“You know the original is eighty feet,” he said, a warm smile, almost impish with enthusiasm. His glasses reflected the light, much like sun on the sea. “So I thought, okay then, we’ll make this one about forty.” Pushing his chair aside he got up and squatted a bit, as though taking an imaginary seat. “And I figured the oars should go about here, you understand,” he said, miming the action of rowing. Building the boat never felt like a job, he explained. “I loved doing it.” He didn’t work from set plans. “Just go by feel,” he said, breaking into another smile.

Kris’s Munin remains a beautiful craft. A hybrid, dancing two worlds. Artisanal as the earthbound Oseberg, yet as seaworthy as its companion the Gokstad. When I boarded the Munin it was the pride of that wooden boat festival, having spent many years on the Salish Sea, transporting sailors and rowers, tourists too, through Burrard Inlet, around cruise ships and tankers, sea buses and floatplanes, mooring most often at the Vancouver Maritime Museum.

By the time Kris and I finally met, the Munin had been pulled from the water, preserved at the Scandinavian Community Centre in Burnaby, which is where we were on that evening. As we spoke we had a view of his ship, set atop grass, while we ate one more course of herring. Aquavit was then set on the table, a digestif, as we admired his ship’s design. I suspect he still heard, maybe felt, as I did, the lap of saltwater on hull and on keel, coax of wind in the red and white stripes of the sail. Canadian colours, Nordic design. Extinguishing borders and space. Again, people the common connection.

Sun slowly set, the view darkened, and the Viking Ship faded from sight. No longer a time warp imagined, the transition present and real. As though glimpsing the last of an age, mystique gripped in an artisan’s hands. And a boat’s oaken beams, history of having Gone Viking, recollecting the surge of the sea.