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The longships were equally happy fighting the waves in fierce storms or sailing in shallow waters up a quiet Suffolk inlet.

While craftsmen worked on the rudders, Canute was in Denmark dreaming up plans of a Viking invasion force strong enough to take England and Swein Forkbeard, son of Harold Bluetooth, had embarked on a 20-year party of pillage and plunder.

Both would have used longships fitted with oars along almost the entire length of the boat.

Each rudder is more than four metres long and the positioning of them is slightly different to what you'd expect - they were put in place at the side of the ship rather than the back.

So did they come from warships or trading ships?

Hard to know, say the experts, but they almost certainly came from ships moored in a river mouth near Southwold.

"You can still see the tool marks on the rudders made when they were carved from a piece of oak," says David de Kretser, curator of Southwld Museum.

"They've been dated to about 1000 AD. One was trawled up in 1980 near Eastern Bavents and the other was found on the beach in 1984, just north of Southwold Pier.

After being discovered they left the county and ended up in the National Maritime Musuem at Greenwich.

But they've retuurned on an extended loan scheme and they'll now form the centrepiece of Southwold Museum.

However, the museum's going through a huge refurbishment at the moment, helped by funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and the rudders will not be on public display until Good Friday 2008.