Life in Viking Age Jorvik (York)

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

The people and their town

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 Vikings seem to have been able to mix quickly with local populations, if their record in other places such as the Isle of Man and Ireland is anything to go by, where they soon became part of mixed Manx-Norse and Hiberno-Norse populations. There is no reason to think that things were much different in The Danelaw and, by the time of the Norman Conquest, the term 'Anglo-Scandinavian' may have been the most suitable for the population of Jorvik and its region.

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.