'We're full-time Vikings who fell in love on the battlefield'

For some people, love is found by swiping on a dating app or locking eyes across the dance floor of a crowded bar, but Ellie and Pete Taylor's love story started on a Viking battlefield dressed in full medieval costume.

"Pete was a very handsome-looking Viking. He was putting his tent up in the rain," Ellie, 27, remembers.

"At that time, he had a proper Viking hairstyle and a full beard as well, like [legendary hero] Ragnar Lothbrok."

Ellie met Pete in 2019 while attending a re-enactment of the Battle of Stamford Bridge - which, about 950 years earlier, saw an army led by the Saxon King Harold defeat a group of Viking invaders.

The re-enactment was something Ellie had grown up doing due to her parents also both being keen re-enactors.

"I killed her dad on the battlefield...not for real obviously," Pete, 35, explains.

"After the battle, we went and sat around his campfire and I met Ellie."

Over the flames, sparks flew and Pete remembers that he later managed to steal a kiss with Ellie under a tree.

"I followed her around like a little lost puppy dog all weekend," he laughs.

"I told everybody as soon as I met her that I was going to marry her and everyone was like, no, that's not going to happen."

However, two weeks later Pete left his job and home in Staffordshire and moved up to York, where he and Ellie lived in a caravan for several months.

Seven years later, the couple are married, own a house and have welcomed their baby into the world.

"We had a big white wedding at a stately home in Wakefield," Pete says.

"Then we had a second Viking wedding in the ruins of Whitby Abbey, where we had a couple of hundred Vikings in attendance and had a formal handfasting ceremony.

"It's the old fashioned way of getting married, where you bind your hands together and then swear oaths over a sword."

The couple say it was only right to have a Viking-style wedding, based on their shared love of re-enactments and the medieval lifestyle.

Pete, who has been taking part in re-enactments for about 15 years, says it is a way he can "step out of reality".

"It takes you away from the confines of modern life because the Vikings didn't have mobile phones or anything," he adds.

"So, during the day, you can't go on your phone, you're running around a battlefield or cooking or cleaning your weapons or just sitting around playing games and having fun."

The couple have since taken their Viking lifestyle to the next level by setting up a joint business venture, inspired by the ghost walks in York.

With a full wardrobe of medieval clothes made by his mother in law, Pete leads Viking walking tours around the city.

"I'm doing all of the behind-the-scenes stuff while Pete's out there being a Viking and doing what he does," Ellie says.

Despite only starting out this month, the couple say there have already been a few bookings so far, with crowds seeming to really enjoy it.

"I grew up being a Viking and now we do it full-time," Ellie says.

"It's a community as well. We've met a lot of our friends through the Viking society.

"We've been through a really hard personal time recently and it's been a community that we've been able to rely on for support.

"We've gone back to our Viking roots with what we're doing now."

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