The story of Orkney exploring the possibility of joining Norway is deeply pleasing on many levels. It’s such a great tease, but also aspirational. Who in Britain has not dreamed of divorcing this sewaged isle and joining forces with another, more enlightened place, maybe one with adequate healthcare funding, life expectancy trending in the direction you’d expect in 2023 and a functional relationship with the EU? “There is a huge affinity and a huge, deep cultural relationship there,” the council leader, James Stockan, told the BBC. To which surely much of the nation is nodding and muttering, “Yeah, fair play, Stockan, strong move.”
Living in a city that also has a “deep cultural relationship” with Norse lands, albeit Danish rather than Norwegian, I find it a dreamy prospect. That relationship in York is of being successfully invaded by someone with the less-than-bloodcurdling moniker, Ivar the Boneless (he sounds like a cute cartoon dragon). My French husband is baffled by the way we glorify this inglorious history. “You’re celebrating being invaded?” he says every year, gesturing at men, women and children in cloaks and historically inaccurate helmets queueing for yorkshire pudding wraps at the annual Viking festival. “We don’t have a festival celebrating the Germans.” This is usually my cue to remind him that the Vikings just softened us up for his Norman forebears, so maybe he should pipe down. In any case, the city-wide economic exploitation of our Viking heritage over the past few decades goes some way to making up for the whole pillage business.
With all respect to Orkney, if anywhere deserves to be adopted by a nice Scandinavian country, it is York. We’re so wedded to our Norse roots, the city decided to twin itself with its past Viking incarnation, Jorvik, in 2014 for the 30th anniversary of the Jorvik Viking Centre. Maybe if we do something even weirder for the 40th next year – put all the street signs in runes, some kind of goose sacrifice; I’m still brainstorming – the Danes might let us in.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
