1941: On this day, 814 20-year-old city girls responded to their call-up papers - although some forgot their registration card! Many of the girls had come with their mothers, while others had their boyfriends for company. Some are described as arriving 'with an army escort on either side'. Quite a few perambulators are also recorded as being parked outside the building. (Gray, David, Peterborough at War 1939-1945, David Gray, 2011)
Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.
The people we know as the Vikings originated from northeast Europe where the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden and Denmark are today. They were called the “Norsemen” or “Vikings” from a Norse word that probably meant “pirate” - vikingr.
From the late 8th to late 11th centuries Vikings pirated, traded, raided but also settled in many countries. Norse settlements were established in, amongst others, the British Isles, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, Normandy, and the Baltic coast. They also voyaged as far as the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East, and North America.
The first Viking raids in Anglo-Saxon England were devastating. The Vikings targeted monasteries (including Peterborough Abbey in 870), and the monks described them as heathens, bent on theft, pillage and devastation. But there is more to the story of the Vikings than just violence and brutality, they created art, told stories, used runes for writing, farmed, fished and explored!
References:
Peterborough Museum Exhibition
The Children of Ash and Elm by Neil Price, Allen Lane, 2020
Vikings life and legend Edited by Williams, Gareth, Pentz, Peter, Wemhoff, Matthias. The British Museum Press, 2014
Image:
Viking Ship Lofotr licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
Image of Viking voyages, attribution- en:User:Bogdangiusca, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, v