On Tuesday June 13, the Westbury U3A group was treated to a talk entitled "The Viking Golden Age - Explore, Trade, Conquer". This was given by Colonel Anthony Coutts-Britton, who is a Fellow of the Guild of Battlefield Guides and an accomplished and entertaining speaker. 
As well as getting on overview of how the Vikings gradually explored and spread through lands from Greenland in the west to Russia in the east, we learned many interesting odd snippets about these people during the talk. For instance, it seems there is no documentary evidence that they wore helmets with horns on. The name of their tribal chief was 'jarl', from where we get our title, earl. Their women were equal in law to men, over one thousand years before British women achieved that status! Famed for their boat-building skills, one excavated longboat, the Sea Stallion, was 30 metres long, carried 60 men and could travel at 15 knots! The EU and euro are nothing new - when Cnut became king of England, Denmark and finally Norway in the 11th century, he created one currency to be used for trade in all three.