The Vikings in Burnsall

The Vikings (or pirates) arrived in England from Denmark and Norway. Their first raid is believed to have taken place on 2 February 793 when they destroyed the church at Lindisfarne where St Wilfrid had earlier been a novice.

By 835 the Viking invasion began in earnest and in 867 the Kingdom of Northumbria was replaced by the Viking Kingdom of York (Jorvik). By the 890s the north eastern half of England had been settled by these newcomers and was under the influence of the Danelaw.

The discovery of the stone sculptures along with local place names with Norse derivations such as Thorpe, Cracoe, and Skyreholme tell us that the Vikings settled in and around the Wharfe Valley over a thousand years ago.

Viking Exhibition

The Opening

On Sunday 5 September 2004, the then Archdeacon of Craven, the Venerable Malcolm Grundy, dedicated our Viking Exhibition which is aimed at unravelling Burnsall’s rich Viking past.

The archdeacon (second left) was escorted by Holderness Vikings outside St Wilfrid’s after the service.

HM King Harald V of Norway sent his best wishes to all at St Wilfrid’s on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition.

The launch of the exhibition was cause for a weekend of celebrations in the village. On Saturday evening more than a hundred people dressed in Viking costume gathered on the village green to drink Lindisfarne liqueur prior to attending a Viking Feast in the village hall. The menu included lamb or fish stew followed by locally grown gooseberry or rhubarb crumble. Between courses, guests were entertained by the Viking leg wrestling, a swordfight, saga telling and music played on a Hardanger fiddle.

The Holderness Vikings re-enactment group had set up camp with ten authentic Viking tents on the riverbank where they were cooking food in their pots, preparing their weapons and adding to the atmosphere.

The day of the dedication service saw the village invaded by hundreds of visitors who came to Burnsall’s first Viking Festival. Alongside an example of a Viking boat from Jorvik were the Viking craftsmen and women, art and sculpture workshops. Members of the Great Britain eight man Olympic rowing team took part in a coracle race on the River Wharfe. To end the day a seven-foot longboat constructed by children over the two days of the festival was launched and set on fire in Viking tradition.

The Exhibition

The exhibition at St Wilfrid's Church is open every day from about 9:00am to dusk, and entrance is free of charge. The exhibits include:

• Thirteen pre-conquest stone sculptures.
• Informative timeline
• Interactive display of knot work.
• Audio display made by local school children describing events from the end of the Roman rule to the capture of York by Eric ‘Bloodaxe’.
• Interpretive panels
• St Wilfrid’s Church history time line.
• Catalogue of Early Sculptures in Burnsall Church (Price £3.00)

What the sculptures tell us

St Wilfrid’s unique collection of stone sculptures consists of Viking tombstones and fragments of Anglo-Scandinavian crosses dating from the ninth to the eleventh centuries. Many of the stone sculptures were discovered under the floor of the church by workmen carrying out building repairs during the nineteenth century.

The discovery of the stone sculptures along with local place names with Norse derivations such as Thorpe, Cracoe, and Skyreholme tell us something about life in our village a thousand years ago.

• There were people of Viking origin living in the parish in the ninth century.
• They named the places where they settled.
• They integrated with the Anglo-Saxon (English speaking) population.
• They buried their dead in the Christian burial ground.
• Their use of the cross indicates that they adopted the Christian faith.

This drawing made by WG Collingwood in 1915, shows one of the earliest sculptures in the exhibition. It is a cross head and part of a cross-shaft dating from the ninth century.

The design contains a mixture of Scandinavian and Anglo Saxon elements.

A number of Viking era stone cutting tools can be seen in the exhibition.

Early in the tenth century there was a second wave of settlers from the west – probably from Ireland, where there was a Viking Kingdom based on Dublin.

These invaders were of Norwegian origin. In the Burnsall exhibition there is a complete hog back tomb cover and an incomplete cross head reflecting the Hiberno-Norse taste of these later settlers.

The exhibition logo is based on an incomplete cross head dating from the tenth to eleventh centuries.

Its style though Christian is strongly Scandinavian and to some, the arms are reminiscent of Thor’s hammer, a pagan Viking symbol.

This conjectural burial scene by Jon Potter shows what a tenth century funeral at Burnsall might have looked like.

A detailed catalogue and description of the sculptures is on sale in the church price £3.00

The sculptures are described in more detail in ‘Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture Volume VIII WESTERN YORKSHIRE by Elizabeth Coatsworth. Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2008