Volunteering at the Jorvik Viking Festival 2018

Two Institute of Medieval Studies students, Clementine Harper (MA) and Rachael Gillibrand (IMS PhD Researcher) volunteered at the JORVIK Viking Festival in York. We caught up with them after the event, to hear about their experiences!

During the week, Clementine worked mainly with textiles, using her new-found nålebinding skills to teach visitors. Clementine said:

I came to the MA in Medieval Studies from a French degree so my interests are mainly in Medieval French literature, and I am studying Old Norse and Viking culture this term. As such, when I heard about the JORVIK Viking Festival I jumped at the chance to be involved in any way I could. I have always loved anything to do with textiles and I have been knitting for about 11 years so I signed up for the textiles demonstration role at the festival. I was given the opportunity to learn several ancient techniques as part of my training for the role, including lucet braiding and nalbinding, which I have kept up with since the festival ended. You can see me showing a young visitor how the lucet mechanism works to make bracelets and other ornamentation, and being similar to a modern French knitting doll, or Loom bands, this was the most popular technique with younger visitors. All the visitors were interested to see what we were making at the textiles table, and I was pleased to see people of all ages and backgrounds having a go. It was a wonderful experience and I hope to help out at another event soon.

Clementine interacts with one of the attendees at the Festival, during her textiles workshop on nålebinding.

Rachael's interest in material culture and experience within the heritage sector meant she had a slightly different role. Rachael said:

During the York Viking Festival, I volunteered at the JORVIK Viking Centre as a 'Handlings Collection Guide'. This meant that I got to show visitors real archeological finds from the 1976 Coppergate dig, including a knife blade, glass beads, Amber fragments, hone stones and, the crowd pleaser, fragments of coprolite (look it up!). I met so many lovely people, and it was fantastic to work alongside Leeds IMS alumni including Benedict Frankish and Chris Tuckley.

You can find out more about the festival here.