"Viking ship" arrived to Australia

[RusCan2013]

Found this vid, from last year, but still funny
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQMEWigPMxY"]Viking ship in Australia - YouTube[/ame]

It actually isn't a "Viking" ship, but an Ancient Slavic one, called "Rusich"

It's a multinational project, built by enthusiasts from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, and sailed by a Russo-Ukrainian crew. The captain is Sergei Sinelnik, famous Russian traveller and explorer, shown in first photo above.

They sailed all around Russia

(at a stop on the shore of the Volga river) and the world.

Russian Navy destroyer "Admiral Levchenko" escorts the "Rusich" through the Gulf of Aden

Wouldn't want some Somali pirates getting their hands on the Motherland's brave explorers

And, yes, eventually they reached Australia

stuck around there for awhile, let the locals take their pictures and all that, and then sailed back to Russia.

"Vikings" indeed. Ancient Rus (ancestors of Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians) had ocean-going sailing vessels centuries before them

 

[Hawkeye]

The Rus’ were Varangians (Vikings) from Sweden and not as Russian nationalist historians argue, that the Rus' were themselves Slavs.

 

[RusCan2013]

The Rus’ were Varangians (Vikings) from Sweden and not as Russian nationalist historians argue, that the Rus' were themselves Slavs.

They were mixed ancestry. Yes, a Viking tribe did come to Novgorod and settled there in late 800s, but as this painting shows

there were already people living there, Slavic people, whom the Varyags met, with whom they began to trade, exchange knowledge and folklore, and, yes, intermarry and intermate. And THAT, my friend, is how the original Russians came about