Havhingsten af Glendalough, a life size replica of a Viking long boat built in Ireland a thousand years ago, was launched into Roskilde Fjord amid much fanfare over the weekend.
The name, a little implausibly, means The Sea Stallion of Glendalough.
Under a baking sun, watched by a crowd of over 10,000, Margrethe II, Queen of Denmark, did the honours as the vessel was nudged, poked and finally tugged, with the help of bystanders, into the fjord.
The Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr O'Donoghue, joined in the festivities and accompanied the Danish monarch on the vessel's maiden voyage, propelled by 60 women and men.
Any thoughts as to why Irish materials, ports and craftsmen were being used to build war ships for the most fearsome marauders of the period, were obviously not troubling the minister as he beamed at the regatta of small boats that formed a guard of honour for Havhingsten af Glendalough on its maiden voyage. Then again successive Irish governments have been committed to a policy of attracting "outsourced" industries to the country.
Excavated in 1962, the original boat, Skuldelev, and four smaller ships have become a cornerstone for archaeological analysis of the Viking age. The surviving wood has undergone exhaustive testing at the Roskilde Viking Museum which was developed on the banks of the fjord in the wake of the discovery. Tests of Skuldelev's remains show that it was built of Irish oak from the vicinity of Dublin in AD 1040.
Havhingsten has been painstakingly reconstructed over the past five years, using traditional Viking boat-building techniques and materials. Although saws were known at the time, no saw traces have ever been found on Viking ships. As a result, replicas of Viking-age axes, planes, chisels, knives, spoon bits and hammers have been used in the reconstruction.
This is the largest ship to be reconstructed by the Viking Museum at Roslikde. Only 25 per cent of the original ship remains, but reconstruction was possible as the 1,800 fragments include essential parts of the keel, the entire keelson and stern, and all strakes or side panels up to the gunwale: the vital measuring points of the vessel.
Each of the 90 timber strakes that make up the keel took five days to hew from 14 oak trees. The strakes are held together by 7,000 hand-forged rivets, which took the blacksmiths at Roskilde over 1,000 hours to make, using 400 kg pure iron.
The hull has taken an estimated 27,000 hours to construct.
The next stage, making and assembling the vessel's complicated sail and rigging, will take place over the next two years.
It will require about 1,400 metres of hand-woven rope for the standing and running rigging, and some 600 metres of hand-woven horse hair rope for the sheets and bolt rope. The rope makers will use 4,500 one-metre-long tree branches, and 180 kg of horse hair.
In 2007 Havhingsten will leave Roskilde and sail south around England to Dublin. The journey will have some poignancy as a vessel that left as a warship returns as a pleasure craft of huge archaeological importance.