Viewing Viking Artifacts For Yourself

With the popularity of the History Channel's Vikings, already slated for a third season, it may be worth learning a little more of the era online and in-person.  The British Museum would be a great place to start.  Its ongoing exhibit, Vikings: Life and Legend, runs from March 6th to June 22nd and provides a comprehensive collection and story that fills in some of the gaps in our understanding of the people and period.  You can see a recovered viking ship (the Roskilde 6 pictured below), a mass grave, amulets, idols, and more. 

The Museum's press release states it better:
 

Discover the world of the Vikings in this major exhibition – the first at the British Museum for over 30 years.

The Viking Age (800–1050) was a period of major change across Europe. The Vikings expanded from their Scandinavian homelands to create an international network connecting cultures over four continents, where artistic, religious and political ideas met.

The Vikings’ skill in shipbuilding and seafaring was central to their culture and achievements, and at the heart of the exhibition will be a 37-metre-long warship. Found in 1997, and dating to around 1025, it is the longest Viking ship ever discovered. Many other new discoveries, including part of a mass grave of Viking warriors, will be on display for the first time showing how our understanding of the Vikings is still being changed by new excavations and recent research.

The exhibition will also present personal objects, including jewellery, amulets and idols, which help to reveal more about how the Vikings saw themselves and their world. Exquisite objects, including the magnificent Vale of York Hoard, demonstrate the global reach of the Viking network of trade, plunder and power – a network that left a lasting legacy in countries from Ireland and the UK to Russia and Ukraine.

Enter a world of warriors, seafarers and conquerors to discover the many fascinating aspects of a history that is both strangely alien yet remarkably familiar.

London's newspaper The Guardian direct attendees to the longship first since it represents the best of the vikings:

The Vikings created something that went beyond any civilisation of their age. The greatest work of art here is the longship. It is a great human image of endeavour and exploration: these were not just killers but intensely curious pathfinders who even colonised the icy wastes of Greenland. A clever Viking called it that, according to the sagas, to make it sound more attractive for settlers.

And while the writer at The Guardian was not as impressed with the narration related to the rest of the exhibit, viewers of Vikings on the History Channel already have enough images to go with the remaining artifacts to bring it all to life again.