To help kickstart your year of history, we have some amazing prizes to giveaway, including tickets to one of the must-see events of 2018. The largest of its kind in Europe, Jorvik Viking Festival is a weeklong commemoration of York’s Norse roots and regularly attracts over 40,000 visitors to the historic city.
Taking place from 12-18 February, this year’s theme will be conquest of England by the Great Viking Army in 866. Living history displays, talks and tours around the city will also explain how the Norsemen settled down and made Medieval York the Viking capital of England. The festival includes have-a-go archery, music from the world-renowned artist Einar Selvik (who made the score for the TV show Vikings) and a feast fit for Valhalla at the Great Viking Army Banquet.
The festival’s grand finale is a dramatic 100-strong combat performance, in which Viking warriors face-off with doomed Anglo-Saxon defenders. Leading the charge will be three brothers and Viking legends — Halfdan Ragnarsson, Ubba Ragnarsson and Ivar the Boneless — while pyrotechnics enhance the night-time battle royale.
Thanks to the Jorvik Viking Centre, which reopened last year and runs the festival, we have two ‘group passports’ for a family of five up for grabs. Worth £54.95 each, these passes will give the winners free membership to the Viking Centre and other York attractions, including DIG, Barley Hall and the Richard III & Henry VII Experience for 12 months. They will also allow the winners to access all of the festival entertainments at these sites as well as the living history encampments across the city.
As if that wasn’t enough, there’s more! The two passport winners plus seven other runners-up will also receive a bundle of brand-new history books worth £100 each. These must-read page-turners will range from the Middle Ages to the modern day and cover everything from military to music history. Titles up for grabs include The Square and the Tower by the critically acclaimed Niall Ferguson, Hue 1968 by Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden, The Mayflower Generation by Rebecca Fraser, On the Ocean by Barry Cunliffe and The Private Life of Edward VI by John Ashdown-Hill.
To be in with a chance of winning any of these great prizes, answer the question below.