Wirral's Viking Trail

Viking Mersey is available as a free download: https://tinyurl.com/3sbrxe37 Or buy the book for only £10: https://tinyurl.com/yckxa888

  The following articles were printed (or reprinted) in  Wirral and its Viking Heritage , ed. P. Cavill, S. Harding & J. Jesch, 2000. Some articles have been edited. ( The complete volume is available for only £5 from  https://tinyurl.com/6dxjwm5z  .) North-West Mercia AD871-924 . Article by F.T. Wainwright, originally published in the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire & Cheshire in 1942.   Ingimund’s Invasion.  Article by F.T. Wainwright, originally published in the English Historical Review in 1948.   The Background of Brunanburh . Article by John McNeal Dodgson, originally published in the Saga Book of the Viking Society in 1957.   Early monuments of West Kirby . Article by W.G. Collingwood. Originally published in John Brownbill ed., West Kirby and Hilbre. A Parochial History, 1928.   Wirral Field Names . Article by F.T. Wainwright, originally publish...

  The Vikings became legendary for their seafaring skills and their navigation methods have long been a subject for speculation. The following is based on an article Steve wrote in “The Conversation” in 2016. Ancient records tell us that the intrepid Viking seafarers who discovered Iceland, Greenland and eventually North America navigated using landmarks, birds and whales, and little else. There’s little doubt that Viking sailors would also have used the positions of stars at night and the sun during the daytime, and archaeologists have discovered what appears to be a kind of Viking navigational sundial. But without magnetic compasses, like all ancient sailors, they would have struggled to find their way once the clouds came over. However, there are also several reports in Nordic sagas and other sources of a  sólarsteinn  “sunstone”. The literature has sparked decades of research examining if this might be a reference to a ...

  The Danish historian, archaeologist and politician   J.J. Worsaae wrote the following in 1852: “The name of the village of Thingwall in Cheshire affords a remarkable memorial of the assizes, or Thing, which the Northmen generally held in conjunction with their sacrifices to the gods. It lies, in conjunction with several other villages with Scandinavian names, on the small tongue of land that projects between the mouths of the rivers Dee and Mersey. At that time, they generally chose for the holding of the thing , or assizes, a place in some degree safe from surprise. The chief ancient thing place for Iceland was called, like this Thingwall, namely Thingvalla, originally þingvöllr, þingvellir (pl) of the thing-fields .” The local administration that Worsaae is referring to in his 1852 book “An Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and Ireland” is the Thing at Thingwall in Wirral (ON Þingvöllr , from þing =assembly and völlr =field, “Assembly Field”)...