Vikings! (Anna Van Geest)

York has been busier than usual this week. I tried to enter the Minster, but the line stretched outside the door, street vendors were everywhere, and the Shambles was nearly impassable. I was confused at first as to why this was happening, especially since some of the people asking for directions had British accents. Then I remembered: the Viking Festival. This week marked the 35th annual Viking Festival that the city has hosted, the largest of its kind in Europe. The Viking Festival started on February 20th and lasted until the 27th. It happens each year at this time because it used to be when the Vikings had one of their holidays. A millennium ago, when the Vikings lived in York (from the mid-ninth to the mid-tenth century) they had a festival called ‘Jolablot.’ This festival celebrated the end of winter hardships and the coming of spring.

This festival, along with many other aspects of Viking life in York, was lost to us until 1976, when a five-year excavation called the Coppergate Dig started in York. The dig area covered over 1000 square metres, and archaeologists found evidence of over 2000 years of history, including over 40,000 artifacts that were used to determine what day-to-day life was like in York during the time of the Vikings. York used to be a huge trading hub, with connections all the way to the Byzantine empire. But York’s Norse history is even greater than that. In order to really understand what York would have been like during the time of the Vikings, it is important to start at the beginning.

After the Roman Empire left Britain, northern England and Scotland were left vulnerable to attack, first from Germany and later from Scandinavia. By 866, York (or Eoforwic as it was known at the time) was an important Anglo-Saxon city and home to a major Christian cathedral. On November 1, All Saints Day, the leaders of Eoforwic would have all been in the cathedral, celebrating and remembering the saints, making the city even more susceptible to attack than usual. The Great Heathen Army, led by Ivar the Boneless and Halfdan Ragnarrson, attacked, and Eoforwic was taken over by the Vikings. They ended up retreating and spent the winter months back in their homeland before trying to attack again in March 867. This was a much more violent clash than the one in 866. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles record that there was an excessive slaughter of the whole of northern England at the time. In this attack, all the Anglo-Saxon leaders who had escaped the first time were killed. The Vikings renamed Eoforwic “Jorvik.” They are said to have rebuilt the city of York, cultivated the land around it, and remained there. The Vikings stayed in Jorvik until 954, when the last Viking king, Eric Bloodaxe, was expelled and York became a part of the newly consolidated Anglo-Saxon state.

Since the Vikings had such a strong presence in York for almost a century, they left a huge legacy in York. That is why the city of York hosts this lovely festival every year. This past week there were sword fights, street merchants, stories of forgotten history and much more. These events were organized by the Jorvik Viking Center, built on the site of the Coppergate Dig and named after the Viking name for York. The line to Jorvik stretched down the street, so many people wanted to see it. I find it fascinating that people would come from all over just to see the history that happened in this place over 1000 years ago. This has been a fascinating week in York, and it was amazing to see what history happened in this city that we call home.