A SLEEK Viking longship lies smack in the middle of the nave at St Mary's Church in Coppergate. It is long and low and predatory. You could picture it nosing its way up the River Ouse through curls of early morning mist 1,150 years ago; and imagine the fear it might have have provoked in those living along the river's banks.

But what on earth is it doing in this church?

Simple: it is the centrepiece of a new Jorvik exhibition which opens this weekend.

Excavations have shown that St Mary's actually has foundations dating from the Viking age, says Sarah Maltby, Jorvik's director of attractions.

So the church is actually the perfect place for an exhibition of life in viking York - especially since it is so close to the Jorvik viking centre, and the place where so many of York's viking-age discoveries were found.

York Press:

The viking longship inside St Mary's

The new exhibition - Jorvik: Home and Abroad - is a chance to show off many of those finds properly for the first time since the next-door viking centre flooded on Boxing Day.

It is one of three exhibitions that will keep the vikings centre stage in York until Jorvik itself can re-open next spring.

An earlier exhibition - Jorvik: Life & Death - opened at the Theatre Royal last month. A third will open in York Minster's undercroft in August.

But this one, which opens on Saturday, is designed to be Jorvik's main showcase: a real chance to get up close and personal with many of the objects you'll have come across at the viking centre itself - and even some you won't have seen before.

Like the other two exhibitions, this one is a partnership with the York Museums Trust, which manages St Mary's. And the aim is for it to run right through to next spring.

So what will you be able to see?

Well, that viking longship, for a start.

It is a replica, of course: not the real thing. And it would have been a trading vessel, not a warship, says Sarah Maltby. By the time the exhibition opens on Saturday, it will have been packed with Viking trade goods: dried fish from Norway; antlers, furs, and the schist stones the vikings used to sharpen their knives.

But it is still a magnificent boat, filling the church's nave, its mast rising towards the rafters, light from the church's windows splashing across its flanks.

There is much more to the exhibition than just this boat, however.

Several display cases have been set up, to show off some of the best of the viking objects discovered at Jorvik. And because this church is so much more light and airy than the underground museum where they're normally displayed, you get a better view of them than you'll probably ever have had.

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Louis Carter examines a viking comb

The detail of the carved bone combs is exquisite. There are brightly-coloured glass beads made more than 1000 years ago that look as though they were made yesterday; ring pins that would have been used to fasten viking cloaks; bone 'skates' that vikings would have strapped to their shoes to enable them to get around in the snow and ice; cowrie shells that might have been used as tokens of exchange; and leather shoes miraculously preserved in the swampy, anaerobic ground beneath York.

You can get up close to all of these things in a way you couldn't at Jorvik itself.

At one end of the church will be two viking skeletons excavated from the cemetery at St Benet's Church in Swinegate. They're definitely of viking age, says Sarah - and proof that while when they first invaded York in the 860s the vikings were pagan, they later adopted the Christian religion of the Saxon people they had conquered. Intriguingly, one of the skeletons - that of a man - seems to have been of African descent: proof of just how widely the vikings travelled and traded.

At the other end of the church, a Jorvik staff member dressed as a viking will be operating the popular coin die, which enables visitors to stamp their own viking coin.

York Press:

A viking loom at St Mary's

Other 'vikings' will be operating a loom so as to demonstrate viking weaving techniques; and running stalls where visitors (and children in particular) can practice their bartering skills.

Upstairs there will be a viking encampment complete with livestock (not real, Sarah stresses); a craft area where visitors can have a go at weaving viking-style; and a storytelling area.

It may not be Jorvik - there's no sky ride, for a start. But it will be the next best thing: and a chance to see some of the familiar Jorvik objects in a whole new light and new setting.

“It is a great way of keeping the story alive, whilst we continue to rebuild and re-imagine the viking centre itself,” says Sarah.

  • Jorvik: Home & Abroad opens at York St Mary's on Saturday and will run until late February. The exhibition will be open every day from 10am to 5pm. Admission will normally be £5 adults, £3 concessions, children 16 and under free. This weekend, however, it will be free to all York residents as part of the York Museums Trust's residents open weekend.