Support notes for primary
teachers
Viking Adventures
About the film
The film includes exclusive footage filmed in the special exhibition Vikings: life and
legend and around the British Museum. It covers a broad variety of topics
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 film lasts sixty minutes.
The film carries a U certificate.
Curriculum links
The film 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.
Geography
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 film 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 film. 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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Viking Adventures
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Preparation and follow-up
Here are a few suggestions of things to do in the classroom before and after
the film.
Preparation

Use maps to identify the locations of the Viking homelands.

Look at Viking objects in the Explore section of britishmuseum.org

The scholar Alcuin of York (c.735-804) wrote about the arrival of the first Vikings
in Britain. Read and discuss some extracts from his work. What view of the
Vikings is given by Alcuin? Why do you think that Alcuin of York thought about
Vikings in this way? 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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Follow-up

Discuss the film 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?

Ask your students to write a review of the film. 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 film.

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 Alcuin of York’s thoughts on the Vikings. Did the film offer
evidence with supported or challenged Alcuin’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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Further resources
 A set of Viking objects from UK museums with associated information, images
and teaching ideas can be found on the Teaching History with 100 Objects
website at
http://teachinghistory100.org/
 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 which holds many Viking
objects can be found at
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 the Viking ship Roskilde 6 can
be found at
vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/
 There is an animation showing how a Viking ship was built at
youtube.com/watch?v=78kpzwGmBxk&feature=related
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