In the Doldrums: The Viking Ship Hall between High Seas and Troubled Waters

In 2018, ICOMOS issued a heritage danger alert with regards to the political threat posed to Viking Ship Hall in Roskilde, Denmark. The building, an iconic brutalist museum designed in 1962 by Erik Christian Sørensen, had been listed in 1989. After a political media campaign, initiated in 2016 by a far-right populist MP, the building was eventually delisted and exposed to the prospect of being demolished. Although the state granted 150m DKK for a new museum two years ago, the present one still stands, to all appearances in a kind of limbo since to date nothing has been possible to decide regarding its future. In my proposed talk, I would like to present some of the political intricacies that has put the building, instead of the cat, in a Schrödinger’s box. A presupposition of the talk is that the present state of undecidability enables a time-specific kind of review. From today’s vantage point, it becomes apparent how this building always existed, indeed was meant to exist as a transformation object. This is not only clear from various early documents, it is also perceivable in the architectural design. The design also reveals to a contemporary observer the vulnerabilities where its mutability has proven insufficient against an entanglement of forces. Rising sea levels and violent storm surges has combined with failed restoration efforts to erode the values of the exterior; contemporary demands from museum guests has interlaced with new conservation restrictions to imperil the presentation of the Viking ships; sensitive negotiations inside the museum board remain interdependent on the goodwill of private funds, local politicians and Danish architects to define the ultimate worth of Sørensen’s hall. In a sense, nothing has happened since 1962. Everything, nonetheless, keeps changing.