The York excursion 2006 let me experience many highlights, but also some lowlights. I couldn’t decide which topic – high or low – I should choose to write about. That is the reason why I chose the topic of the Jorvik Viking Centre, which was partly both highlight and lowlight.

It was fascinating to see how people actually lived over one 1000 years ago. Normally I am not very much into history because it is often very difficult to imagine what life was like hundreds of years ago. At the Jorvik Viking Centre this wasn’t a problem any more because you were able to look behind the curtains and to experience the Jorvik everyday life in the year 975.

I found it kind of weird and impressive at the same time how natural and real the figures looked. One could even get the impression that one of them would move in the next moment. Another – let’s call it “interesting” – thing was that you could experience Jorvik life with many senses. You could not only see and hear what happened during that time, but also smell the village, the animals, the food and the farms. Under these circumstances the visit seemed more real than I thought it would be, although it was disgusting from time to time. The galleries and the skeletons were also informative as well as the artefacts from that time such as stones, tools or old jewellery. The only disappointment was that the whole journey turned out to be very short, we didn’t get to see one of the exhibitions close up and we weren’t able to talk to the “Vikings”. When I saw the man who gave us the introduction outside the Centre, I thought we would have more contact to Viking actors or at least people who are dressed like Vikings. This wasn’t the case and unfortunately we also had no opportunity to dress ourselves up like Viking women.

Despite this I can say that all in all the Jorvik Viking Centre was very interesting and our morning there was certainly not a waste of time!