Vikings word bank for KS2

The KS2 history statement is about the Viking and Anglo-Saxon struggle for the Kingdom of England, up to the time of Edward the Confessor. The word that matters most there is struggle: this is a story of two peoples competing for the same land over about 270 years, not of one raid. Put Anglo-Saxon and Danelaw on the working wall from the first lesson, so pupils always see both sides.

The usual starting point is the raid on the monastery at Lindisfarne, off the coast of Northumberland, in AD 793. It is a dramatic opening, but move quickly to what came next: Vikings settled, farmed and traded, and by the late 800s a large part of eastern and northern England was under Viking law, the area later called the Danelaw. Alfred the Great of Wessex made a treaty that divided the land, and the story continues through Viking kings of England to Edward the Confessor, who reigned from 1042 to 1066.

Pupils arrive thinking of Vikings as fighters and little else. The verbs on the mat are chosen to widen that picture. Raid is there, but so are settle, farm, trade, barter, carve and explore. A good opening activity is to give pupils the verbs on cards and ask them to sort them into “raider”, “trader” and “settler”. Most will be surprised by how few belong in the first pile, and the discussion that follows is the heart of the topic.

Settler, trade and voyage in the topic vocabulary connect to real evidence. Viking traders travelled huge distances, and archaeologists have found Viking hoards with coins from far beyond Scandinavia. The Viking city of Jorvik, now York, was a busy trading town; the excavations at Coppergate uncovered houses, workshops and everyday objects that show how people actually lived there.

The Vikings left their mark on English, and pupils love finding it. Place names ending in -by, meaning farm or village, such as Whitby, Derby and Grimsby, and -thorpe, a smaller settlement, show where Vikings settled. Pupils can hunt for them on a map of England and see the Danelaw appear. Everyday words came from Old Norse too: sky, egg, window (from “wind eye”) and the day name Thursday, from Thor.

Rune and saga are the literary words in the bank. Runes were letters carved on wood, bone and stone, in an alphabet called the futhark. Pupils can write their names in runes, which turns carve and rune into something they have done. Sagas were long stories of heroes, families and journeys, first told aloud and later written down in Iceland, and they are a good model for oral storytelling in class.

Helmet is on the mat partly so you can bust a myth. Viking helmets did not have horns. The horned helmet comes from costumes designed in the 1800s, especially for operas, long after the Viking Age. Show pupils a picture of the real Gjermundbu helmet from Norway, which is plain and rounded, and ask them why the myth might have caught on. It is a short lesson in checking sources.

Longship and voyage suit adventure stories and logbooks. A Viking voyage does not need fighting: a family of settlers looking for a new home can read runes on a map and settle an argument by trading fairly. Pupils can write their own saga in that spirit, using one adjective and one verb from the mat in each paragraph, then perform it aloud as a skald, a Viking poet and storyteller, would have done.