Vikings and Christians

"Place is important." I believe this. Places of worship do have a spiritual presence and feeling about them. I think there is also something important about standing where your ancestors stood. I don't have any known recent ancestors from the Viking capital York, but given that the Vikings were settled here and in numerous other parts of England, Scotland, Ireland and northern France, and they did tend to pillage around quite a bit, spreading their DNA as they went, who knows. I like the idea of having a bit of Viking blood.

After enduring a day of motorway driving, we spent the next day in York. We went to the York Minster. York has been here since the 4th century, and a church has been on the York Minster site since 627. The oldest bits of the current building date back to 1220.

Each photo shows only a small part of its immensity. "If you turned York Minster into a fish tank 5 fully grown blue whales would fit inside nose to tail." It is not exactly your little village church.

It is a tourist attraction with an excellent museum down in its underground rooms and a working living church community.

Holy Communion service in one of the small side chapels.

I was standing in the middle of the church when I took this photo looking toward the end of the church.

Ah, yes...

A 1000 year old book still used today. It contains the four Gospels and a letter from King Canute dated 1019.

The altar stands almost directly beneath the central tower which is 56m high and weighs 16,000 tonnes or the weight of 40 jumbo jets.

The Kings Screen contains statues of 15 English kings from William the Conquerer to Henry VI.

We climbed the main tower, 275 steps inside a narrow stairway. Here are S and T winding their way up. It was hard work.

Halfway up.

 Part of the 360 degree view from the top.

And back inside.

Then we went learned about an even earlier peroid of York's history - Vikings! Yorvick is an immersive museum experience built over an archealogical excavation site that revealed how the Vikings lived when York was their British capital around the year 900. It has a ride that you sit in and it takes you through a full sized replication of a York street from the time. Excellently done. The automated people looked very real. I swear one of the men turned his head and looked at me.

 And numerous exhibits of items that were dug up during the excavation.

 The Shambles is a street where animals were slaughtered in medieval times and the left over bits were thrown into the open drains. Now it is part of a charming area of old buildings filled with shops and cafes.

It was another hot day. Tomorrow will be another hot day. This weather is getting monotonous and not very English, I must say.