A US woman aboard a Viking ship replica has died after it capsized and sunk off the west coast of Norway.
Karla Dana, 29, an archaeologist from Florida, lost her life when the Naddoddur boat started taking in water and went down on Tuesday evening, according to the ‘Viking Voyage’ expedition team and local broadcaster KVF.
Five other adventurers on board were rescued on a raft and have reportedly been identified as the skipper and expedition leader Andy Fitze, Livar Nysted, Saeny Blaser, Georg Aebi and Martin Fitze. They are from Switzerland and the Faroe Islands.
The boat had smooth sailing departing from Tvøroyri in the Faroe Islands on Saturday until around 6pm on Tuesday when rough seas prompted the explorers to make a distress call off the coast of the Norwegian island of Måløy, reported the Faroe Islands-based news outlet Local.fo.
A search and rescue mission from Norway found the Naddoddur sunken and saved five of the explorers, but found the sixth member drowned to death and trapped under the boat hours later.
Dana’s autopsy and an police investigation are expected to be conducted.
The survivors were not injured but were tended by crisis team members for psychological distress, GlobalNews reported.
Andy had described the expedition on Facebook as an ‘unforgettable event that takes you back to the time of the Vikings’.
‘Our expedition is a tribute to the legendary Viking navigator Naddodd and will take us from the Faroe Islands to Norway – a journey of some 500 nautical miles – on a replica Viking ship,’ he said before embarking, according to Local.fo.
‘This crew will push the boundaries of navigational expeditions.’
The boat was named after a famed Norwegian Viking from the late 8th century, and intended to complete his original journey from Norway to the Faroe Islands after he was blown off course accidentally.
Dana was one of two women on the expedition.
‘Together we want to honor and pass on the unwavering determination and pioneering spirit of the Vikings,’ Andy said at the time.
Berger Jacobsen, the chairman of the Naddoddur boat club that owned the sunken vessel, told BBC that the replica had previously sailed to Norway, Iceland and Shetland.
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