This year, the Jorvik Viking Festival celebrated its silver jubilee. To mark that milestone the organizers wanted a more spectacular show than usual, complete with a ship burning and firework display.

For the first time in ages, I didn’t have to give anyone a lift to York this year and so arranged to car share with JD and stay over for the whole weekend. We set off mid afternoon on Friday and after an easy trip, dropped our gear off at the school hall and dropped in on the LHE at the Guildhall. Having said hello to the guys who’d been hard at it all week, we grabbed some food before heading off to the pub. The Bay Horse was already starting to fill up and throughout the evening more and more of Regia arrived. We had a great night chatting and planning battle tactics for the following day!

On Saturday morning we kitted up and in dribs and drabs headed off on the (longer than you think) walk from the school hall to the Museum Gardens for training at 10. I wandered in via breakfast at a decent little café with Jane and some of the Lith, arriving just after practice had started.

Lining up to hit each other were the usual suspects, and a rather large and impressive group of exotically equipped eastern style Vikings I’d never seen before - many in full war gear. They were a group called Draum Broder, Leicester branch of ‘The Vikings’ who’d been invited to the event and had turned up in strength. They were a really good bunch and formed an impressive unit on the left flank of one of the armies. They seemed to adapt to the slight differences between our rules and the ones they’re used to very well. It was great fun fighting them and I’d love to again some time. They also brought some real colour on the field with their Russ Viking kit and war gear (loved fighting the guy with the sabre).

Training went on for a couple of hours solid combat, which was good and hard. As most of the society have attended at least one, and usually more, major training events already this year (as well as local practices) the standard was excellent. Of particular interest was the clash of styles between the spear based Regia style and the more sword based method of The Vikings. It was great fun and I think we all learnt some useful lessons! All in all it was a cracking session. After our training had finished ‘Jorvik Vikingr’ (a local group) put on a display of their own while we got ready for the parade.

The parade went through the city to the Eye of York, traditionally the site of the afternoon and evening battles. Due to health and safety concerns over launching fireworks from the roof of the museum, this year the battles were being held up at the racecourse on the outskirts of the city. At the end of the parade we boarded busses and were ferried up to York racecourse, where a heated marquee and light lunch had been laid on for us. After this we mustered for the afternoon battle, or as it turned out series of battles.

With no public present we were able to run through the plan for the night battle and have four really good fully competitive fights. Around two hundred warriors took the field, so all were of a truly epic scale! Most memorable (from where I was) was assisting our reserve in cutting down a Viking boar snout that had breached our line in the first clash. Mercia once again showed their unmatched ability in a broken field fight, before wrapping up the rest of the Viking centre, while Mike lead a force to take out the left flank.

All four competitive battles were well won by the Saxons, continuing the trend of the last few years. I’m not sure why battlefield superiority goes in these cycles but it is definitely the case that one side holds the advantage for a few years before the other gradually replaces it. At the moment the Saxons have a few good, well drilled groups and a well established command structure and are well on top. Long may it continue!

After the afternoon session ended we had a much needed rest before the evening combat, and watched the early part of the show. First up was a smallish battle by ‘The Vikings’ and though I missed the end kitting up for our scrap, what I saw looked good. There was then a performance by some fire jugglers which looked pretty impressive, before we went on for the climax of the show: a floodlit evening battle followed by a Viking ship burning.

We had already agreed that the Vikings would win, but the floodlighting was good enough to allow us to fight competitively before all getting killed at the end. It was a good fight and very atmospheric, especially the Valkyries raising the slain warriors at the end. As we marched off, archers loosed fire arrows at the ship. It went up almost immediately and was a very moving experience. After the ship had burned almost to the keel, the firework display capped the night off. We got back on our coaches to be taken back to York to get out of our war gear (over ten hours in mail is Very tiring) and get to the pub!

Utterly exhausting but great fun!

More photos of the event are in our York 2010 gallery