The People of JORVIK
JORVIK Viking Centre is filled with representations of people from across the Viking world. From our Viking hosts who welcome you to our time window and artefact gallery, to the characters you’ll meet as you travel back in time, every one of them has a story to tell.
Each character is inspired by archaeological evidence from the Coppergate excavations and other important Viking sites. Together, they help us understand what life was really like in Viking-age York.
The people you meet on your journey through the Viking city of Jorvik are the result of more than 40 years of research by York Archaeology and have been brought to life using modern animatronic technology. From hunters and blacksmiths to traders and storytellers, each character helps us understand what life was really like in Viking-age York.
Torgils the Hunter and his Dog
The first person you’ll meet as you step back into Jorvik is Torgils the Hunter. You may notice that he’s saying something, but it doesn’t quite sound like English. Don’t worry, our translation matrix is working perfectly! Torgils is greeting you in Old Norse, which makes sense because he originally comes from Norway.
He’s dressed in what we’d probably think of as “typical” Viking clothing, wearing a woollen tunic over a linen shirt decorated with a colourful tablet-woven trim. Tablet weaving (sometimes called card weaving) used small square cards with holes in the corners to weave decorative bands and patterns. These colourful trims could be added to clothing to make even everyday outfits look a little more special.
You might also notice that Torgils has a tattoo and filed teeth. We’re still not completely sure why some Vikings filed their teeth. Some archaeologists think it may have been a sign of identity or status, while others believe it could have helped warriors look more intimidating. Don’t worry though, Torgils is one of the friendly Vikings! He’s just returned from a successful hunt and is carrying a hare for his supper, along with a traditional English bow.
Torgils' Dog
Torgils is accompanied by his faithful dog, which is about the size of a modern Alsatian. The collar and chain used to restrain the dog are based on real archaeological finds from a 10th-century boat burial at Uppsala in Sweden, helping us recreate even the smallest details as accurately as possible.
In fact, we know that dogs were much-loved companions, just as they are today. How do we know? Well, this part is a little sad. Archaeologists regularly discover the skeletons of dogs buried alongside their owners in both Anglo-Saxon and Viking graves. We think this was because people wanted their loyal companions to join them in the afterlife. One piece of evidence comes from the Tjängvide image stone, found on Gotland. It shows a warrior arriving in Valhalla (the great hall of the god Odin in Asgard), where he is welcomed by a Valkyrie carrying a mead horn. Standing faithfully behind her is the warrior’s dog, ready to greet its master once again.
It seems that, just like many people today, some Vikings couldn’t imagine heaven without their faithful dog by their side.
Hakim the Arabic Trader
Next up on our journey through Viking-age Jorvik is Hakim, a trader from the Near or Middle East. At first, that might seem surprising, but we have strong evidence that the Viking and Arabic worlds traded with one another.
Arab scholar Ibn Fadlan recorded 10th-century Norse trading expeditions to Baghdad (in modern-day Iraq), which was one of the most important cities in the Islamic world. It’s therefore not unreasonable to imagine a trader like Hakim could have made a journey from parts of the Islamic world to somewhere like York.
Hakim is carrying a supply of silk that he hopes to sell, and there’s a good chance people in Jorvik would have been interested. During the Coppergate excavations, archaeologists discovered a silk cap and a tiny silk reliquary pouch, showing that luxury fabrics from far away really did reach Viking-age York.
Silk was extremely rare in Britain and Scandinavia because neither the raw materials nor the technology needed to produce it existed there. If you owned silk, it probably meant you were wealthy or important enough to afford something that had travelled thousands of miles.
That little silk reliquary pouch tells us even more. Reliquary pouches were used by Christian priests to carry holy relics, offering another clue about the different cultures and beliefs that came together in Viking-age York.
We’ll come back to that little silk pouch later…
Blanda the Slave Trader and Bronach the Slave
For our next inhabitants of Jorvik, we have to acknowledge an uncomfortable part of Viking history.
While we often remind people that the Vikings were much more than raiders and warriors, we also have to be honest about the darker side of their world. Blanda (the man holding the rope) is a slave trader. The woman beside him is Bronach, an enslaved woman he intends to sell. He is shouting at her in Old Norse to get down from the trading ship that has just docked at the wharf on the River Foss. Unfortunately for Bronach, she cannot understand him because she comes from Dublin in Ireland.
Slavery was a profitable business, and you can see this in the contrast between the two characters. Blanda wears expensive clothing and jewellery, showing his wealth, while Bronach’s simple clothing reflects her lack of freedom and status.
When Vikings raided the coasts of Britain, Ireland and elsewhere, they often took what historians call portable wealth. This meant anything valuable that could easily be taken back to their ships, including cattle, supplies, precious metalwork from churches and monasteries, livestock and, tragically, people.
We know this happened because it was recorded at the time. The Annals of Ulster, which describe events in medieval Ireland, record that after a Viking raid on Howth, a county in Dublin in AD 821, “a great booty of women was carried away.”
So, where were these captives taken?
One clue comes from The Life of Findan, a 9th-century account of an Irish nobleman who was enslaved by Vikings. It suggests that some enslaved people were sold in Viking settlements in Britain. More recent DNA studies also suggest that others may have been taken even further, with some eventually reaching Iceland.
Grummi the Blacksmith and Svein his Son
Away from the river,, we can see our blacksmith Grummi teaching his ten-year-old son Svein how to sharpen the knife he has just made. When the Vikings settled in what the Anglo-Saxons called Eoforwic, they gradually transformed it into the city they knew as Jorvik. They didn’t simply drive out the people who already lived here. Instead, many Vikings and Anglo-Saxons lived and worked alongside one another. We can see this through Grummi and Svein, who are speaking Old English rather than Old Norse.
When you hear the phrase “Old English”, you might imagine people saying “forsooth” or quoting Shakespeare. That’s actually Early Modern English, spoken around 500 years after the Viking Age. Old English sounded completely different and was actually much closer to modern German than the English we speak today. The fact that Grummi and Svein speak Old English suggests that they grew up in Jorvik or elsewhere in Anglo-Saxon England. If you’re feeling a little nosey, you can even spot Grummi’s wife Inga inside the house preparing supper over the hearth with her elderly foster-father Gamall.
It’s hard to overstate how important a blacksmith was in Viking society. Nearly every other craft and industry relied on them to provide weapons for warriors and nobles, tools for hunters and fishermen, and even fixtures and fittings for the home. It is fair to say business was booming, and our research on the iron artefacts from Coppergate shows there was a huge variety of things being made. Archaeologists discovered around 220 knives, alongside hone stones used to sharpen blades, as well as needles, nails and even intricately crafted padlocks. As we can see, the skills needed to become a blacksmith were often passed down from one generation to the next.
Eymund and Karl the Fishermen
Our next inhabitants of Jorvik are two fishermen, Eymund and Karl. They are also speaking Old English and, from the sound of it, Karl (the one with brown hair) is frustrated. Not only was the catch poor today, but his fishing net has broken and now needs repairing. Eymund, the blond fisherman beside him, seems to be sympathising while gutting the day’s catch.
One thing that makes Eymund especially interesting is that his facial features are based on an actual Viking-age skull. Through scientific analysis and facial reconstruction, researchers were able to recreate what he may have looked like over 1,000 years ago. He is not the only person at JORVIK to have been brought back to life in this way.
If you look closely, you can see Eymund preparing a fish, which gives us a clue about one of the most important sources of food in Viking-age York.
Thanks to the thousands of fish bones discovered at Coppergate, archaeologists have built up a detailed picture of what people in Jorvik were eating. Finds dating from the mid-9th to early 10th century include eels, pike, perch, salmon, trout, smelt and carp.
One of the most interesting discoveries is just how much herring people were eating. By the end of the Viking period, herring made up around two-thirds of the fish bones analysed.
Unlike many of the other fish found at Coppergate, herring is a marine fish, meaning it lives in the sea. Very few other marine species seem to have made it to the city. The growing reliance on herring might suggest that the rivers were being fished more intensively, or that gradual pollution was affecting the habitats of some freshwater fish and encouraging people to fish further afield.
It seems like looking after our waterways has always been challenging.
Asgerða the Loom Weaver
Let’s get inside quickly and meet Asgerða. As we can see, she is humming and working at her loom while dressed in a hangerok, a traditional Sandinavian apron-style dress worn by women during the Viking Age. She is also wearing a hood covering her hair, similar to styles found in Viking-age York. This type of head covering may have been worn by married women, although we cannot know for certain.
Her home is a reconstruction of the timber houses discovered at Coppergate, and you may have noticed the coloured dyes outside in the yard. Loom weavers like Asgerða, and Vikings more generally, dyed their clothes using plants found in the world around them. They used madder, greenweed and woad to create reds, yellows and blues, or could combine the dyes to make even more colours. They also made white linen for undergarments from flax (a type of plant fibre), which could be finished using glass linen smoothers like the ones found at Coppergate.
We think this kind of work took place in homes all across Coppergate. Archaeologists found shears, wool combs and spindle whorls (which were used to spin wool into thread), across all four excavated building plots. They also discovered sheep lice, suggesting that wool may have been cleaned and prepared inside the houses.
Earlier looms were warp-weighted, meaning fired clay loom weights were used to keep the threads under constant tension while weaving. Over time, these were replaced by two-beam vertical looms, a design that had been used in other parts of the world for thousands of years.
Mord the Leatherworker
Moving onto Coppergate now, we can see our leatherworker Mord. Sitting next to his stall of shoes and scabbards, he seems to be struggling to sew a shoe. As you can see, his fingers have become clawed. This is caused by a genetic disorder called Dupuytren’s Contracture, which runs in families and is often seen in middle-aged men.
While that might sound like a bit of a mouthful, it is also known as “Viking disease”. Allegedly, this nickname comes from the idea that Vikings helped spread the condition through Northern Europe and beyond as they travelled and mixed with local communities. However, the link between the condition and the Vikings is still debated.
Let’s focus on the shoe for a minute. Leatherworkers like Mord made many different styles of footwear, including simple slip-on shoes, boots and shoes that were laced or fastened with leather straps or toggles.
When you visit the JORVIK artefact gallery, you can see a very unusual example. It is an almost complete left shoe made from a single piece of leather. A central sole section was cut first, then the sides were folded up around the foot and sewn together with a seam running from the toes to the opening of the shoe.
No other shoe like this has been found in Britain, so it may have arrived in York with a foreign trader or an enslaved person.
Leoba, a Resident of Jorvik
At the end of Coppergate, we can meet Leoba, a resident of Jorvik who is using a crutch to help her walk. Leoba is based on the analysis of one of the two mostly complete human skeletons discovered during the Coppergate excavation.
We know that Leoba was around 46 years old when she died. Although she was only around 5 ft 2 inches (1.59m) tall, her bones suggest she had a strong frame. They also reveal that she suffered from degenerative joint disease, with problems affecting her hips, legs, spine, ribs, shoulders, knee, hand and wrist. This suggests she had a pronounced limp and may have relied on a crutch because of a genetic problem affecting her right hip.
Leoba was found in a shallow pit towards the end of the site nearer the River Foss. Unfortunately, her legs were missing because of later construction work on the site. She may have been buried near the edge of a cemetery outside the Coppergate excavation area. As no other burials have been discovered here, some archaeologists have suggested that she may have been separated from the main community in death.
Although Leoba lived and died in Jorvik, she did not grow up here. Analysis of the levels of lead, strontium and oxygen in her bones and teeth suggests that she spent her childhood near the coast, possibly in south-west Norway or the northern tip of Scotland. These clues allow archaeologists to build up a picture of where people came from and how they moved around the Viking world.
Loðan the Priest
Leaving Coppergate behind, we move into another Viking-age home where we meet Loðan the Priest. Here we see him giving the last rites to a dying woman while her grieving loved one looks on.
When the Vikings first arrived in Britain, many followed their own Norse beliefs and worshipped gods such as Odin, Thor and Freya. However, over time Christianity became increasingly common among Viking communities. We don’t know exactly why individuals chose to convert. For some, it may have been a sincere change in belief, while for others it may also have helped them build relationships and trade with the Christian communities around them.
We have evidence that Christianity was becoming an important part of life in Viking-age York. A Viking-era church is thought to have stood just behind Coppergate, and several other new churches were built in the city during this period.
Loðan’s clothing gives us clues about his role as a priest. He is wearing an alb, a full-length white linen tunic worn during religious ceremonies, along with an ornamental collar called a superhumeral and a woven belt. Over his arm he carries a maniple, a narrow band of embroidered fabric traditionally worn by clergy. Around his neck is a stole, another symbol of his position as a priest.
Hanging from Loðan’s belt is a small silk pouch, based on an actual object discovered during the Coppergate excavation. The embroidered cross suggests it may have once held holy relics, although whatever was inside has long since disappeared. It leaves us with a fascinating mystery about the beliefs and practices of people living in Viking-age Jorvik.
Ragnar the Storyteller
In the final house we meet Ragnar the storyteller. Across Scandinavia and Iceland, storytelling, music and poetry were an important part of everyday life, with stories being passed down through generations.
Ragnar appears to be telling the Völuspá, one of the most famous poems from the Poetic Edda. This Old Norse poem tells the story of the creation of the world and its eventual destruction during Ragnarök. As he tells his tale, images of serpents, stars and wolves appear to rise from his hearth. Don’t worry, we don’t think Vikings could actually summon these creatures! Instead, this represents the power of storytelling and imagination.
Ragnar is accompanied by music from instruments such as harps and panpipes, creating the atmosphere of a Viking-age performance. We know music and entertainment were important parts of life because archaeologists have discovered clues about how people in Jorvik spent their free time.
There was no television, radio or streaming in Viking-age Jorvik, but that didn’t mean people couldn’t have fun. They gathered together to share stories, play games and make music. Archaeologists have found board game pieces, ice skates and even musical instruments at Coppergate. One of the most unusual discoveries was a syrinx, a type of panpipe made from boxwood. Dating from the 10th century, it is the only known example of this kind of instrument from the Viking Age.
The syrinx can still produce a five-note scale, ranging from top A to top E, and may originally have had even more tubes. This small discovery gives us a glimpse of the sounds that may once have filled the streets and homes of Viking-age York.
Reconstructing the Past
As you can see, Jorvik was a bustling, thriving city filled with people from all walks of life. The Vikings weren’t a monolith. They weren’t just one thing, and that’s important to remember as you continue your journey through the Viking Age.
We hope that by learning about the people behind the archaeology, these discoveries have come to life. Every artefact has a story to tell, and together they help us build a picture of the real people who lived, worked and made their homes in Jorvik over 1,000 years ago.