History - what were the Vikings really like and why do they have such a bad reputation?

 This week and last week, we have been getting stuck into the Vikings! 

Their first challenge was to draw a picture of a Viking in their book and to see if Miss Slade had correctly predicted what they would draw…pretty close!

We discussed the stereotypical view of Vikings and whether or not we can trust it as historians. We reminded ourselves of the relationship between the Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons and identified whether certain information was true or false based on a timeline of Britain from the Romans through to 1066. 

Our next task was to work out why contemporary accounts of the Vikings were all so negative. We remembered that although the Vikings used  the Elder Futhark to write, they kept very few written records and very, very few of those that they did keep have survived. So who write the Accounts describing the Vikings? 

We discussed the Viking lifestyle of seafaring, looting and battle and asked ourselves who in Britain had been impacted by them? The first victims happened to be some of Britain’s most literate people…Monks! With the first attack on Lindisfarne in AD 793, the Vikings came to realise the wealth contained within religious houses in Britain and had no problem making it a habit, stripping away what was valuable and destroying relics such as the alleged blood and bones of saints.  It is little wonder that early reports weren’t exactly glowing…