WHERE TO FIND THE VIKINGS IN BRITAIN

1 LINDISFARNE See page 57.

2 YORK

York is England’s premiere Viking Age city and home to the Jorvik Viking Centre, which was built in 1984 to showcase the results of the archaeological excavation at Coppergate. Visit Jorvik to experience the sites, sounds and smells of 10th-century York and meet its animatronically recreated inhabitants.

3 ORKNEY

Under Scandinavian rule until the 15th century, Orkney’s landscape is packed with reminders of its Nordic past. Top of the list is Maeshowe, a 5,000-year-old chambered cairn covered with runic graffiti made by Norse men and women who broke into the mound. The runes give us the names of several culprits including Hlif, Benedikt and Helgi, and hint at some naughty activities that took place inside.

4 SHETLAND

Like its Northern Isle twin, Shetland was also colonised by the Norse in the 9th century, and a form of their language — Norn — was spoken here up to the 1800s. The Shetlanders are proud of their Viking heritage, which they celebrate every January at Up Helly Aa, a riotous fire festival culminating in torch-lit processions and the burning of a longship.

5 MALDON

Located on the Blackwater estuary in Essex, the tidal causeway that connects Northey Island to the mainland was the setting for a bloody battle between Anglo-Saxon locals and Scandinavian raiders in 991. The clash is commemorated in an Old English poem The Battle of Maldon.

6 WOOD QUAY, DUBLIN

Back in the 70s when Dublin Corporation announced plans to build offices at Wood Quay on Dublin’s riverside, they became public enemy number one. Archaeological excavations revealed beautifully preserved remains of the Viking Age settlement. Despite protests, construction went ahead and the site was destroyed. Today, Dublin City Council rents out ‘City Wall Space’, a state-of the-art conference facility featuring what is described on their website as “the original Hiberno Norse (Viking) City Wall”.

7 LONDON

Few traces remain of the Norse who raided and settled London, but if you look hard enough you’ll find them. Tooley Street near London Bridge is a corruption of ‘St Olaf’s Street’, named for the Norse church first documented there in 1035. The Museum of London is home to a Norse grave marker found near St Paul’s Cathedral. Decorated with a lion fighting a serpent, the runes read ‘Ginna and Toki had this stone laid’.

8 ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, OXFORD

During preparations for building work at St John’s College in Oxford, a mass grave was discovered containing 37 Scandinavian skeletons. Mostly males between the ages of 16-25, their cracked skulls, stab wounds and signs of burning suggested they had been attacked by a mob and killed. Given that they died between 960 and 1020, they may have been victims of a royal proclamation in 1002, ordering the deaths of “all the Danish men who were in England”.

9 ISLE OF MAN

The Isle of Man sits at the centre of a cultural and economic network that stretched across Viking Britain. Its rich concentration of archaeology and art reflects this position, and the hybrid nature of Manx society. Across the island you can find carved stones that mix Norse and Celtic elements, such as Thorwald’s Cross, one side covered in Christian imagery and the other depicting the Norse apocalyptic myth of Ragnarok.

10 ST GREGORY’S MINSTER, KIRKDALE, YORKSHIRE

Built into the wall is a sundial made just before the Norman conquest, by which time Norse settlers had been in England for almost 200 years. Written in Anglo-Saxon, it states that Orm son of Gamal bought and rebuilt the church “when it was tumbled and ruined”. Orm and Gamal are quintessentially Norse names, but this man is a pillar of the local Christian community.