How Yorkshire’s library cuts started... with the Vikings

Centuries-old books and manuscripts which had been brought to York from Italy to create one of the finest libraries in northern Europe were wiped out in a stroke during the ninth century by the Norse invaders.

But research by a York University academic has pieced together details of the great lost library through painstaking detective work that has delved back into the ancient city’s hidden past.

Dr Mary Garrison, a lecturer in the university’s department of history, has built up an in-depth insight into the massive library that was collected by a renowned scholar called Alcuin – and its heartbreaking destruction by the Vikings.

Dr Garrison, who has studied Alcuin and early medieval history for the past 15 years, said: “It was such a remarkable library, and it is such a such tragic loss that it was destroyed as the Vikings invaded and laid waste.

“There is a certain bitter irony with the fact that there are so many libraries which are under threat now across the country. Any library should be so valued and what happened in York way back in the ninth century is now being repeated with the stroke of a pen rather than a sword in the 21st century.”

York had carved out a reputation as one of the most influentially intellectual cities in Europe in the eighth century as Alcuin collated the massive library.

The books and manuscripts were brought back from Italy, which was itself a centre for learning and literature, by scholars on horseback in gruelling journeys that would have taken weeks to complete.

The valuable documents were often several centuries old and were kept in chests in the medieval York Minster’s school.

The Latin manuscripts were preserved and used to teach students in York from as far afield as the Netherlands and Ireland.

The library is thought to have been collected between 730 and 780 by Alcuin and his teacher, Aelbert, and featured works on topics including astronomy, religion, arithmetic and natural history.

But the invading Viking forces are thought to have destroyed the library during their ferocious attacks on York and Northumbria in 866 and 867.

Some of the manuscripts, however, survived after they were taken abroad by missionaries before the arrival of the Vikings and are now located in libraries across Europe and as far as afield as America.

Dr Garrison said: “The library has vanished. No books now existing can be proven to have come from it. But it was extraordinary. The library was dispersed or destroyed, but the surviving information about its growth, use and disappearance make a fascinating and inspiring story.”

Dr Garrison has organised an exhibition to tell the story of the library’s creation and its destruction. It is being held in the Old Palace, which houses the current York Minster Library, and could be on the actual site where the books and manuscripts were originally stored.

The exhibition, called The Great Lost Library of Alcuin’s York, features new designs by Yorkshire calligraphers Dorothy Wilkinson, Sue Sparrow and Angela Dalleywater based on the distinctive eighth century Caroline minuscule script that Alcuin encouraged his scribes to use.

As well as the calligraphy, the display includes photographs of the manuscripts preserved across Europe and North America.

Dr Garrison said: “The school and library of York were the finest in eighth century Europe. Alcuin and his teacher before him taught a range of subjects wider than any other scholars of their time.

“I hope that this exhibition will allow York residents and visitors to learn about and value this remarkable era in the city’s past, and to appreciate the extraordinary origins of the Minster Library.”

The exhibition has taken more than a year to research and funding has been secured from the Yorkshire Philosophical Society and the Sheldon Memorial Trust as well as the York Decorative and Fine Arts Society and York University itself.

The Dean of York, Keith Jones, said: “Scholarship and letters have been studied at York since the eighth century and these beautiful traces of Alcuin’s library are a very moving record of that long history still alive today.”

The Great Lost Library of Alcuin’s York exhibition opened yesterday and runs until April 15. It is open Monday to Friday between 2pm and 4pm.