Shoppers and workers in Newcastle 50 years ago did a double take when a small group of Vikings began pillaging on the city's normally peaceful Neville Street - but thankfully the stunt in March 1973 was a harmless bit of fun.
Our region, of course, has a relationship going back eons with the seaborne raiders from the far North of Europe who raided, explored and traded across a vast area stretching from North America to the Middle East between the 8th and 11th centuries.
The first Viking longships appeared off the North East coast in 793. The monks of Lindisfarne felt the full force of these fearsome new warrior invaders from Scandinavia. In the aftermath of the first attack, one monk wrote: “The church of Saint Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God, stripped of all its furnishings, exposed to the plundering of pagans”.
READ MORE: Tyneside in 1968: 10 photographs from around our region 55 years ago
A year later, Viking vessels are said to have sailed up the River Tyne where they came across the gentle monastic setting of Jarrow, or Donmouth as it was know then. Legend has it that the invaders set fire to the monastery, but the Viking leader was captured and killed by the locals as a punishment from St Cuthbert. Jarrow has retained its Viking links, with modern-day statues of two Norsemen standing in the town centre, while the local shopping precinct is called the Viking Centre.
When in November 1968, King Olav V of Norway officially opened the city's new seat of local government, the Civic Centre, much was made of the long-time ties between the two nations. The Evening Chronicle reported: “They came 1,000 years ago and conquered us - but this time the Vikings are more friendly. King Olav comes to open Newcastle’s new Civic Centre, while a touring band of his businessmen look at the North’s industries and, it is hoped, buy the goods.
"Peaceful ties with Norway now stretch back 750 years to the first trade agreement and the days when Tyne-bound Viking ships brought terror are long forgotten. In the North East today, the Norwegians are liked and welcomed - witness the thousands who have made their homes here.”
Elsewhere on Tyneside, place names like Byker and Walker have Norse roots, while the Vikings pressed on around much of Northern Britain and beyond. It is thought around 35,000 of them might have finally settled in Britain, controlling a vast swathe of land called the Danelaw that stretched from London to East Anglia, through the Midlands and up to the North of England.
There is plenty of evidence for a large-scale Viking presence in England, and not just in place names. Historians have noted how fields, hedges, small streams, and other rural landscape features have Scandinavian names, suggesting that they were named by a Norse-speaking population, living in the countryside and working the land. The Viking Age is generally thought to have ended with Norman invasion of England in 1066.
One study, meanwhile, found 20% of the DNA of the average English person today is owed to the Vikings. If you suddenly have the urge to build a Viking longship, now you know why...
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