Lollipop Viking ship

A Viking ship made from ice-cream sticks set sail across the Netherlands' IJsselmeer lake on Friday and its stuntman builder hopes to cross the Atlantic later.

The 15-metre (50-foot) Thor was made from 15 million recycled ice-cream sticks glued together by US-born Robert McDonald, his son and more than 5,000 children.

"Pick up your ice-cream stick, send them to me and I will put them to use," McDonald, 48, said on radio, hoping to auction the ship later and donate the proceeds to charity.

"Kids from all over the world started mailing them to me. I got enough sticks to build three of those ships," said McDonald.

McDonald, badly injured as a child in a gas explosion that killed the rest of his family, is still looking for donations to finance his Atlantic voyage, the proceeds of which will go to children in hospitals and in disaster zones. He has worked as a stuntman in 400 films.

He needs a crew daring enough to repeat the ancient Viking route to North America via Iceland and Greenland.