21 May 2020

I have a fairly eclectic selections of reading material I enjoy. There’s a good harmless romance, a bit of murder mystery, comedy, biographies sometimes, and a nice collection of non fiction that range from true crime to historical poo.

I was reading this morning about the Lloyds Bank Turd (or Coprolite if we are being polite). Found beneath the site of a Lloyd’s Bank, this 1200 year old fossilised lump of excrement is now housed in the York (England) Jorvik Museum, and is attributed to a Viking (although I’ve seen photos and it isn’t wearing a Viking helmet so not sure how they could be definitive on that one).

My (admittedly a bit strange) brain pictured a large Viking chap, successfully dropping a large one in the latrine, joking to a friend afterwards how that one was “so good they will still be talking about it in a thousand years time! Probably build a museum around it”!!!

And it was a big one! 9 inches long and weighing half a pound. Analysis of it showed the person concerned ate meat and grains but not much in way of fruit or vegetables. This was despite there being evidence of fruit and nuts available at the time (from the same latrine). So I can also assume this was from a teenage male who wouldn’t eat what his mum told him. Just my interpretation, you understand. Could very well have been an older male who was in charge of his own catering arrangements.

The historical poo has been described by paleoscatologists (what a joy those people would be to chat with at a dinner party…) as “as precious than the Crown Jewels”.

If only they’d known that when they were making the actual Crown Jewels. They might not have wasted their time and money on all those diamonds and rubies and stuff.

The turd might not shine as brightly though.

Let’s all add the Jorvik Museum in York to our bucket lists, shall we? I want to see some Viking Turd selfies 🙂