09.00          Transfer to York City Centre

We will leave our hotel after breakfast with a packed lunch and transfer to York City Centre.

10.15          Walking Tour of York

We will meet our guide at Exhibition Square for a guided tour of the City of York departing at 10:15.

The city of York wears its layers of history with pride: Roman, Viking, Anglo-Saxon, medieval, Georgian and Victorian.  Buoyed by the double whammy of monastic wealth and wool, York played second city to London for half a millennia and has been capital of the north for nigh on 2000 years.  The gem at the heart of this walled and gated city is the Gothic York Minster and its peerless collection of medieval stained glass.

York has its feet planted firmly in the past, but visit the city outside July and August and you'll find it's no soulless theme park.  Sneak into a snicket (an alleyway to you and me); walk the ghostly city walls and fruitlessly ask for beer in an unlicensed bar (otherwise known as a gateway); and find yourself in a medieval shambles of askew timbered houses and cockeyed lanes.  And as the hub of northeastern Britain's rail network, it's a trainspotter's paradise.

York's walled historic heart is small but confusing, thanks to its tangled medieval streetplan.  The tiny lanes are called gates - tangible evidence of the Viking years - and the many gateways that pierce the encircling city walls are called bars (in the old days you'd want a gate to 'bar the way', rather than act as an opening).  York straddles the rivers Ouse and Foss, and lies virtually at the heart of Yorkshire.

York Minster dominates York's landscape and psyche, and is proudly marketed as the largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe.  The building's foundations reveal the site's ancient history, including evidence of the original assembly hall that lay at the heart of the Romans' military headquarters; the wooden chapel built for bishop Paulinus' baptism of King Edwin in 627; a subsequent stone church; the church destroyed by William the Conqueror during his 'harrying of the North'; and a Norman church dating from around 1060.  The structure's historical significance is more than matched by its world-beating collection of stained glass, most notably the fabled Great East Window (1408), the largest medieval stained-glass window on the planet.

Today's multistyled structure incorporates the Early English northern transept (1241-60); the Decorated-style nave, choir and octagonal chapter house (1260-1405); and, at the cathedral's heart, the perpendicular-style lantern tower (1460-80).  More-recent amendments were made following the disastrous fire of 1984, which severely damaged the south transept; the minster was also damaged by fire in 1829 and 1840.  York Minster is imbued with the specially charged atmosphere shared by large historic buildings, and there's a wealth of tiny details to search for, from tiny cherubs to feudal shields and dragon's heads.  The 275-step climb to the top of the lantern tower is rewarded with a bird's-eye view of York.  The best views of the minster itself can be gained by ambling along the stretch of city wall from Bootham Bar to Monk Bar (the latter retaining its portcullis).

13.00          The Jorvik Viking Centre

We will travel back in time to the Viking age at the Jorvik Viking Centre.  Here archeologists discovered the preserved remains of Jorvik - the place the vikings once called home.  They used that evidence to create one of the most enthralling reconstructions of the viking age. 

York's Viking roots were revealed in all their horned glory during excavations of the Coppergate area in 1976.  Now, through the miracle of smell-a-rama, 'time-car' rides, fibreglass figures and a lot of imagination, the Danish murky depths have been transformed into one of York's most popular attractions.  It's much less corny than it sounds, and quite successfully brings to life the experience of the city's 9th-century Norse inhabitants. Across the way, the time travel moves onto the medieval era at the 14th-century Merchant Adventurers' Hall, the gorgeously timbered former guildhall of York's famously wealthy cloth-trade monopolists.

·        What was it like to live in Anglo-Scandinavian Jorvik (York)?

By the time of the Norman invasion (1066) AD it is thought that 10,000 or more people were living in Jorvik.  This would have made it second only in size to London at the time.  Amongst the important members of the population, from time to time, would be kings, noblemen, archbishops and bishops.  There would be monks (and perhaps nuns), priests, merchants, traders, minters of coins, and craftsmen of all kinds.

 

We have no way of knowing how quickly the Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon people became mixed together and indistinguishable from each other.  The Vikings and the Angles of northern England were very close ethnic cousins.  They probably differed little in physical appearance, their Old English and Old Norse/Old Danish languages were similar, and they shared a number of cultural features. In the early years of Scandinavian settlement, it would perhaps be only details of dress, ornament, hair style, speech and mannerisms which distinguished one group from the other.

In a vigorous trading and religious centre of this kind, we might also expect to find (perhaps as temporary residents) a few people from other lands and ethnic groups, especially traders and merchants.  There would have been slaves in the royal, noble and wealthier households and these would have been captured or bought in many different parts of the Viking world.

Traders would be continually arriving and departing by land and water.  The town (especially its river frontage) would have been a very lively and interesting place as cargo ships arrived after pushing their way against current, wind and tide up the Humber estuary and the River Ouse.  Merchants would be anxious to learn if the goods they had sent out on the same ship weeks or months before had been successfully traded and how much money, gold, silver or other goods the crew had brought back for them.  Craftsmen might be expecting fresh supplies of raw materials from abroad.  Children would be especially excited to find out from the ships' crews where they had been and what adventures they had had on the way.  Very interested, too, would be the storytellers and poets who would be on the lookout for tales and news to weave into their stories and poems.  And the ladies would certainly wish to know if the ship was carrying any exciting new fabrics or jewellery from distant places.  As well as the ships, there would be traders arriving with pack-ponies loaded with goods, having made overland journeys, perhaps, from the west coast of northern England, from the towns of the English Midlands, or from the Scottish border country.

The archaeological evidence from graves in Jorvik gives us some clues about the physique of the Anglo-Scandinavian population.  Men on average seem to have been about 1.72 m tall and women 1.57 m.  For both sexes, this is a few centimetres less than today's averages. Life expectancy though, was much different then and people could not expect to live as long as they do today.

The sights, sounds - and even the smells - of Viking Age Jorvik (York) have been recreated realistically in the exhibition at the Jorvik Viking Centre in Coppergate, York, and a visit there gives a 'time travel' experience which no amount of words and pictures can convey.