Historical York by Karsten

Stephanie being rescued on the medeval wall
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June 30, 2006

York

Do you like history? You will like York!

Do you like history? Are you the type of person that likes to know everything about history? Do you like seeing medieval ruins and amazing sites? Well, if you answered yes to all of these questions you will probably like York. We certainly learned a lot about the history of the Vikings, Romans and Medieval times of York. We started the day off by visiting the Jorvik Museum. There we learned all about the Vikings about their life and their times. It was quite interesting. You went in some kind of ride (time capsule) and you got a tour of the Viking life. To my amazement the clay figures did quite well at acting. They even had a smell that smelled like the Vikings daily living. What really caught my attention is that the archeologists actually dug under ground and found lots of artifacts from the Vikings in this area. They found a skeleton of a person who was about 30 – 45 years old, and lots of other neat things. This helped them to recreate the Viking village as it would have been way back then. After the museum we went on a walking tour. We really got our money’s worth on this tour. The tour was to be at least an hour but it took about three hours. The tickets cost about five to ten pounds for person. No, actually it was FREE. The tour guide showed us all the Roman ruins and told us how the Romans built them. The tour guide told us a lot of history and after about two hours I was getting a little bit confused about who the people were. I was really glad that I studied all of this history in school and now I actually got to see all of these things for real. Below is a brief timeline of the earliest history of York:

Barb and David in wondering which way to go in front of the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey
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Ancient Timeline of York

Prehistoric – Area perhaps called ‘Eburacon’ (meaning ‘The Estate of the Eburos’ or ‘The place where the yew trees grow’) by Ancient Britons.

71 AD - City founded by the Romans and named ‘EBORACUM’ which in 73 becomes the capital of the North of Britannia.

c107 – Construction of stone wall by the Romans enclosing approximately 50 acres.

Western gate with the York Minster in the background
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306 – Constantine The Great declared Emperor of Eboracum.

400s – Roman withdrawal leaves city open to Saxon invaders.

627 – First Minster built for Saxon King Edwin of Northumbria.

700s – City now Saxon capital of Northumbria ‘EOFORWIC’.

866 – Vikings, under Ivan the Boneless capture Eoforwric and name it the Viking Kingdom ‘JORVIK’.

c1000 – City know by its present name York.

1020s - 1060s York ruled by powerful Anglo & Scandinavian Earls.

1220 - Building of present York Minister begins.

1240s – 1340s Construction of present City Walls.

We ended off the day by eating at Willow Gardens, an ‘all you want to eat’ Chinese restaurant. Since we hadn’t had anything to eat since our big English breakfast at the B & B, we were very hungry and really enjoyed the meal. To be honest, however, the Indian food we had the night before was better. Tomorrow we will pack up and leave York to go back to London. Then it’s off to Paris on Sunday!