Viking Lancashire

Thanks again to Mrs Lamb for the following article, written by her after the Year 3 / 4 trip to Lancaster Maritime Museum for an excellent morning spent learning about the Vikings in the North West.

Last Tuesday morning Years 3 and 4 visited the Maritime Museum in Lancaster for a Viking morning. We met a Viking farmer, Kraka, who had settled in this area and his father Crock, as well as the storyteller Linden. Linden invited us into her house and the children worked for her by grinding the wheat, weaving fabric for sails and embroidering a tapestry.

As well as learning the Viking battle cry, which was yelled with great enthusiasm by everyone, we also learnt:

Boys and girls were considered adults at 12, when they were old enough to marry;
Human ear wax was used to coat the flights on arrows to prevent insects nibbling them;
Vikings needed 7000 calories a day to survive;
Every part of an animal was used, as meat to eat, skins for warmth and bones to make needles and combs;
The men were not allowed to sit down until they had checked that all the ladies in the room were seated;
Torrisholme is a Viking name.
One of the stories we were told by Linden was of a brave warrior who had sustained a serious stomach wound during battle. She had travelled to him and administered herbs to aid healing. After some time when he was not showing any signs of improvement she slit his throat to send him on his way to the gods and prevent a long and painful death. Then she had to visit the stone masons to arrange for the hogback to be carved. This is the gravestone used by the Vikings, it is carved with pictures which tell the story of the person’s life.
This story reminded me of my holiday this year when I visited a remote graveyard on Shetland and saw the hogback grave markers. What struck me about the place was the remoteness of it and that the hogback stones were alongside modern present day gravestones. In the days of the Vikings they used boats to access the graveyard, nowadays the coffin travels by tractor. As I wandered around that day I marvelled that the graveyard had been used for so many years and that two so very different styles of stones, and people separated by so many years of change were resting side by side on that remote headland.

A glimpse of Canada

Toronto



The Wilderness




Canada, as these pictures show, is an amazing country of great contrasts. Moving from Toronto to Nether Kellet is quite a change, and Adam in Year 6 writes below about his life in Canada:

My name is Adam and I was born in Toronto, Canada, and lived there with my Mum and dog until I was seven years old. Toronto is a very big city built next to a lake. Toronto is famous for the CN Tower, moose, Canadian geese, beavers and the Rocky Mountains. It is very hot in Summer, so I used to go to cottage country with my Mum and some friends. We stayed in a cottage next to a lake and went on a seadoo or went boating and swimming. If we stayed in the city, we would go to the local pool or splash pad to keep cool. In Winter, it is very cold with lots of snow. I loved Winter because I would go sledging and ice-skating with my Mum and friends and play hide and seek in the snow because it was so deep. I used to play ice hockey at the local arena. My favourite thing in Winter was the Santa parade with lots of amazing floats and Santa with his reindeer at the end. School is very different because the first year I spent half the day at pre-school and the second half at school. The second year, I went to school.