2025 marks 15 years since the School of English’s Vikings for Schools programme first began as an outreach initiative in 2010. Over one and half decades it has educated thousands of local primary school children about the Vikings and even won the Institute for Policy and Engagement’s 2024 Best Schools Initiative Award. Now, building on this successful foundation, 2025 also marks the beginning of a new initiative: Vikings for Scouts.
In partnership with the Derbyshire Scouts Archaeology Team and supported by UoN’s AHRC Impact Accelerator Account funding, the Vikings for Scouts project has been adapting the Vikings for Schools model for a new audience, developing a resource pack of Viking-themed activities to support the Derbyshire Scouts Archaeology Badge. This badge is an innovation of the Derbyshire Scouts Archaeology team who support Scouts to learn about the past and how archaeologists study it, even providing opportunities for young people to take part in real excavations.
Working with the Scouts allows for a more ambitious take on some of our tried and tested Vikings for Schools activities. The Viking Place-Name Jenga is bigger, the thunderous clatter of its toppling twice as loud, while the Viking-Age burials activity has moved from a ten-inch box to a six-foot cardboard dragon boat complete with life-size mannequin!
The feedback so far from both Scouts and Leaders has certainly been positive, a testament to the hard work put in by our Student Co-ordinator Emma Horne, Faculty of Arts Placement Student Samantha Garrad, and Student Ambassadors Ben Marshall, Alex McGinty and Leah Walper, who trialled activities with Scouts at the Experimental Archaeology Weekend Camp at Gradbach in July.
Places are fast booking up for the project’s major launch event on Saturday 6th December, with attendees travelling from around England to attend and receive their own copy of the finished resource pack. While the December event may mark the close of this stage of the project, we hope that for many Scout groups across the Midlands and beyond it will mark the start of a new relationship with the region’s Viking heritage inspired by the resources we have developed.
– Dr Kate Olley, Director of the Centre for the Study of the Viking Age