Craftsman's House - Drawing 1
	Craftsman's House - Drawing 2
	Craftsman's House - Drawing 3
	Craftsman's House - Drawing 4

Managers meeting in Denmark

The primary aim of this meeting was to introduce the team to Ribe Vikinge Center which will has played a leading role in the PARABOW project. It is here that the main reconstruction is being built by the carpenters and student groups.

Ribe was a leading Viking town and the large amount of archaeological evidence points to a cosmopolitan trading centre where furs from. Russia, amber from the Baltic, Irish gold an silver, Phoenician glass, Etruscan pottery, English blue died cloth and Frankish iron goods were all bought and sold in a thriving market.

The Vikinge Center of today re-enacts this market each May and Viking scholars, academics and enthusiasts attend from all over the world. It was this kind of accurate re-enactment plus the excellent quality of the reconstructed buildings that were of interest to the PARABOW team. The visit focused on how the centre could receive students as well as PARABOW teams and how to utilise their existing staff, training programmes, events, museum links and extensive network. The very fact that at Ribe they have faced all the practical problems of reconstruction and yet, at the end of the process, succeeded in building such a fine settlement, is witness to their skills and perseverance.  PARABOW needed to adopt similar levels of managerial as well as technical skills and the team discussions focused on, funding mechanisms, historical accuracy and integrity, the introduction of rare breeds of farm animals to add realism to the visitor's experience, the practical management of the annual Viking market and the sourcing of timber and the tools to work it in traditional ways. With regard to the latter, this included not only the major structural oak timbers for the reconstructed buildings but also wooden roof tiles, willow and hazel for wattle, straw for 'daub' and straw for thatching, ash for arrows and the feathers for fletching and ox blood and ochre for colouring the arrow shafts.

Martin Clark (Grampus) and Bjarne Clement (Ribe Vikinge Center) examine traditional Viking age arrows.

The managers visiting Ribe could not help but be stimulated by the success of Bjarne Clement and his team and they came away determined to emulate this success for their own sites and countries and for PARABOW as a representation of the whole.