The exhibition was produced for the Sailing Olympics, which were held in Kiel in 1972, and introduced an international audience to a comprehensive depiction of the Viking Age for the first time. A copy of the Hiddensee Hoard – the original was in the GDR – was exhibited in the section entitled Relations with Eastern Europe. The catalogue emphasised the aim of an objective representation of the age, and maintained that depictions of the “Vikings” had previously fluctuated between the excessively barbaric or the excessively heroic, particularly in exaggeratedly nationalistic versions. The Swedish–West German exhibition project evidently provided an opportunity to make the Viking Age accessible again after its ideological appropriation during the Nazi period.