Vikings

[poliphilo]

We were leaving Preston yesterday and we came across this little group of stone Vikings (on the slip road leading to the motorway.) I don't know what they're doing there but they've got bits of metal embedded in them and holes in odd places, which suggests they've been salvaged from some building or other.

I did some research (I Googled) and it turns out that Preston is on the Viking highway that runs down the Ribble valley from Jorvik (York) to the Irish Sea. The biggest Viking treasure hoard ever found outside Russia was dug up nearby (at Cuerdale) in 1840. 

 

 

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I was scared of the dining room.

It was a cold room and we only used it on special occasions- like Xmas dinner. I don't exactly know why it frightened me, but it did.

When I went by it- as I did every time I went to the kitchen- I hurried past and kept my face averted.

Perhaps it was haunted.

Or perhaps I was just being silly.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

Actually I find that many English dining rooms are slightly scary, since they are just these formal, un-used rooms. In my parents' house the dining room was the hub of the house; you HAD to go through it to go anywhere in the house, and we had all our meals there, did all our arts and crafts there, our homework, everything. Whereas the traditional English dining room is dead, abandoned, barren... I can imagine being scared of a room like that.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We had a big kitchen- or big enough- and we ate most of our meals in there- off formica.

The Dining room was quite small and the gate-legged oak table pretty much filled it.

If something had trapped you in there at the far end, you'd have had a terrible job getting out.