 | Vikings of Jorvik
The Vikings were a warlike race from Scandinavia who invaded parts of Britain at the end of the ninth century A.D. Underneath modern day York is a visitor attraction that shows what the city was like in the time of the Vikings. This attraction is called Jorvik, the old name for York. Read the text then try the exercise below. | |
| Literally out of sight in York is Jorvik, as the city was known in Viking times. The present-day Jorvik is a visitor attraction underground which recreates the look, sounds and smells of the year 975. But every aspect of it is carefully based on fact, following the 5 years of excavations on the very same site, down to a depth of 5 metres. In 1976, archaeologists digging below the cellars of an old sweets' factory first found the remains of the tenth century city. The ground was moist and spongy, like a peat bog. This oxygen-free environment had preserved a large number of everyday items, many of which would normally have rotted away. Over 40,000 different objects were recovered. These included tools, shoes, coins, jewellery, animal-bone combs, cups - even musical instruments, and a toilet seat! Similarly, large parts of the mainly-wooden buildings had survived. In one case, that even allowed tree-ring dating to show that the wood came from trees cut down in the year 970. So it has been possible to reconstruct the complete buildings, with the same size, shape and relationship to each other as they had more than a thousand years ago. Each of them was both workshop and home in the same building. They belonged to tradesmen such as a butcher, a blacksmith and a carpenter, and another whose skill was creating objects out of deer antlers. Other workshops in the Jorvik reconstruction are those of craftsmen who worked in leather and metal, and there are also food shops. The original excavation was carried out by the York Archaeological Trust, which still runs Jorvik today. See vocabulary 
Exercise - Comprehension Look at the statements below, according to the text are they true or false?  Check your answers
Links for more information
Jorvik Viking Centre
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