Viking Classic Smooth Bent Brandy Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

Viking was a make originally created by Bjarne Nielsen as a sub-brand of his main-line Bjarne pipes. Nielsen himself was one of the towering figures of Danish pipe-making until his passing in 2008, introducing the world to a generation of talented pipe-makers from his home country. While neither Nielsen nor Bjarne are around anymore, the Viking line continues to be produced, offering interesting designs at affordable prices.

This Viking is a nice synthesis of traditional English-French and more modern Danish shaping conventions. One could call it a bent brandy, but I would lean more towards calling it a volcano shape, with a classy silver faux-spigot connecting the bowl and shank. The width and curvature of the base of the bowl, along with the general ‘freehand’ style shaping approach, pushes this design a little further away from the volcano shape than is conventional. I think it looks great, and not just because I have a marked preference for Danish design variations. It’s a fairly big pipe, with a bowl of substantial size, so it should be suitable for nice, long smokes.

This pipe is also completely unsmoked, with a factory-original bowl coating to ease its breaking in period.

 

Details:

Length: 6″ / 152.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.75 / 19.05mm

Bowl Depth: 1.5″ / 38.10mm

Weight: 2.4oz / 70g