Using the Mantle of the Expert approach, pupils help a confused museum curator to write high quality captions for 11 images that MIGHT show the Vikings in a more positive light. It is crucial that they get it right. Important Scandinavian visitors are coming to see the exhibition tomorrow! Imaginatively differentiated, the lesson uses a combination of Gallery and Prove it! activities to provide excellent preparatory grounding.
“Vikings as we traditionally know them are basically a concept invented in the 19th century,” says Gareth Williams, curator of the British Museum’s exhibition, Vikings: Life and Legend. “They’ve been depicted as big and muscular and with very silly helmets, because how else would a Romantic Viking dress? Disappointingly for those of a Romantic, or indeed comic-book, inclination, there is little historical evidence that Vikings wore horned helmets — much less ones with wings, which are still popular with Viking re-enactors today. Very
