The Hjemkomst — A Viking Ship Built in My Hometown
One of my favorite pieces of local history comes from Hawley, Minnesota, the small town where I grew up.In the 1970s, a man named Robert Asp began building a full-size replica Viking ship in an old potato warehouse right in downtown Hawley. The ship was based on the famous Gokstad Viking ship from Norway and was eventually named Hjemkomst, which means “homecoming” in Norwegian.After years of work, the completed ship was brought out of the warehouse in 1980. Robert Asp’s dream was to sail it across the Atlantic to Norway, but sadly, he passed away before he could make the voyage himself.His family and crew decided to finish what he started. In 1982, the Hjemkomst sailed across the North Atlantic and arrived in Bergen, Norway, before eventually reaching Oslo.I’ve always thought it was incredible that such an ambitious maritime adventure began in a small Minnesota town surrounded by farmland, hundreds of miles from the ocean.Growing up in Hawley made the Hjemkomst story part of our local identity, and with my own family having Norwegian and Swedish ancestry, it makes the story even more interesting to me. I’ve also always had an interest in ships, shipwrecks, and maritime history, so this is one piece of my hometown’s history that I especially enjoy sharing with people from other parts of the world.Today, the Hjemkomst is preserved at the Hjemkomst Center in nearby Moorhead, Minnesota. The photo is not of me, just one of the few showing the proud sign that has been placed in my hometown.
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