Jorvik Viking Center, York, England
| Posted by |  |
britishpages | – • |
|
The world famous JORVIK Viking Centre is a ‘must-see’ for visitors to the city of York and is one of the most popular visitor attractions in the UK outside London.
Welcoming 15 million visitors over the past 25 years, visitors can journey through the reconstruction of Viking-Age streets, as they would have been in the year AD975. JORVIK Viking Centre also offers three exciting exhibitions and the chance to actually come face to face with a 'Viking'.
Everything in JORVIK Viking Centre is based on archaeological evidence unearthed during the Coppergate excavations undertaken between 1979–81 by York Archaeological Trust.
Archaeologists started digging on the site of an old sweet factory and unearthed remains of 10th century Viking-age buildings that were surrounded by moist, spongy layers of earth similar to that of a peat bog.
These damp conditions helped preserve everyday Viking items such as wood, leather, cloth, bugs and even a Viking toilet and its contents.
In total, an incredible 40,000 objects were uncovered by excavating 36,000 layers and sieving 8 tonnes of soil!
What is a Viking?
Vikings were warriors. More precisely, Viking is the name by which the Scandinavian sea-borne raiders of the early medieval period are now commonly known.
Vikings were not professional privateers or full-time soldiers – or at least not at first. Originally they were full-time fishermen and farmers who spent much of the year at home. Only in the summer would they have rallied to the call of a local leader and ventured across the sea to raid, trade or seek out new lands to settle.
Even before the earliest Viking raids on their monasteries, the Anglo-Saxons used an Old English word, wicing. But this wasn't a word that they used often or exclusively for the Scandinavian raiders; instead, it was used for all-comers, and meant 'a pirate' or 'piracy'. It was only in the late tenth or early eleventh century, in Anglo-Saxon poems such as 'The Battle of Maldon', that wicing came to mean 'a Scandinavian sea-raider'.
The Old Norse language spoken in Scandinavia used the word vikingr in its vocabulary, but its origins are uncertain. The explanation currently favoured is that it originally meant 'a seaman who came from the Vik district of Oslo fjord', and then came to mean sea-borne warrior, firstly from that area and later from all over Scandinavia.
Wesbite: http://www.jorvik-viking-centre.co.uk
Welcoming 15 million visitors over the past 25 years, visitors can journey through the reconstruction of Viking-Age streets, as they would have been in the year AD975. JORVIK Viking Centre also offers three exciting exhibitions and the chance to actually come face to face with a 'Viking'.
Everything in JORVIK Viking Centre is based on archaeological evidence unearthed during the Coppergate excavations undertaken between 1979–81 by York Archaeological Trust.
Archaeologists started digging on the site of an old sweet factory and unearthed remains of 10th century Viking-age buildings that were surrounded by moist, spongy layers of earth similar to that of a peat bog.
These damp conditions helped preserve everyday Viking items such as wood, leather, cloth, bugs and even a Viking toilet and its contents.
In total, an incredible 40,000 objects were uncovered by excavating 36,000 layers and sieving 8 tonnes of soil!
What is a Viking?
Vikings were warriors. More precisely, Viking is the name by which the Scandinavian sea-borne raiders of the early medieval period are now commonly known.
Vikings were not professional privateers or full-time soldiers – or at least not at first. Originally they were full-time fishermen and farmers who spent much of the year at home. Only in the summer would they have rallied to the call of a local leader and ventured across the sea to raid, trade or seek out new lands to settle.
Even before the earliest Viking raids on their monasteries, the Anglo-Saxons used an Old English word, wicing. But this wasn't a word that they used often or exclusively for the Scandinavian raiders; instead, it was used for all-comers, and meant 'a pirate' or 'piracy'. It was only in the late tenth or early eleventh century, in Anglo-Saxon poems such as 'The Battle of Maldon', that wicing came to mean 'a Scandinavian sea-raider'.
The Old Norse language spoken in Scandinavia used the word vikingr in its vocabulary, but its origins are uncertain. The explanation currently favoured is that it originally meant 'a seaman who came from the Vik district of Oslo fjord', and then came to mean sea-borne warrior, firstly from that area and later from all over Scandinavia.
Wesbite: http://www.jorvik-viking-centre.co.uk
Leave a comment
| Free Embeddable Newspaper Powered by Nabble | Help |
