In the summer of 793, a fleet appeared off the Northumbrian coast of England and the monks of Lindisfarne fled in terror. The sacking of that holy island sent shockwaves across the Christian world and announced the Viking Age to history. Yet the story of the Norse in England is far more than a chronicle of raids and burning. Over the nearly three centuries that followed, Viking settlers transformed the language, the law, the placenames, and the political map of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England: founding the great trading city of Jórvík on the bones of a Roman fortress, wintering their Great Army in the Saxon heartland, and eventually ruling a kingdom that stretched from the Humber to the Thames.
Far Horizons proudly presents a thirteen-day journey that traces this extraordinary story from its beginnings in Northumbria to its culmination in the south; a story that runs from sudden violence through full-scale invasion to the slow, often uneasy business of two peoples sharing land, language, and rule. Beginning in Northumbria, we travel across the tidal causeway to Lindisfarne, stand inside the Saxon crypt at Repton where the Great Army buried its dead, explore the preserved Viking streetscape of York, and follow the Danelaw south through Lincoln and Norwich to the Saxon treasure-hoard of Sutton Hoo and the great cathedral city of Winchester, capital of the English kings who ultimately drove the Vikings back. Throughout, you travel with Dr. Steven Ashby, Reader in Medieval Archaeology at the University of York, whose own research on craft, trade, and daily life in Viking-Age Britain and Scandinavia — the subject of his books A Viking Way of Life and Crafts and Social Networks in Viking Towns — gives this itinerary its scholarly backbone.
This is also a tour through the English countryside at its most quietly handsome: the Northumberland coast, the limestone villages of the Derbyshire Peak fringe, the flat, water-cut fen country of Lincolnshire and Norfolk, and the chalk downs around Winchester. For those who want to follow the Vikings further still, the Isle of Man extension crosses the Irish Sea to an island where Norse rule lasted longest and where carved crosses, a ship burial, and a parliament with a thousand-year-old Norse name are remarkably intact.
Our journey begins in Newcastle upon Tyne, gateway to Northumbria and to a coastline the Vikings first came to know as raiders rather than traders. After settling into our hotel for one night, gather for an opening lecture with Dr. Steven Ashby, who introduces the world you are about to enter: eighth-century Northumbria, a kingdom of scriptoria and shrines that stood, unknowingly, in the path of the Scandinavian longship. (D)
Drive north along the Northumberland coast to the dramatic Norman castle of Bamburgh, situated atop a towering dolerite outcrop. One of several fortresses defending the rugged coastline, it has stood guard in some form since the sixth century, when it served as the royal seat of the Anglo-Saxon kings of Bernicia. Spend the full day at the site, with lunch at The Castle Inn in the village below.
In the afternoon, meet privately with archaeologists from the Bamburgh Research Project, whose excavations since 1996 have uncovered Anglo-Saxon burials, the remains of a possible royal hall, and evidence of the site’s continued importance into the Viking Age. Time permitting, visit St Aidan’s Church, built near the spot where the Irish monk Aidan, founder of the monastery on Lindisfarne, is said to have died in 651. Continue to Chathill for dinner and overnight for two nights at Doxford Hall, a two-hundred-year-old English mansion house. (B/L/D)
This morning we depart for a timed crossing onto Holy Island, submerged twice daily by the North Sea. It was here, in 793, that Viking raiders struck the monastery St Aidan had founded more than a century earlier. Spend the morning at Lindisfarne Priory and its museum, tracing the community’s founding, its illumination of the Lindisfarne Gospels, and its violent end.
After lunch at a local restaurant on the island we visit Lindisfarne Castle (time permitting), constructed as a defense against attack from the Scots and the Norsemen, before crossing back to the mainland and Doxford Hall. (B/L/D)
Travel inland to Hexham and the abbey St Wilfrid. Founded in 674, this abbey still holds its Anglo-Saxon crypt, built partly from stone salvaged from the Roman fort at Corbridge. Wilfrid modeled the crypt on those he had seen in Rome, and it survives largely intact beneath the later medieval church above.
After lunch in Hexham, continue to Escomb, where a small stone church raised around 670 stands as one of the most complete Anglo-Saxon buildings in England, its walls built from dressed Roman stone likely carted from the fort at Binchester. Continue to York, our home for the next three nights. (B/L/D)
York was Eoforwic under Anglo-Saxon rule and Jórvík after the Viking conquest of 866, when it became the capital of a Scandinavian kingdom that controlled much of northern England for the better part of a century. We begin today at the Jorvik Viking Centre, built over the Coppergate excavation that recovered timber houses, workshops, and thousands of everyday objects from Viking-Age York.
In the afternoon, visit the Yorkshire Museum’s Viking North exhibition, drawn from the same excavation, which reconstructs the lives of the merchants, craftworkers, and farmers who filled the Viking capital. Dinner is on our own this evening. (B/L)
Today we walk the city that Vikings and Anglo-Saxons both called home. Our route through the Shambles, Stonegate, and Goodramgate traces streets whose Scandinavian names still mark the medieval city plan (“gate” descends from the Old Norse gata, or street). Walk a stretch of the city walls before reaching Clifford’s Tower, the Norman motte raised over a site with Viking-era occupation beneath it.
In the evening, Dr. Ashby lectures on “York/Jórvík: The Greatest Viking Town in the West,” drawing on his own research into the craft and trade networks that made the city the Vikings’ most important urban settlement outside Scandinavia. Dinner is on our own this evening. (B/L)
This morning we drive south to Repton, a quiet Derbyshire village that was the headquarters of the Great Heathen Army for one winter. In 873–874, the Viking force that had already toppled the kingdoms of Northumbria and East Anglia camped here, inside a D-shaped earthwork enclosure built around St Wystan’s Church. Excavations beneath and beside the church have uncovered a warrior’s grave furnished with a sword and a Thor’s hammer pendant, along with a mass burial once thought to hold the army’s winter dead. Enjoy a tour of the church grounds before lunch in the village.
Continue to Lincoln where we spend two nights. (B/L/D)
Lincoln was one of the Five Boroughs of the Danelaw, the network of fortified towns through which Scandinavian settlers governed and traded across the eastern Midlands. We will spend the morning at Lincoln’s Museum of Archaeology before continuing to Lincoln Castle and the Roman-era Newport Arch, followed by a walking tour of medieval Lincoln that ends at St Mary le Wigford, a church whose tower still incorporates a reused Roman inscription and Anglo-Saxon stonework.
Dinner is on our own this evening. (B/L)
Our drive to Norwich today takes us past Torksey, on the banks of the River Trent, where the same Viking army that later wintered at Repton had camped in 872–873. Metal-detecting surveys and excavation over the past decade have identified it as one of the largest Viking camps ever found in Europe, evidence of a semi-permanent settlement rather than a passing raiding party. Time-permitting we will also stop en route Earl’s Barton, one of England’s most significant surviving Anglo-Saxon churches.
Continue to Norwich for lunch, then spend the afternoon at Norwich Castle and Museum, which traces the city’s growth under Anglo-Scandinavian rule in the kingdom of East Anglia.
Overnight for two nights in Norwich. (B/L/D)
Drive to Sutton Hoo, where in 1939 archaeologists uncovered the ship burial of an East Anglian king, almost certainly Raedwald, who died around 625, generations before the Viking Age began. The site sets the stage for what came after: East Anglia was among the wealthiest of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and it was here that the Great Heathen Army, in 869, killed King Edmund and brought the kingdom under Danish control.
Return to Norwich in the afternoon for a two-mile walk along the Viking Norwich Trail, which threads through the city’s Anglo-Scandinavian street plan. (B/L/D)
Travel south to London for a day among the British Museum’s Viking and Anglo-Saxon collections, among the finest in the world. Its galleries hold the Sutton Hoo helmet and ship-burial treasures alongside the Vale of York Hoard, a cache of Viking-Age silver and coins buried around 927 near Harrogate, and the Lewis Chessmen, walrus-ivory pieces carved in a Scandinavian workshop and later lost (or hidden) in the Outer Hebrides. Lunch is on our own at the museum.
In the evening, Dr. Ashby delivers a concluding lecture drawing together the raid, conquest, and settlement we have traced across Northumbria, York, the Midlands, and East Anglia.
Overnight at the Radisson Blu Hotel, London Heathrow. Dinner is on our own. (B)
Our final day takes us to Winchester, capital of the kingdom of Wessex and the seat of Alfred the Great, whose military reforms and negotiated peace with the Viking leader Guthrum in 878 checked the Great Heathen Army’s advance and preserved an independent English kingdom. Spend the day at Winchester Cathedral, where the Kings and Scribes exhibition displays mortuary chests said to hold the bones of Anglo-Saxon kings, and at Winchester City Museum.
Return to Heathrow in the late afternoon and enjoy a Farewell Dinner at the hotel. (B/L/D)
Transfer to the airport for our flight home. (B)
Transfer to the airport for an afternoon flight to Douglas, where we overnight for the next three nights.
Gather in the evening for an introductory lecture with Dr. Ashby on the island’s own Viking history, followed by dinner. (B/ /D)
Drive north to Andreas to see Kirk Andreas, home to one of the finest collections of Viking-Age carved crosses in the British Isles. This includes Thorwald’s Cross, thought to pair a scene from Ragnarök with a Christian crucifixion, significant for displaying Norse myth and Christian belief carved side by side on the same stone.
After lunch in Peel, visit Peel Castle on St Patrick’s Isle, where excavation uncovered the richly furnished tenth-century grave known as the “Pagan Lady of Peel,” buried with a Norse-style necklace and a set of household goods. Dinner is on our own this evening. (B/L)
Spend the morning at the Manx Museum in Douglas, whose collections trace the Norse settlement of the island and the origins of Tynwald, the Isle of Man’s parliament, whose name descends from the Old Norse Þingvöllr, or “assembly field,” and which counts among the oldest continuously sitting parliamentary bodies in the world.
After lunch on our own, travel south to Castletown for an afternoon at Castle Rushen, one of Europe’s best-preserved medieval castles. (B/D)
Transfer to Douglas airport for flights home, by way of London Heathrow. (B)
