Prof Steve Harding's Viking Wirral

To all our followers:  Til árs ok friðar! - may the following year be plentiful and prosperous!   We look forward in 2022 and in particular to perhaps unlocking the secrets of the Meols Boat and making some real progress with the scientific analysis of the Bebington finds.

Click the link to immerse yourself in local history with Wirral’s Viking Trail: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ncmh/documents/dna/wirrals-viking-trail.pdf

St Olav’s Viking Walks have taken place on Wirral and in Chester since 2008. This is a link with some further information about this year’s and previous walks, including an article written by Steve Harding and Dan Robinson and published in “The Norseman” in 2009: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ncmh/vikings/olsok.aspx We have included our playlist of broadcasts about past walks, available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN1ANYZrllJ23yGR7JzY57FUT9HX6zgh-

Annual set of walks & talks to celebrate St.Olav – the Patron Saint of Norway, and Wirral and Chester’s great Viking Heritage 15 th  ANNUAL WALKS 2022 The following series of short walks are planned for 2022 in the period 28 th -31 st  July: Walk 1: Thursday 28 July  5pm :  Viking Thingwall  (meet at Bassett Hound car park) – approx 1.5 mile Walk  2 : Friday 29 July 6pm:  Viking Chester  (meet at  Grosvenor Museum ) –   approx 1.5 mile Walk  3 : Saturday 30 July 9am:  Viking Neston  (meet at Denhall Quay) – approx 2 mile Walk  4 : Saturday 30 July 1pm:  Viking Thurstaston & West Kirby  (meet Thurstaston visitor centre) – approx 3 mile Walk  5 : Sunday 31 July 10am  Viking Lingham & Meols  (meet at Moreton Shore) – approx 3 mile Associated St. Olav’s Talks: Talk 1: Friday 29th July 4-4.45pm:  The Isotopes project on Viking Age iron objects from Meols, Fulford & Bebington  (Grosvenor Museum) Talk 2: Friday 29th July 5-5.45pm:  St. Olav – the Viking saint   (Gr

Some really good news just come from the National Environmental Research Council (NERC) - they have approved extension of the pilot isotope study on Viking Age iron objects (using iron, lead and strontium isotopes) from Bebington, Meols and Fulford to over 100 objects including 30 from Torksey and additional objects from Scandinavia: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ncmh/documents/dna/neif-application-october-2021.pdf For provenancing or sourcing the objects, the databases need to be greatly expanded. To assist with this we have organized a joint meeting of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Antiquaries Society to be held at Burlington House, London, June 13th 2022. The web site is: https://www.rsc.org/events/detail/44249/advances-in-isotope-ratio-and-related-analyses-for-mapping-migrations-from-prehistory-to-the-viking-age The figure below shows some very early results. Still a long way to go before we can properly "source" or provenance objects and address the question tha