A day in the life...

Ferdy and I decided we'd had enough of 2021 this week, so we transported ourselves to 960 AD to experience a day in the life of a Jorvik Viking.

To be precise, we transported ourselves to Coppergate, a street in the Viking-age city of Jorvik where we met a number of its residents.

We travelled along the river, past the fishermen with a broken net and an evil slave trader, and into people's houses, meeting blacksmiths, leatherworkers and market sellers. We encountered a weaver dying her wool, a trader selling silk from the East, shells from the Red Sea and soapstone from Norway and even passed a priest giving a dying man his last rights. Ferdy enjoyed the Storyteller recounting the Völuspà; the story of the creation of the world and its end at Ragnorok. I'm sure it helps that many of the Norse gods and places feature in the Marvel films.

In the museum itself, we watched coin striking and purchased our own version made from one of the Anglo Saxon coin dies found at Coppergate, which featured the King Aethelstan.

In boring 2021, we had been learning about fractions over breakfast and I was pleased to hear, when informed that this coin would buy about 16 chickens, and people cut it into halves and quarters if they needed less, Ferdy pipe up that a half would buy 8 chickens and a quarter, 4 chickens. It is rather nice to see that something goes in to that rather dreamy head of his...

Meanwhile, in a cardboard tube factory in modern day Birmingham there was serious work to be done; it was time for Gil to experience a day in the life of a factory worker.

Gil learnt about measuring the length and diameter of a cardboard tube, he watched each different machine and saw how it works (his favourite was the tube winder whose superpower is to make cardboard tubes longer and longer, otherwise known by Gil as the Groot machine - always a Marvel reference) and he met all the factory workers. He excelled himself in 'stapilising' lots of paper together and he even answered the phone and took some orders, totally unfazed by an order of 100 tubes which he replied would cost £100. Obviously.

Finally he managed to write and type up a story about the last dragon. Perhaps a factory in Birmingham is not so far removed from Viking-age York after all.