The Myklebust ship is the largest Viking ship ever traced in Norway — about thirty metres long. It was not buried but burned: laid on a pyre within a mound at Myklebust in Nordfjordeid, in the old way. By tradition it was the funeral of Audbjørn Frøybjørnsson, the king of the Fjords who fell against Harald Fairhair at the battle of Solskjel — the burial is dated to around the years 870–900.
More than a thousand years later the ship stands again at Sagastad in Nordfjordeid. Rolf did not only carve the dragon head at the bow and the tail astern — he designed the ornament and the whole ‘Myklebust style’ himself. With no original to copy, it had to feel recognisable, rooted in the old craft, and yet be something wholly new: a style of his own, drawn and set down by Rolf. The head weighs around eighty kilos, is built from three pieces of wood laminated together, and sits seven and a half metres above the deck — high enough to meet stormy seas, and to cast fear into enemies and whatever obstacles lay in the voyage's path.
