The clang of hammer on metal rings out across the Danish fjord as sweating blacksmiths work to painstakingly recreate an anchor that once hung from a Viking longship 1,000 years ago. Their efforts are part of a project to seek out the seafaring secrets of those Scandinavian sailors by reconstructing the boats they crossed the seas in. In the heat of their raging forge, the team from the UK's National School of Blacksmithing is helping to rebuild the "Skudelev 5," whose remnants are on display in nearby Roskilde's Viking Ship Museum. "The ships are really what drives this whole expansion during the Viking Age, and what brings Scandinavia into the kind of political scene in Europe at the time. So, for us, ships are really the absolute kind of core of the Viking Age and how it developed," says Triona Sorensen, curator at the Viking Ship Museum. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES