News / Vikings on screen
A CINEMATIC version of the British Museum’s ‘Vikings: life and legend’ is to be screened at Mareel on two successive Sundays.
There will be 3pm screenings on both 15 and 22 June for what is billed as an “exclusive guided tour” of the BP-sponsored exhibition, the first major work the British Museum has put together on the Vikings in over 30 years.
Introduced by the museum’s director, Neil MacGregor, ‘Vikings Live from the British Museum’ presented by the celebrated television historians Michael Wood and Bettany Hughes.
Exhibition curator Gareth Williams and leading world experts will take the audience through the exhibition, getting up close to objects and exploring the global contacts, ships and swords, burials and beliefs of the Viking Age as well as examining the Vikings’ enduring language and legacy.
It focuses on the core period of the Viking Age, from the late eighth century to the early 11th century. The extraordinary Viking expansion from the Scandinavian homelands during the era created a cultural network with contacts from the Caspian Sea to the North Atlantic, and from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean.
Warfare and warrior identity are at the heart of what it meant to be a Viking and contact with other lands was often violent. Objects include recently excavated skeletons from a mass grave of executed Vikings in Dorset, armour and weapons. But there is also fine jewellery, sculpture and metalwork which was traded as well as raided across the globe.
At the centre of the exhibition is Roskilde 6, the longest Viking ship ever found. Kristiane Straetkvem, conservator at the National Museum of Denmark will talk about the exciting find, excavation and conservation of the ship timbers found in a Danish harbor, while renowned yachtsman Robin Knox-Johnston relives his transatlantic voyage testing Viking navigation.
During the screening craftsmen from the National Maritime Museum will construct the prow of a great Viking ship to show what made these vessels so spectacular – built for speed, endurance and shaped for terrifying beauty. A replica ship is installed in front of the m useum and a Viking burial starts to take shape, culminating in an elaborate theatrical boat burial lit by a ritual procession of flaming torches carried by Viking warriors.
The screenings also explore how through our langauges, poetry, names and place names – even our DNA – we can see how many of us are connected across time to the Vikings.
With practical demonstrations and “stunning” close-up photography of the Viking objects in the exhibition, the screenings of ‘Vikings Live from the British Museum’ promise to be “a reminder of how the Vikings have shaped our modern lives”.
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