Kringle Workshops, a maker of handmade wooden toys in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, has added a wooden Viking ship to its collection. The piece was listed on the company's website on October 6, 2026, as a new item in a limited release, and it opens a Boat category in an online shop that had been built around trucks and cars, construction and farm vehicles, trains, airplanes, and doll furniture.
The wooden Viking ship toy carries a red-and-white striped fabric sail, a set of oars and a dragon-headed prow, and it comes with seven wooden Viking figures to crew the boat. It measures 16 1/2 inches long and 6 1/2 inches wide and stands 16 inches tall at the mast, according to the product listing. Because of its size and small parts, the company recommends it for children 3 and older.
The ship was designed and built by owner Tom Bethke, who makes every Kringle Workshops toy himself in his home workshop. With the addition, the shop lists 25 toys across seven categories, according to the website. Earlier changes noted on the product pages include a flatbed tow truck with car, labeled new for 2024, and a swiveling ladder bucket with a peg doll added to the fire truck the same year.
“Most of my toys have wheels, so I wanted to try something different,” said Tom Bethke, owner of Kringle Workshops. “The Viking ship gave me the chance to work with a sail, oars, and a crew of wooden figures, which made it a different kind of project from the trucks and trains in the collection.”
According to the company's description of its process, each new design begins with research into real-world references and moves through rough sketches, full-scale drawings from the side and from above, poster-board templates and a full-scale prototype before any finished toys are built. The prototype stage is where proportions and moving parts are tested and adjusted, and the same hands that draw the first sketch build, sand, inspect, pack and ship the finished piece. The company states that there is no assembly line and no outsourcing.
Across the collection, the toys are assembled with water-based glue and wooden dowels, sanded smooth so there are no sharp edges, left unfinished to show the natural wood and wood-burned with the company's Kringle Elf logo, according to the website. Woods used in the line include pine, oak and birch. The company says its toys are meant to be played with rather than displayed and, with care, to be passed down from one generation to the next.
“I want the toys to give children plenty of room to use their imagination,” Bethke said. “With the ship, they can move the figures around, imagine a voyage and create their own adventures, just as children can find different ways to play with the other toys in the collection.”
The ship joins the collection ahead of the holiday season, when Bethke also works as a professional Santa Claus, a role he has held for more than 50 years, according to the company's website. The site describes how he made wooden toys for friends and the children of relatives for years and delivered them on Christmas as Santa before he began selling his designs to the public.
The existing lineup includes a pickup truck with horse trailer, a flatbed tow truck with car, a fire truck, a garbage truck, a cement truck, an excavator, a farm tractor and wagon, a 45-inch freight train, a biplane and a racing airplane, along with a classic hot rod car and two pieces of doll furniture. Several of the designs include working parts such as folding ramps, tilting beds, a spinning mixer barrel, and a ladder that raises and extends. The company also takes requests for custom wooden toys that are not part of the standard collection.
Kringle Workshops LLC is a small business based in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, that designs and builds handmade wooden toys for children ages 3 and up. Founder and owner Tom Bethke learned woodworking from his father, trained in design and three-dimensional sculpture at art school, and worked as a designer and builder for live theatre and as a display artist for corporate events and trade shows before turning his toymaking into a business. Each toy is made by hand in the United States, from the earliest sketch to the finished piece, by a single craftsman.
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For more information about Kringle Workshops, contact the company here:
Kringle Workshops
Tom Bethke
651-552-7709
Kringleworkshops@comcast.net
