Viking School Workshops in Merseyside
Explore the Viking Age without leaving your school
Longships, warriors and raids might be the first things pupils associate with the Vikings, but there is much more to discover.
The History Guy offers immersive Viking school workshops across Merseyside, bringing practical history, archaeology and hands-on activities directly to Key Stage 2 pupils.
For the day, part of your school grounds is transformed with a large Viking-style yurt containing historical equipment, materials and replica objects. Pupils don't simply hear about Viking life – they investigate it through activities, challenges and archaeological evidence.
Vikings on Merseyside's doorstep
For schools in Merseyside, Viking history has an especially interesting local dimension.
The Wirral has strong archaeological and place-name evidence for Scandinavian settlement, while the wider Mersey and Irish Sea region formed part of a world connected by travel, trade and migration during the Viking Age.
That gives pupils an opportunity to see the Vikings as something more immediate than a distant group encountered in a history book.
During the workshop we can explore the wider Viking world and consider why people travelled, where they settled and how archaeology helps us piece together their lives.
What will pupils actually do?
A History Guy workshop is built around participation.
Children might begin by encountering unfamiliar objects and materials before finding themselves writing in runes, working with wool or learning why a group of warriors needed discipline to make a shield wall work.
Activities can include rune writing in clay, where pupils encounter a very different writing system; wool carding, spinning and weaving, introducing the enormous amount of work behind Viking textiles; and shield wall training, which turns cooperation and organisation into a memorable practical exercise.
Viking games and physical challenges introduce another side of everyday life, while an interactive trading activity gets pupils thinking about goods, resources, travel and connections between different communities.
Artefacts and materials are used throughout the experience to encourage pupils to look closely, ask questions and consider what evidence can – and sometimes cannot – tell us about the past.
What was life really like in the Viking Age?
One of the aims of the day is to challenge the idea that every Viking was simply a warrior.
Pupils encounter a much broader society.
They investigate the work of craftspeople and textile makers, consider the importance of farming and trade, explore communication and travel, and discover how everyday possessions had to be made using available natural materials and considerable skill.
Warriors and raiding still form part of the story, but they're placed within the much larger world of Viking families, settlements, crafts and journeys.
This makes the workshop a useful way of introducing some of the complexity behind the term “Viking.”
A Viking experience that comes to you
Instead of arranging transport to a museum or heritage attraction, the experience is set up at your school.
The large yurt creates a dedicated environment away from the normal classroom, giving pupils the feeling that something unusual is happening from the moment they arrive.
Viking workshops are available for schools across Liverpool, Wirral, Sefton, Knowsley and St Helens, as well as surrounding parts of the Merseyside area.
For schools on the Wirral in particular, the workshop can provide an excellent starting point for connecting a KS2 Viking topic with the Scandinavian history found much closer to home.
Archaeology at the heart of the day
The History Guy is run by Pete Forrester, a trained archaeologist and experienced outdoor educator with more than 15 years of experience working practically with children.
That archaeological background influences the way the Viking Age is presented.
Rather than treating everything we think we know about the Vikings as established fact, pupils are encouraged to consider the evidence.
How could an archaeologist work out what an object was used for?
What survives after a thousand years?
What disappears?
And how can a fragment of an object, a burial, a place name or the remains of a settlement help us understand somebody's life?
These questions help turn Viking history into something pupils can investigate rather than simply memorise.
Bring the Vikings to your Merseyside school
The workshop is designed primarily for Key Stage 2 and can support a school's study of the Viking and Anglo-Saxon period through practical experiences that complement classroom learning.
It can work as an exciting introduction to a new topic, a centrepiece during the unit or an opportunity to consolidate what pupils have already learned.
If you're planning a Viking topic in a Merseyside primary school, get in touch to discuss your class sizes, requirements and available dates.
The History Guy – immersive, hands-on history brought directly to your school.