Festival name clash starts a war of Viking words

The York War Games Society, which meets to recreate battle-scenes using table-top figures, feels aggrieved that its long-used phrase Vapnartak has this Bank Holiday been bagged by the Jorvik Viking Centre in the city to promote one of its events.

Meaning ''weapons taking'', the old Norse saying has also been used as the title of an annual event organised by the War Games Society every February at the Merchant Adventurers' Hall in York.

Organiser Alex Speight says his Vapnartak was in danger of being confused with the Viking Centre's differently spelt Vapnatak - part of a wider Viking Festival held in York over last weekend.

He said: "We find it irritating because, in the run-up to our event at the Merchant Adventurers' Hall, there was some confusion from people coming to our show because they had seen adverts for the May Vapnatak and thought that was ours.

"We have been going for the past ten years, and we have been using this name for a long time.

"Now the Viking Centre has started using it for its Bank Holiday event. When we found out we were not very happy about it because we were using Vapnartak first.

"I don't think it hurt our event much but it's annoying.

"We wrote to the Archaeological Trust and expressed our displeasure, but there's not a great deal we can do about it, because Vapnartak is a language thing and you can't really make it a trade mark."

The Jorvik Viking Centre's Vapnatak co-ordinator, Janet Baverstock, said the phrase was open for anybody to use, as it was merely a piece of language.

She explained: "Our Vapnatak is used in a completely different context. The War Games Society's event is something quite different and our promotional material made that clear.

"We called our event the Jorvik Viking Festival Vapnatak 1999, so there can be no confusion."

see COMMENT 'A Viking spat'

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