“It’s just like Disneyland!” my Mother said. “There are rides! And a museum!” That is how my mother (or her guidebook she was reading from) described York’s Jorvik Viking Center. We were trying to find an activity that would fill up one of our days in York, and a theme park seemed like something great for my middle-school-aged sister and with me since I was still in high school. Plus, I did like museums, so that seemed like a win-win.
A little background: Jorvik is the name given to the 9th and 10th century York when it was ruled by Norse kings. In the 1980’s after an old factory was torn own to build a mall, excavations were undertaken. As Wikipedia notes:
Well-preserved remains of some of the timber buildings of the Viking city of Jorvík were discovered, along with workshops, fences, animal pens, privies, pits and wells, together with durable materials and artefacts of the time, such as pottery, metalwork and bones. Unusually, wood, leather, textiles, and plant and animal remains from the period around 900 AD, were also discovered to be preserved in oxygen-deprived wet clay. In all, over 40,000 objects were recovered.
In 1984 York Archaeological Trust decided to build an interactive experience to highlight Viking culture and display some of the artifacts, and that is how Jorvik Viking Center came to be. Later in 2001, more funding came in to “intensify” the experience.
So we made our way there. I recall a little bit of a wait while we got on the first (and later we learned the only “ride”). And then we got on the Time Warp Ride taking you back to see Viking life as it was at precisely 5:30 PM, October 25th, 975 AD. Here is a photo of what those “time capsules” looks like today:
What you were supposed to see were homes and workspaces of various people: a blacksmith, woodworker, antler worker, leatherworker, and butcher. You’d see Coppergate, a market street with stalls and moneyer. You’d even see the sights (and experience the smells) of people going through daily life, such as people repairing a fire-damaged house, livestock and pigsties, and even…latrines.
This is the vivid memory I have of my visit: a dark, dusty, bad smelling, mercifully short ride (its only 12 minutes at most!), creepy animatronics (to be fair I use to find Disney animatronics of humans like at Pirates of the Carribean also to be Uncanny Valley territory), and lastly a broken robot Viking (you could hear the mechanical pistons whirling as it moved) vocalizing groaning and grunting as it struggled to take a shit.
That’s right, a shitting Viking robot. In fact here is a photo (although you have to see it in person to get the full horror of this experience.) And my memory is that it looked much more grotesque but it has been over 15 years since I went, so I’m assuming the broken robot has been fixed and updated since there. (I was also horrified by this, as I was on the side closest to this robot.)
After the short ride ended, we were spitted out into the gift shop. I had heard there was a museum, but back then (in 2010 they re-did and added more space to the museum) there was…nothing. I remember the gift shop being larger than a scant few displays of nothing along a wall. Surprised, I asked about the other rides, to find out that yep, that 12-minute ride was all there was. So I wandered around the shop area. A man dressed up as a Viking asked if I wanted a real Viking coin. I perked up at this, a real freaking ancient coin! YES! I then watched him insert a piece of gray plastic and then strike the “coin”. I was simultaneously intrigued to learn how old coins were made as well as disgusted that he was talking about fake replicas and not real coins. That is why he informed me of the price of what I had just “bought”. Yeah…the demonstration wasn’t free. I remember having to wander off begging my dad to buy it for me as I was low on money. After some disucssion he did (and of course I lost it before the end of the trip.) We were in and out in less than an hour (and I’ve heard some people getting in/out in less than 20 minutes.) So….not the day-filling theme park we were lead to believe it was, and so we were very disappointed.
So I wandered around the shop area. A man dressed up as a Viking asked if I wanted a real Viking coin. I perked up at this, a real freaking ancient coin! YES! I then watched him insert a piece of gray plastic and then strike the “coin”. I was simultaneously intrigued to learn how old coins were made as well as disgusted that he was talking about fake replicas and not real coins. That is why he informed me of the price of what I had just “bought”. Yeah…the demonstration wasn’t free. I remember having to wander off begging my dad to buy it for me as I was low on money. After some discussion he did (and of course I lost it before the end of the trip.) We were in and out in less than an hour (and I’ve heard some people getting in/out in less than 20 minutes.) So….not the day-filling theme park we were lead to believe it was, and so we were very disappointed.
Years later I asked someone who lived near York about it, telling them I was told it was like “Disneyland”, they laughed hysterically at me. “Jorvik? Disneyland? HAHAHA”. And while doing research on this article I came across this criticism:
The Jorvik Centre has been criticized as a “pop-up book view of history” and its presentation of the past has been labelled “Disney-like”.
“Disney-like”. Oh god. Did my mother see something similar and think “Disney-like” was meant to describe the ride instead of a negative comment on its overly simplistic display of history? Either way, I don’t recommend Jorvik.
Travel Missteps is an every-other week series on how sometimes part of the journey is making mistakes and getting lost.
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