The top brass at the Chicago Park District thought they’d figured out what to do with the great Viking ship near the duck pond in the Lincoln Park Zoo. In December they sold the replica of a 1,000-year-old wooden vessel, which has been stored in the park for most of this century, to the American Scandinavian Council, a group of Scandinavian American civic and business leaders.
On the other side is the American Scandinavian Council, a stodgy bunch of businessmen, most of whom live in the suburbs. “I don’t know why Carl keeps kicking this horse around,” says William Carlson, the council’s president. “I think the whole thing boils down to Carl losing control of something he’s held on to for 20 years.”
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The ship in question is a replica of a vessel discovered in Sandefjord, Norway, more than 100 years ago. For a while there was talk of transporting the original ship to Chicago to be displayed as part of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. “People in Norway wisely said no, because it was a precious artifact,” says Hansen, who was born and raised in Chicago but takes great pride in his Scandinavian roots. “But they decided to build an exact replica.”
Eventually the ship returned to Chicago and was kept alongside what is now the Museum of Science and Industry near replicas of the Pinta, Nina, and Santa Maria, which had also been featured at the exposition. “All of those ships were shabbily treated, which is not surprising since we have a tendency to tear down anything that’s more than, oh, 35 years old,” says Hansen. “Of those three replicas of the Columbus ships, one rotted, one burned, and one was chopped up for kindling. Kindling? Can you believe that? As though they couldn’t find kindling somewhere else. Philistines all.”
By then it was clear that the district would have to move the ship to make way for a new mammal and reptile house. “We let it be known that we were facing time constraints about the ship,” says Uhlir. “And we got several viable offers.”
Uhlir thinks Hansen is off base. “I think Carl has to get serious. Carl wants it in a museum, but the museums don’t want it. Carl wants it in the Jackson Park basin, but we’re not going to have some huge carbuncle in the middle of the lagoon. It’s not going to happen. Wake up, Carl.”
