The Hjemkomst Center is Moorhead's most unusual attraction: a heritage museum built around a full-size Viking longship constructed by a local school counselor and actually sailed across the Atlantic. The ship — 76 feet long, built from white oak planks, with a hand-carved dragon's head prow — sits in the museum's main hall looking exactly as extraordinary as it should. The story of its construction and the posthumous voyage to Norway by Asp's family in 1982 is told through photographs, film, and a scale model showing the route.
The museum also covers Scandinavian immigration to the Red River Valley, which is the cultural context that explains why a Minnesota school counselor would spend nine years building a Viking ship in the first place. The Norwegian and Swedish communities that settled this part of the Great Plains in the late 19th century brought their traditions with them; the Hjemkomst is the most dramatic expression of that heritage. Adjacent to the Viking ship is a reproduction of the Hopperstad stave church from Vikøren, Norway.