When Danish-Australian craftsman Jorgen Jensen is alone in his backyard shed for hours in a day, the ticking of the clock hardly matters.
Hours can slip away as the Woodside local carves, saws, bends and shapes planks of timber from designs that mostly exist only in his head.
Jorgen is one of the few – or perhaps the only – master craftsmen in South Australia building original Viking longboats, a type of ship once essential for Viking Age expeditions.
His biggest feat yet is a seven-metre Viking boat replica ‘Vilsa’ built in 2021, weighing 700kg and taking six months to build from scratch.
Made from 360 metres of Siberian larch wood, the boat is held together with more than 1200 copper rivets.
The five-metre mast is also made from imported Siberian larch wood, while the keel, weighing 60kg, is made from black ironbark found in Australia.
“It took six months to build and that was working from sunrise to sunset,” he says.
“I suppose that was during the Covid lockdown when the shed was my second home.”
With a Danish master trade apprenticeship and professional career as a woodworker and furniture designer behind him, Jorgen was inspired to take on the longship project when an old friend from Denmark encouraged him to try building a small replica.
His first foray into the world of boatbuilding was a small Norse vessel that now sits proudly on a living room mantlepiece.
It was the start of a burgeoning hobby, with Jorgen also later building a five-metre replica.
Best known for their versatility and efficiency, the Viking longships are designed to be fast, durable and capable of navigating both choppy seas and shallow rivers.
They were steered by Vikings who were a dominant naval force across much of Europe for centuries.
Growing up in the north-western part of the Danish island of Zealand, Jorgen spent much of his youth unaware that he was living and playing among relics of the Viking Age.
“When I was a little kid, my uncle had a farm not far from us and I was always walking behind him while he was ploughing using horses,” he says.
“That field had been drained of water in the mid-1800s.
“When my uncle was ploughing, quite often a plank of wood would come straight up through the ploughing shears, and those planks were from the Viking ships.
“We never thought anything of it, the planks were just thrown in a heap and burnt.
“As a kid I had no idea, and I never noticed it (the history) much at all.”
While Viking longships often conjure up iconic images of massive warships carrying dozens of warriors, the Norse people also built smaller vessels for everyday life including trade and travel.
This is the type of vessel Jorgen’s seven-metre replica is based on – a ‘coaster’ usually sailed by two men to transport livestock such as sheep to different settlements.
Jorgen admits the Viking Age is very much dramatised in modern books and movies, and he’s only interested “in the proper history, not the Hollywood history” surrounding medieval Scandinavia.
However, Jorgen isn’t the only one intrigued by these once seafaring warriors, traders and settlers.
The longship project also inspired friend Corry Moors to take an interest in the vessel and its history.
Corry was instrumental in recording a daily photographic record of Jorgen’s longship boat building feat.
Best known for their versatility and efficiency, the Viking longships are designed to be fast, durable and capable of navigating both choppy seas and shallow rivers.
In 2022, the longship was transported for the first time to Clayton Bay for a naming ceremony and Viking festival.
In June this year the ship spent some time at the South Australian Museum to help celebrate the Treasures of the Viking Age: The Galloway Hoard exhibition.
The seven-metre longship has been out and about many times, starring as a float in local Christmas pageants and with Jorgen, Corry and a group of other Viking longship appreciators regularly setting sail on the waters of Clayton Bay.
The group is learning how to row and sail the longship in preparation for a hopeful appearance at the 2027 South Australian Wooden Boat Festival to be held at Goolwa.
While Jorgen enjoys sharing the joys of being on the water with the group, the art of Nordic boatbuilding remains a solo experience.
He works best left to his own devices, creating with nothing but his tools and intuition – no drawings or to-scale plans.
“I just like to do my own thing, it’s always been like that,” he says.
The solitude of his craft is no bother to Jorgen and time flies when he’s in the shed, honing his skills.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” he says.
“As soon as you get near to 80 years of age, time goes very, very quickly.
“But yes, time disappears, somehow, when I’m working with wood.”
