Resource pack for primary
teachers
Viking Adventures from the
British Museum
5 June 2014
A broadcast for schools and families in
association with the BP exhibition
Vikings: life and legend
6 March – 22 June 2014
About the broadcast
The broadcast includes exclusive footage filmed in the BP exhibition Vikings: life
and legend and around the British Museum. It covers a broad variety of topics
connected with the exhibition including:
 everyday life in the Viking Age
 Viking ships
 Viking food
 Viking warriors and warfare
 Old Norse, the language of the Vikings
 Viking beliefs
 archaeology
The broadcast lasts sixty minutes and is pre-recorded.
Curriculum links
The broadcast offers opportunities in the following curriculum areas and for crosscurricular work:
History
Find out about archaeology and how evidence is found, types of evidence and the
lives of women, men and children in the past.
English
The idea of sea voyages and the experience of the people involved offers great
potential for a wide range of writing and oral work, including poetry and drama.
Geograpghy
Learn about the Scandavanian homelands from which the Vikings travelled by
water to trade, and sometimes settle, across four continents.
Science
Explore materials and their properties, organic and non-organic material and the
effect of weathering.
Art and design
Viking jewellery and decorative objects offer a rich starting point for art and design
activities.
Design technology
Discover how the Vikings used design and building skills to create the ships which
enabled them to travel far from their Viking homelands.
RE
Learn about belief systems of the time. The Vikings themselves followed first
pagan beliefs and later the Christain faith while their trading brought them into
contact with the Jewish and Islam faiths.
Dead bodies
A section of the broadcast will include refrences to human remains excavated by
archaeologists. Response to ancient human remains can range from exaggerated
revulsion to prurient interest to emotional upset. We recommend talking with
students about human remains in school, before the broadcast. Discuss how the
discovery, excavation and study of human remains inform us about people in the
past, how they lived and how human remains remind us that distant historical times
involve real people.
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Preparation and follow-up
Here are a few suggestions of things to do before and after the broadcast to
prepare students.
Pre-broadcast preparation

Use maps to identify the locations of the Viking homelands.

Look through the Vikings image bank (see page 4) to familiarise students with
some of the objects associated with the Vikings.

Look at Viking objects in the Explore section of britishmuseum.org

The British historian Bede wrote about the Vikings in his work Historia
Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, or An Ecclesiastical History of the English People
which he completed around AD 731. An English translation is available from
Penguin Classics (1990). Read and discuss some extracts from his work. What
view of the Vikings is given by Bede? Is this how we think about Vikings
nowadays? What do the students expect/hope to learn about the Vikings in the
film? Create a bank of questions. Afterwards decide which questions were
answered in the film and which ones will need further research at school.

Read some extracts from the Laxdaela Saga – an epic story written around the
year AD 1245. The saga recalls significant people and events as the unknown
author looks back at the history of the people living in the Breiðafjörður area of
Iceland from the late 9th century to the early 11th century. The most recent
English translation is by Keneva Kunz, The Saga of the People of Laxardal and
Bolli Bollason's Tale (Penguin Classics, 2008).

The word ‘fawel’ (pronounced ‘fa-vel’) is used in modern Norwegian and Swedish
to mean goodbye or farewell. The word may go back to Viking times. Research
and try out some other Scandinavian words or phrases.

Research the English language words for the days of the week and find out how
some are based on Viking names. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday come
from Tiw/Tyr, Woden/Odin, Thor and Frigg. Just to complete the week Saturday
is from the Roman god Saturn, and Sunday and Monday represent the sun and
the moon. Research the names of some other Norse gods and goddesses.

Watch the ‘Building a Viking ship’ animation created for the Smithsonian
Institution's National Museum of Natural History as part of their Vikings: The
North Atlantic Saga exhibition.
youtube.com/watch?v=78kpzwGmBxk&feature=related
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Post-broadcast follow-up

Discuss the broadcast with your students. What did they enjoy the most and why?
What do they remember about it? Review the questions raised before watching
the film. Which ones have been answered and which need further research?

Use the Viking image bank to remind students about some of the objects seen.

Ask your students to write a review of the broadcast. Use published cinema film
reviews to provide guidance and inspiration.

Look at cinema film posters. Students could design their own poster for the Viking
Adventures broadcast.

Write a travelogue from the point of view of a Viking travelling north, south, east
or west. Or write a diary from the point of view of somebody waiting back in the
Viking homelands.

Find out about Norse kennings. Kennings are a way of naming something by
creating a descriptive compound word in place of a single word noun; for
example, in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf the sea is called the ‘whale-road’,
‘sail-road’ and ‘swan-road’. Kennings can also be possessive phrases, for
example, a ship might become the ‘rolling wagon of the ocean’ or the ‘wave’s
rider’. A kenning can combine these two forms as in the kenning which refers to a
ship as the ‘broad-hulled horse of the whale-land’. Make up some kennings.

Look at images of Viking jewellery and craftwork. Create some Viking art with
modern materials, for example modeling materials, foil, coloured modelling wire.

In Norse mythology the god Odin made the world. First he created Jotunheim, the
icy and cold land of the Giants, then Midgard, a warm world for humans with
trees, lakes, rivers and plants and finally Asgard, a citadel of shining gold and
silver palaces and towers. What might these three realms have looked like?
Record ideas using art, music, descriptive writing, the spoken word or 3D
modeling. Compare the Norse creation myth with those from other cultures.

With your class revisit Bede’s thoughts on the Vikings. Did the film offer evidence
with supported or challenged Bede’s description of the Vikings? How would the
students describe the Vikings based on the objects shown in the film?

Create a Viking trading catalogue. What items would be for sale? How many
silver coins would each item cost?

Research examples of Scandinavian loan words commonly used in the English
language. For example, the word ‘bag’ comes from ‘baggin’ and ‘cake’ from ‘kaka’
while the words ‘egg’, ‘lad’, ‘race’, ‘same’ and’ troll’ are all Scandinavian loan
words.
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Image bank
You can download an image bank of Viking objects at
britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/vikings/schools.aspx
You will find information about the objects in the Notes section of each slide.
You can use the image bank to introduce students to the types of objects they will
see in Viking Adventures from the British Museum and to support follow-up
activities back in the classroom. Individual images can be printed out for use in
small group work.
Further resources
 If you would like background information on the Vikings or a more detailed list of
resources this can be found in the downloadable exhibition resources for
teachers.
britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/vikings/schools.aspx
 The BBC website has a set of information sheets and associated images on the
Vikings which could be helpful when doing your follow up at
www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/vikings/
There is also information about archaeology at
bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/archaeology/
 The website of the National Museum of Denmark
natmus.dk/en/
 Information on the Viking Age can be found at
natmus.dk/en/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050ad/the-viking-age/
 The website of the Viking Ship Museum, home of Roskilde 6
vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/
 There are several published translations of Bede’s Latin Ecclesiastical History
of the British People. A PDF copy can be found at
heroofcamelot.com/docs/Bede-Ecclesiastical-History.pdf
 There is an animation showing how a Viking ship was built at
youtube.com/watch?v=78kpzwGmBxk&feature=related
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