Orkney Viking week is set to go ahead from September 9-19, with both face-to-face and online activities on the programme.
The Viking Week was established in 2019 by Ragnhild Ljosland, Mark Cook and Mark Woodsford-Dean, who together run Orkney Time Travel.
After a Covid break last year, the festival is back, this time in collaboration with the Orkney Archaeology Society.
Site tours and events
On the face-to-face programme you can find falconry at Skaill House, Viking sheep and wool with Jane Cooper, a living history event on the uses of flax with Orkney Time Travel, and three specialist tours:
- The Earl’s Bu in Orphir with Colleen Batey.
- Birsay Bay and the Brough with Chris Morris, in connection with the launch of his new book Birsay Bay Project Volume 3.
- A tour of Norse Kirkwall with Ragnhild Ljosland.
Online programme
The online programme can be enjoyed from anywhere in the world and offers talks with both leading and young emerging researchers.
Judith Jesch, Professor of Viking Studies from Nottingham University, opens the festival with the talk Telling the Orkney Story – Reflections on Orkneyinga Saga.
This theme is followed up by her student Nikolaus Frenzel, whose talk, Legal customs in Orkneyinga Saga, looks at what the saga can reveal about legal structures and procedures among the Norse.
Ragnhild Ljosland, from the University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute, will then look in depth at one central character, Thorfinn the Mighty, the person and the saga hero.
Colleen Batey, emerita of Glasgow University, will share findings from her excavations at the Earl’s Bu, Orphir in an online talk before offering a specialist face-to-face tour of the site.
Also on the online programme is Annie Thuesen, a final year PhD student with UHI Institute for Northern Studies, whose research is on Orkney’s potential for tourism to the lesser visited Norse sites in our islands.
For those with an interest in literature, there is a meet-the-author event with Lexie Conyngham. She is the author of the Orkneyinga Murders series, and at the event she promises a surprise reading from her new book in progress.
The festival is not for profit, though individual providers may ask for an entry fee.
All online talks and many of the face-to-face events are free, with donations raising money for archaeological research in Orkney through Orkney Archaeology Society.
The full programme is available at www.brodgar.co.uk/vikingweek
