Fearsomely crafty

FRIGGA is surprisingly small and neat, considering she's a Viking. None of that flowing Valkyrie hair, no horned helmet or sculpted breastplate. In fact, there's nothing fierce about this pleasant looking woman at all. But then, as she says, Vikings always were more traders than raiders, despite their fearsome reputation.

Frigga is a good example of that. She's a craftswoman: a minter of Viking coins. She sits quietly on a stool, her only movement coming when she strikes a coin with a swift blow of her right arm.

As you might expect of a woman who literally makes money, she's got a sound grasp of Viking economics - and she's more than happy to share it with any passing visitors from the 21st century who are interested.

She strikes a shining coin with a swift hammer blow, then holds up the glinting disc of metal. "That's your original Euro," she says proudly. "You can spend that all over Viking Europe."

York, it turns out, was at the heart of a Viking trading empire. The Viking city had a population of between 10-20,000 people, Frigga says - making it a veritable metropolis. Situated as it was at the confluence of two rivers, and yet deep inland, it was secure and at the same time easily accessible to traders.

And the Viking economy was sophisticated too. A single silver coin or Peninga (from which we get our word penny) was worth about 16 chickens in her day, Frigga says. Cut in half it was worth eight chickens; quartered, worth four.

"Anything that was whole was called a 'thing' by the Vikings," Frigga explains brightly. "So that...." - she holds up a quarter of a Peninga - "... was a fourth part of a thing, or a farthing."

Vikings were as worried about cheats or counterfeiters as we are today. Some coin-makers like herself might be tempted to shave off a little of the silver from the edges of a coin, Frigga says. The punishments were swift and brutal. A craftsman who produced 'light' coins could be traced because each minted his or her own design on one side of the coin. A first offence would be punished by the craftsman having the striking arm cut off. "If I did it again, they would hang me," says Frigga.

A bit further along from Frigga's workshop, Einar the armourer is sitting at a table draped with heavy chain mail. As if to remind us that Vikings were warriors as well as traders, a shining Viking helmet stands next to him.

Einar is a brawny young man dressed in what looks like a smock, his long hair swept back in a pony tail. He's painstakingly twisting tiny hoops of iron wire together to form a shirt of mail.

It's top-of-the-range protection against most kinds of weapon, he says - neither sword nor axe can pierce it, only the point of a spear. Making it is laborious work, however, each tiny hoop of wire being twisted and linked by hand. Working non-stop he can finish a single mail shirt in about a week - if it's summer and the days are long. He can only work by daylight, so in the short winter days a shirt takes even longer.

That makes them expensive - the equivalent price would probably be about £200,000 in 21st century British prices, he guesses.

So mail shirts weren't for oiks. "They would have been for rich people, professional soldiers, the aristocracy," he says.

Just possibly, Einar doesn't much like the people he produces shirts for: there's a hint of the trade unionist about him in the way he grumbles. "It doesn't necessarily make me rich," he says. "It takes me a long time to make one of these."

Einar and Frigga are just two of the Viking craftspeople appearing in a new exhibition at York's recreated Viking city, Jorvik.

Archaeologists who excavated the original Jorvik site below Coppergate in the 1970s and early 1980s revealed there were several craftsmen working there, making everyday objects such as shoes, bowls, spoons, combs, brooches and glass beads, as well as spinning, weaving and dyeing fabrics.

Now visitors to Jorvik get to meet some of them, watch them at work, and chat to them about their trade.

The main ride through the underground Viking city of Jorvik remains unchanged since its expensive revamp two years go. But part of the exhibition space you encounter when you step off the time cars has been transformed into a Viking workshop, where you can meet the craftsmen and women. "A lot of people think the Vikings were incredibly vicious," says Jorvik curator Jane Stockdale. "But they were also fantastic craftspeople. We're trying to show that."

The Fearsome Craftsmen exhibition runs for a year from today. Every couple of months the emphasis will shift to look at a different craft - so in May and June the focus will be on Viking art, in July and August it will be arms and armoury, October will be fashion and over Christmas it will be entertainment, food and games.

To tie in with the exhibition inside Jorvik itself, there will be events out in the street above, adds Jorvik commercial manager Sarah Maltby. So over the summer there will be Viking battle drill - and in October a Viking fashion show, complete with straw catwalk.

The idea of the rolling exhibition is to get visitors to return. For this month only, however, visitors to Jorvik will be able to glimpse all the various crafts that will be on show later in the year, in a series of quick-change 'taster' exhibitions.

So for a snapshot view of Viking art and craft, you could do worse than to visit Jorvik now.

The Fearsome Craftsmen exhibition officially opens to the public today. Admission is included in the normal entry price. Visits to Jorvik can be pre-booked by calling 01904 543403.

Updated: 09:00 Saturday, April 12, 2003