Here Be Dragons

One of the things we most enjoyed about York was the atmosphere - partly created by the presence of its many medieval buildings. It was the kind of place that if a dragon were to land on the roof of building as you were walking by, you would not be surprised. Probably seriously terrified (particularly if said dragon were to be clearly annoyed and breathing fire), but not surprised. It's the kind of place that Robin Hobb (or Megan Lindholm) fans would probably really enjoy visiting.

There were a couple of times we felt this. The first was as we walked through the cold night air to try and find our place. Although, as Mark has pointed out, this became an exercise in frustration, it wasn't that way for the first part of the walk as we came across various old buildings, barely lit in the dying light. The old gates of the city, the walls surrounding the city, the guardhouse, a school several centuries old: they looked to be the very things we have read about in fantasy novels for years, standing before us, unblinking witnesses to generations. Why should there not also be dragons?

The other most notable time was our discovery of the Merchant Adventurer's Guild. It should be clear that an 'adventurer' these days is a different creature to the one who would set out with a boat to find good trade (or loot) in the 1400's. So sucessful were the Merchants of York that they held a monopoly on all trade in York until the 1820's where the monopoly was only broken by a law was passing through both English houses of Parliament. This was the wealth centre of the city and some care had been taken to impress this on the humble wayfarer simply by the entrance.

To us, it looked exactly like something out of Hobb's Liveship Traders Trilogy. A passing dragon would not have been at all out of place. Some people with excellent taste were going to be married there the day we visited. It looked like a great place to be married: you could roast a small lamb on a spit, (an extra one or two for the dragon perhaps - or as the dragon would be an English dragon, perhaps a few spare pigs). And have a troupe of singers and players to dance the night away, in colourful clothes imported from exotic and distant places.


The old part of the city, particularly the street called 'the Shambles' provides the same kind of impression... and our favourite guardhouse... and so on and so forth. It didn't take us long to conclude that Tolkien (Father of the fantasy genre) really had needed to live in a country like this to write in the way he did. I don't think an Australian could have invented the fantasy genre, for example, and I think it would be difficult for an American to do so. I'm sure our dragons would be more ferocious (face it: an Australian dragon would have to be lethal just to match a real Australian animal. Unless it could outclass a taipan, red-back spider and alligator, for example, it would seem domesticated and not worthy of attention, let alone fear). I'm sure the landscape would be more dramatic, adding to the epic feel of the genre. But without towns like York, it is hard to see how the chaotic bustle of a medieval town, in a confined space with little sense of law and order could be captured so aptly.

So we came to York, and filled with a sense of adventure left again - slightly disappointed at the absence of dragons. JMB