‘Did the Vikings play cricket?’ is not a question that is often asked; but it is worth considering. We believe that merely in asking the question we may well be opening up a new field of scientific enquiry which has the potential to keep many sociological think-tanks busy for years to come. On the face of it, cricket-playing Vikings seem unlikely, but so did the possibility when I was a schoolboy of India beating England at cricket. Today we lost not just by 150-odd runs in the England v India Lord’s Test match but did so in an utterly humiliating way after we had victory within our grasp. Why has this happened? Are the Vikings to blame? Could the laws of cricket be written in runic? – we need to know.

A cricket match taking place at Lords, the home of cricket with a name derived from Viking ‘swords’. The man with the wooden object in the air is batting with a bat, a skeuomorph for a Viking sword or phallus; but in the absence of a ball the white-clothed figures have taken up significant positions and postures around the wicket for the next stage of the ceremony. The man with splayed legs off the wicket on the extreme left is paradoxically at mid-wicket; the man with arms akimbo, or in ‘tea-pot stance’, nearest the camera is at slip; to his right is gully, a reminder of the rough terrain on which Viking cricket developed. The abundance of white everywhere clearly points to some sort of purification ritual in progress. Viking influence is also suggested by the surrogate long-ship sailing the seas of Sky high above the pilgrims. The fertility undertones of the whole scene are encapsulated by the function of the special ground out of sight behind the stands, called ‘the Nursery’. 

The Vikings probably first played something akin to cricket on the beaches where they pulled up their long-ships to trade and relax; they could use their swords to swipe at pebbles and skulls tossed to them. When they missed, they were sometimes hit in a delicate part of the male anatomy, giving rise to to the painful condition still known today as ‘hurtigruten.’ Through simple letter-loss, that sword scenario is recalled to this day by the name of the self-styled home of cricket, Lords. Other words also hint at past games: the terms ‘long leg’ and ‘slips’, for example, may be survivors from this Early Phase (EP), and another specialist word, ‘wicket’, plausibly derives from Anglo-Saxon ‘wic’, the actual 8th century word for such beaches.  Cultural anthropologists argue that primitive survivals of such early games can be seen in ‘beach’ or ‘French’ cricket played by, for example, familial groups and in backward places like parts of France. Indeed, the French national game of boules may well be a variant of early cricket as played by Vikings who settled in what became Normandy, flirting in its name as it does with one of the basics of the traditional English game, ‘to bowl’.

As they developed the game, Vikings had difficulty finding suitable places with a large enough area of level ground on which to lay out a properly-prepared wicket; so they headed towards monasteries where they knew they could find a nice flat bit of grass surrounded by the cloisters. Of course, that did not leave room for much of an outfield but perhaps they played a sort of reverse Hundred cricket in which the object was to keep the ball inside the cloisters, not hit it outside into the crowd. Such a setting was regulated by the Danelaw. It had the additional advantage that spectators could be charged for entry – hence the term ‘Danegeld’ – and slain at stumps without the bother of having to chase them. This is almost certainly how the tradition began of having a bier after the match.

All of which implies of course that Vikings had cricket balls; yet, though there is a hint of such existing in the name of the god Ba’al (see below), not a single Viking ball is archaeologically attested. This has led one interpreter to suggest that, not understanding cricket at all, they went through the motions of playing without a ball as a sort of ceremonial ritual – a sort of Tai Chi in horned helmets. This would accord with the very large cricket bats, wrongly interpreted as oars, found in several boat burials; such shaped lengths of wood would certainly have been too long and heavy to use gracefully in a cover drive but they can be seen as ritual bats forever missing a phantom ball (rather like English batsmen today). Hence the bowler’s dictum: ‘You miss, I hit.’

And what did this existential sphere hit? – nothing less than the Holy Grail of EP cricket, the wicket. This use of the same word for both the flat ground on which bowling takes place and the target at which the bowler aims is unfortunate, an ambiguity resulting from a slipped chisel, or ‘chiselo’, when a mason was typing to express the laws of cricket by chipping a series of short, runic lines along the edge of a megalith at Gamla, Uppsala, a Viking religious centre. Given the already complicated laws, such mistakes made the arrival of vampires to supervise ‘cricket ceremonies’ inevitable; but the basic nature of their function was maintained by robing them in white and allowing them to wave their arms about in an early form of Norse Code. Yet, as the Vikings became less hairy and more cuddlesome, the ‘priests’ of their religious practices became less blood-thirsty and morphed into ‘umpires’, heralding the start of Phase 2, or the ‘Umperial Era’ (UE). The game spread as it followed the long-ships trading up the rivers of much of the known world. Cricket’s reputation for fair players – most Vikings were of course blonde – helped in the establishment of colonies which, collectively, became the Viking Umpire based on tenets of ‘spin’ (‘you can’t believe a word they say’), lbw (‘land before wic’) and cunningly-conceived ‘declarations’ (‘this was yours; now it’s mine – you’re out’). This led to the invention of maps so that the Viking bits could be painted red.

When the masonic accident with the chipped Gamla stone it was lying horizontally, supported by two upright stones, as if it were a prehistoric dolmen; perhaps it was, for it was called ‘the Baal stone’, a name reflecting ancient eastern Mediterranean roots in Viking paganism, best translated into English as ‘balls’, later ‘bails’. The whole structure was called, in an attempt to translate from the runic into English, ‘stumps’, an Anglo-Saxon alternative to ‘wicket’; though strictly-speaking a wicket then consisted of two uprights, called the ‘stumps’, capped by the bails linking their tops. ‘Stumps’ were called when play for the day ended. Nowadays, there are three stumps, upright sticks stuck into the ground, indicating the shift over the centuries from a paganism rooted in Baalesian fertility towards a supposedly more benevolent Christianity; for of course the three sticks represent the shaft and two arms of a cross. When cricketers today talk of ‘sacrificing’ their wicket to help the team, they are not only unconsciously voicing echoes from the dim and bloody origins of their sport in the pagan temples of the Viking north but also sensing, however slightly, the even greater sacrifice made for Planet Earth by the great Umpire in the Sky.

There is clearly much more research to be done e.g. we do not know whether the Vikings had a heavy roller. The answer to the question posed by this pioneer note, ‘Did Vikings play cricket?’, is nevertheless provisionally ‘yes’. Equally clearly, there is much more to this than just a game; issues of feminism, for example, arise around the concept of ‘caught’ in a multi-gender sport. Can the single, raised and erect umperial forefinger indicating ‘out’ continue as appropriate code in an age of increasing sexual sensitivities? Was this a problem for the Vikings? An interdisciplinary, international, community project will shortly be conceptualized to research such matters under the title ‘Vikwicric’ (VWC).

As Covid 19 restriction are, unwisely in my view, lifted, it is nevertheless good to be able to get around in the car again. Actually, that is not true in the sense that throughout the 16 months of the lockdown, I have felt no inhibitions at all about poddling around locally in my decrepid Golf and have not once been stopped by officialdom. Failing its MOT was much more of an arrest. Now that traffic is back to pre-covid levels, already the middle months of 2020 take on a nostalgic air of the time when the roads were empty and the driving was good.

Anyway, we drove down the coast to Shingle Street, a huge expanse of shingle with an interesting history in fact and some tall stories from a legendary past. It used to be virtually deserted and a pleasure to be there; it’s still the latter but in summer the place has to be shared with hundreds of day-trippers who have parked their cars higgledy-piggledy along the Street. We stayed in one of the coastguard houses in winter a few years ago: magical. One particular stretch of the shingle used to be a fruitful place to search for material with an artistic potential, particularly pieces of wave-worn wood from boats, jetties and the like; now there is nothing.

     Some of my mini-sculptures made five and more years ago entirely from bits and pieces as found along the Suffolk coast in the good old days of beach-collecting, not beach-cleaning

It is clear from the miserable collection I made on my recent visit to Shingle street that other artists have been there too, taking the best bits of wood, brick, concrete and wood. But far more damaging from the artistic point of view are the activities of the well-meaning beach-cleaning gangs, volunteers sent out by local goody-goody organisations to clear our beaches of all the rubbish on them. But one man’s rubbish is an artist’s inspiration. It is quite clear where these gangs have been hoovering up the artistic potential, for there is no plastic; conversely, when you find plastic objects, you know the area is worth searching.

A beautifully clean stretch of shingle, a credit to the beach-cleaners but a desert to artists.

Three Martello towers dot the sea-wall. 

I wonder whether it might be possible to persuade the authorities that, just as stretches of the beach are reserved for ground-nesting birds or nudist bathing, there should be a new designation of uncleared beaches for deserving artists.

Wickham Market railway station is actually in Campsea Ashe, four kms. east of the eponymous small town. It is indeed rather strange to come across an apparently working railway station, as it were in the middle of nowhere. Yet it is a station of some substance, as witnessed by the bridge alongside it carrying the B1078 road over the East Suffolk Line, a piece of landscape furniture rarely enjoyed by this railway.

It can be seen, not a thing of great beauty, behind the arriving  ‘Silver Bullet’-type up-train to Ipswich (below right). Gone are the days when the railway-writer would luxuriate in such a train being ‘hauled’ by a 2-6-4 or whatever. Now, far less romantically, the front two carriages are pushed and the back two dragged by a diesel power unit in the middle.

The empty platform for this ‘up’ train to Ipswich calls into question the need for the disembodied voice which, god-like, urges all would-be passengers as they arrive to spread themselves along the whole length of the platform to maintain ‘social distancing’ and avoid crowding in parts of the train. About five people were travelling on this particular train. No-one disembarked or boarded at Campsea Ashe for Wickham Market.

But in days of much yore, a long time ago, ’twas otherwise. WIckham Market Station, despite being somewhere else, has form – as a prominent plaque explains:

And in addition to having been a Junction, probably with its own Fat Controller I would imagine, this historic site also has its own little niche in history because 1952, the date on which the branch line was closed, was a good decade before the infamous Beeching cuts to which the uninformed would be inclined to attribute the closure.

I’m guessing here but probably it was in the 1960s that the station was downgraded Beeching-wise, losing Platform 2 and one of its two ‘iron-roads’. The up-line was just in front of the young woodland in the background of the photograph (left) and the ruinous platform, now sprinkled with primroses, remains under the trees and scrub. Even I remember the semi-derelict appearance of the station ten and more years ago; and I remember too reading about a mighty community effort not only to rescue it but to restore it to its modest former appearance. That is the real point of the photograph, taken in March 2021, showing the ‘Japanese’ detailing mentioned in the plaque and the overall good condition of the station building.

But the even more important significance of the ‘restoration’ was that the local community found a new use for the building. To achieve this is real success for, while sticking an old building together is often do-able, finding a viable use for it is usually difficult even though everybody knows that using a building is the best way of preserving it. What do you do, however, with a railway station building on the edge of a village in rural Suffolk with two trains an hour?

The answer:

And so far it has worked, even though the pandemic has meant that it has not been possible to use the meeting rooms and cafe since early 2020. But here is the magic of this place in action: if you go round to the ‘back’ of the station building, overlooking the car-park, you can find, often marked by a short queue, a small window which gives straight into the kitchen; and there you place your order for a snack or takeaway meal of delicious, home-made food. The soups are to die for, and the bacon rolls will persuade you that life is worth the living after all. You can even order the cakes for your wedding or funeral if you give enough notice. But for me the surreal element is that here, in the middle of almost nowhere, I can order a black Americano from a lady who seems to be there all hours, and be given a lovely drink from a real expresso machine. Who cares whether it’s in Wickham Market or Campsea Ashe?

The East Suffolk Line is a thing, if not of beauty, then of infinite wonder. It wombles its way from Ipswich to Lowestoft, a journey not many people seem to want to make, particularly during this last year when the train has often carried literally only one or two passengers. Yet its continued existence is vital for special groups of travellers like musicians going to Snape Maltings and students going to college at one end or the other. Above all, it is East Suffolk’s link with the outer world, connecting at Ipswich with trains bound for London. Oh, and with the country’s largest container port at Felixstowe, and – though its map can’t quite bring itself to show this – with Ely and its great cathedral, and with Cambridge.

The rolling stock seems entirely inappropriate for such a rustic line. It is brand new, and has greatly increased the efficiency of the service; but passengers look at it twice before boarding, wondering whether such a stream-lined,  surrealist apparition will really go to Oulton Broad South or Wickham Market, actually at Campsea Ashe. First impressions are that here is a train which took a wrong turn somewhere and has sped into Westerfield from the Swiss Alps or Japan. And how can it really go anywhere when the power unit, which we used to call the engine, is in the middle, jammed between the carriages? And how can you tell in which direction it might go when there is no knowing which is the front and which the back?

Is this train arriving or departing? Have you arrived just in time to catch it or have you just missed it?

And then there is Wickham Market………….