The DAHRG Viking Experience

Based in Birmingham The Viking Experience was formed in 1991 to provide educational services to schools and museums in the Midlands area of England.

The director Mrs Roz Sheard is a qualified Special Needs Teacher and specialist in Arts and Crafts for Special Needs people, Villagers Training Thegn (Officer) of The Vikings, Britain's largest Dark Age re-enactment and living history group . She has also written for Focus Educational Magazine.

The Viking Experience provides in-depth specialist talks, documentation and craft workshops for the Anglo-Saxon/Viking period, with the support of the Birmingham group of The Vikings, 'Dahrg de Belne.'

School visits by a "VIKING" in authentic costume, along with a travelling museum of artifacts have proven extremely attractive and effective especially when compared with the cost of taking children to visit external museums and specialist centres. As well as the cost incentive, communication and enquiry skills can develop better when pupils can talk with a "Real Viking" as well as touch and handle clothing and other artifacts, often with elements of role play included to emphasise a point.

Slow learners and other special needs children often seem to respond well to the practical nature of a visit. The full day option includes a choice of practical skill bases where children can make their own reproduction artifacts in Jewellery, Pottery, Leather work, Runic writing and Weaving.

School visits wherever possible attention in given to Cross Curriculum Links with Dark Age History, and a few examples are given below.

Mathematics
Weaving, money, ship building and navigation.

Science
Cloth dyeing, leather curing and tanning, metallurgy, pottery, food.

Geography
Trade routes, battle sites, artifact finds.

English
Effects of invasions on place names, links to words in current English Vocabulary.

The Arts
Viking music, development of Viking and Celtic art through the period.

Design and Technology
Metallurgy in arms and armour, weaving and clothing design, Jewellery making, pottery and ceramics development, use of computers in archaeology.

Religion
Norse and Anglo Saxon Gods, Odin, Thor etc, links to Christianity.

Further Information

A project book Crafts for the Junior Viking developed as an extension to the "Scholastic" article is available at £5.00 Pounds Sterling plus 75p postage from:

Mrs R Sheard, The Viking Experience, 43 Croft Road, Yardley Birmingham, B26 1SQ, England.

Further details about the project book or visits can be obtained by stamped addressed envelope to the above address or Email jhsheard@yahoo.co.uk   

More about Birmingham Vikings

Also known as DAHRG (Dark Age Historical Research Group)

Visit the web site at http://www.birminghamvikings.co.uk

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