in the process of planning a roadtrip to Norway. The rough route plan at the moment is driving up through Germany to Denmark, across the bridge to Sweden and then up to the Lofoten in Norway. Along the way I was planning on possibly taking a detour and visiting the Ribe Viking Center in Denmark. On a previous trip I visited the viking ship museum in Oslo, the Håkonshalle and museums in Bergen, the Nidarosdom in Trondheim, and the Lofotr Viking museum in Borg, all of which I plan on revisiting :). I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or ideas of any more places to check out and visit, especially in regards to Viking/Medieval history.

I appreciate any thoughts and input!

If you're interested in stuff which predates the Viking age too, I'd wholeheartedly recommend stopping by Gottorf Castle in Schleswig before crossing the border into Denmark, to see the Nydam and Thorsberg bog treasure and the Nydam boat.

Ribe is great, and if you don't mind a small detour, a visit to Aarhus and Mosegard Museum would be very worthwhile. On Fyn, I'd recommend spending half an hour visiting the Ladby ship burial near Kerteminde, which is great. Once you've crossed the bridge to Zealand, Trelleborg (Slagelse), a fantastic Viking ring fort is en route and worth a quick look. It also has a reconstructed longhouse, although there are plenty of those to see in Denmark.

The main site I'd recommend not missing on Zealand is the Viking Ship Museum at Roskilde, where you can have a go at rowing and sailing in a reconstructed Viking boat on the fjord -a truly magical experience. If you see nothing else, definitely see Roskilde.

Copenhagen Museum is excellent too. There also countless reconstructed Viking villages and other brilliant museums, but if you're just passing through quickly, these are the sites I'd recommend seeing.

A second vote for the Viking ship museum in Roskilde. A wonderfully set up site.

oh man, it's been since 98 that i was in denmark. there is so much to see. i will second, thrid and forth Roskilde and the Copenhagen Museum. they are both huge treasures.

I would second making a detour to Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus. Among other things they have the Illerup Aadal finds at display.
The National Museum in Copenhagen is absolutely worth a visit. So is the viking ship museum in Roskilde and the one in Oslo is also a must see.
Have a nice trip!

Hi guys, thanks for all the awesome tips! I was originally thinking of just going through Denmark fairly quickly to get to Norway ASAP, but it seems like that would have been a great disservice to all the amazing things there are to see :).
Definitely going to shuffle plans around to make more time for all the awesome things you suggested. I'm going try and visit everything "en route" on the way up and then do the Aarhus sidetrip and anything else I may have missed on the way back down.

Once again thank you all so much for the info, just reading your suggestions got me really excited and pumped to get going! :D :D

Apart from what you have already mentioned I can recommend the following:

Oslo:
Museum of Cultural History - the historical museum. It is located in the middle of Oslo close to the royal palace.
http://www.khm.uio.no/historisk_museum/index_eng.html

Bergen:
Bryggen Museum - A museum that contains loads of medieval artifacts found from several excavations in the harbour area.
http://www.uib.no/bmu/

Bergen Museum - Is focused on iron age, viking age and medieval church art. Highly recommended.
http://www.uib.no/universitymuseum

Trondheim:
Museum of Natural History and Archaeology - They have a good exhibition on both medieval and viking artifacts.
http://www.ntnu.no/vitenskapsmuseet/english


Also, since you are driving you might pass by some of the stave churches which are awesome and is highly recommended. You can find a list over all of them here. It is only in Norwegian but google translate might help you:
http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_over_stavkirker_i_Norge

Gottorf Castle is more commonly known as the Museum of Haithabu, so don't get confused. It's really worth a visit, since it's situated directly at the site of the former viking village of Haithabu near Schleswig.

if you've got some more time to spend, I recommend the isle of Bornholm. It's danish, but the easiest way do get there is via ferry from Ystad/Sweden. There you can explore Castle Hammershus, one of europes biggest complex of medieval ruins. It's quite a sight!

Thomas

The time has come :D Going to start driving today, and the plan is to try and hit every location you guys have mentioned one way or another :). I'll try to take as many pictures as possible, and if I can get a reliable internet connection I'll post them up ASAP.