Viking Torksey: Inside the Great Army’s winter camp

[icymist]

In the winter of AD 872-873 a Viking army made camp at Torksey in Lincolnshire. Dawn Hadley and Julian D Richards are leading a new project to investigate life in those winter quarters, and to discover what happened after the Norsemen moved on.

A brief, understated entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 872 records that ‘Her nam se here wintersetle æt Turcesige’. Written in Old English, the 9th-century annal is generally translated as ‘Here the army took winter quarters at Turc’s island’. The army in question was a massive Viking war band that had been plundering England for seven years, while the location of their winter camp is modern Torksey, on the River Trent, 13km northwest of Lincoln. Despite this guide, the precise location of the camp defied detection for many years. Now, fresh survey is shedding light on how a Viking army whiled away the winter months, and even the development of Early Medieval urbanism.

http://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/viking-torksey-inside-the-great-armys-winter-camp.htm

[Tyrs WolfDaemon]

1. Cool, thanks for the link

I've marked this for reading later today (once I can get my migraine under control). I love reading about the archeology. There are many days that I wish I had gone into archeology rather than hydrogeology.