It’s all going to get a bit sack and pillagie next year at the British Museum with news of their big Spring 2014 exhibition,Vikings: Life and Legend. While the truth about Vikings has been on display in the UK pretty permanently since the 1980s thanks to the Jorvik Viking Centre in York, the upcoming exhibition at the British Museum will be their first on the subject in more than 30 years.
Opening on the 6th March 2014 and running on until 22nd June 2014, the exhibition is clearly going to be a very popular event, especially with Horrible History loving kids everywhere. The British Museum’s usual opening hours will apply, 10am to 5:30pm Monday to Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, plus the late night opening on Fridays until 8:30pm.
Tickets for the Viking exhibition are £16.50 for adults and entrance is free to under 16s. Students and anyone between 16 and 18 years old pay £13 and there’s a group ticket for more that 10 people that works out at £13 too. It’s also £13 for the unemployed or disabled persons with free entry for their assistant (disabled persons, not unemployed. That would be weird) and National Art Pass holders pay just £8.25, the lucky lucky bar stewards. Tickets are available to book online at the British Museum website.
The exhibition will contain all manner of relics and artefacts to show the life and explain the legend that has come to be associated with Vikings. However, the most impressive will undoubtedly be the 37m long Viking warship that will be taking centre stage in the exhibition. Known as Roskilde 6, it’s the longest Viking vessel ever discovered and dates back to around 1025AD. It’s the first time the warship has landed on UK shores possibly in just under a thousand years, if it ever made it over here while it was active and destructive.
Looking at the main time period of the Viking Age, which ran from around the latter half of the 8th century to the early 11th century, Vikings: Life and Legend highlights the vast network that the marauding seafaring warriors built up during their expansion. Taking in everything in between the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caspian Sea West to East and the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean Sea North to South, the Vikings spread out over a vast range, which is a big part of the exhibition.
Warfare was at the heart of the Viking culture, along with trade and both were built on the strength of the Scandinavian shipbuilding skills. However, the Vikings didn’t always have it their own way, as the exhibition’s feature on the mass grave of executed warriors on the Dorset coast shows.
With weapons and spoils, ship relics and far flung treasures, the Vikings: Life and Legend exhibition plans to paint the true picture of the Nordic fury.
