Shoppers and workers in Newcastle 50 years ago did a double take when a small group of Vikings began pillaging on the city's normally peaceful Neville Street - but thankfully the stunt in March 1973 was a harmless bit of fun.
Our region, of course, has a relationship going back eons with the seaborne raiders from the far North of Europe who raided, explored and traded across a vast area stretching from North America to the Middle East between the 8th and 11th centuries.
The first Viking longships appeared off the North East coast in 793. The monks of Lindisfarne felt the full force of these fearsome new warrior invaders from Scandinavia. In the aftermath of the first attack, one monk wrote: “The church of Saint Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God, stripped of all its furnishings, exposed to the plundering of pagans”.
