[Aaron Hoard]

I recently visited the Vikings: Lives Beyond the Legends exhibit at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, British Columbia. This is a traveling exhibit out of the Swedish History Museum and will be showing in Victoria through November 11, 2014.

Overall, it was a nice exhibit covering many of the facets of Viking life with a good selection of artifacts and some replicas. I recently visited the Vikings exhibit at the British Museum and I think I liked the Victoria version better. The British Museum's exhibit probably has better artifacts and the giant ship, but the Victoria exhibit is easier to digest and has fewer crowds.

Here's some pictures I took of the Victoria exhibit - I asked one of the museum staff if pictures were allowed and he said "well, I don't think you're supposed to, but they haven't told us explicitly that you're not supposed to, so... just do it when I'm not looking". Ok... As normal for (my) pictures in museums, the lighting and glass are not optimal for picture taking, so apologies in advance for the quality.

Warrior grave-find with a couple of shield bosses, a couple of spears, a seax (I think), sword, axe and spurs.



Nice Type M (?) axe head - notice the thicker edge and thinner body.



Not a weapon, but an interesting way to display nails found from a Viking ship excavation.



Ornate axe head - this thing was tiny (maybe only four inches long? I really need to take better notes)



Another nice Type M - not much rust/pitting on this one.



Sword hilt - nice detailing with different metal inlays.



Nice bearded axe head - I was surprised by how thick and large this axe was. This was in a glass case full of weapons that had terrible light/glass - seriously, don't they know I want to take pictures of this stuff?



This seemed like an inordinately-long winged spear - probably over a foot long.



Another sword hilt



And, what Viking exhibit would be complete without an ULFBERHT sword?



So, if you find yourself in this corner of the world this summer, it's probably worth a trip up to Victoria to see this exhibit.

[William P]

that exhibit was in sydney, australia at the national maritime museum and I also highly reccomend going to go see that exibit.

[Luka Borscak]

Very nice stuff... Axes are awesome...