The fastest longship in the world will be integrated into a historic site in Toulouse
It’s a strange shipyard that will take place in a historic heritage site in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne). The Toulouse collective BÁTAR (boat in Icelandic) was selected by Voies navigables de France (VNF) to design and assemble its longship on the site of the dry docks, in the heart of the city center of the Pink City. This place near the Pont des Demoiselles is historically linked to the construction, repair of boats and maintenance of the works of the Canal des Deux Mers.
Viking enthusiasts will build the fastest longship in the world there, called Orkan (hurricane in Icelandic), to cross the Atlantic and reach New York in the spring of 2024.
“We are very enthusiastic about this partnership with VNF, which will allow us to build our 28 m long and 6 m wide boat on a real shipyard,” says Arnaud Huvelin, from the BÁTAR collective. A hundred people have already registered to take part in the collaborative project which begins this summer and which the inhabitants can visit”.
In ten years of existence, the Toulouse collective has already integrated two drakkars, including Bátar Fyr, a Viking boat twelve meters long, which carried out a 17-day expedition last year, from Denmark to Norway via Sweden. The first Viking boat, Bátar 1, took five years to build before making an expedition to Sweden in 2017. These two boats are still used by the collective.
The next Orkan boat will be made from pine and chestnut wood and is expected to require a year and a half of work for a mid-2023 launch. To finance their ambitious project, the cost of which amounts to 2.5 million euros over four years, the collective, which does not receive public subsidies, is looking for patrons and sponsors, whether they are companies or individuals.