Bringing Vikings Back to the East Midlands

Vikings and the Viking Age are currently highly visible in popular culture, generally in forms which continue to emphasise the age-old views of them as glamorous, violent and somewhat larger than life. What does not often find its way into the popular view is that the Viking Age was a time, like today, of migration, diaspora, and cultural and religious encounters between the Vikings and various regions of England.

Over 1000 years ago, the East Midlands was the site of just such encounters as Vikings came into the region, not only as invaders, but also as traders, farmers and settlers. They left a clear mark in the place-names of the region, while material traces of their existence are gradually emerging through archaeological excavation, metal detectorist and other finds, and a better understanding of early medieval sculpture in the region. Put together, the evidence demonstrates how the immigrants found their place in the society of the time, and how the two groups negotiated their religious, cultural and linguistic differences, ultimately to form new communities.

Bringing Vikings Back to the East Midlands will explore these issues in ways which resonate with the experiences of the modern inhabitants of the region, reaching out to different communities through existing and extensive engagement with schools (enabling access to parents and carers who might not otherwise engage with museums/exhibitions), community groups and museum partners across the region. Using the high profile event of the British Museum's travelling exhibition 'Vikings' (at the University of Nottingham Museum from November 2017 to March 2018) we will build new user communities, audiences and heritage sector capability for the region's Viking heritage.

To achieve this, working closely with the University Museum, we will shape the exhibition and its public programme to engage our audiences with:
1) The regional artefacts in the British Museum's exhibition, as well as artefacts held in local and regional museums. Handling sessions with museum-quality replicas, and an online gallery of the relevant holdings of local museums, will provide direct and easy access to an understanding of the Viking Age in the East Midlands. In partnership with Blueaxe Reproductions, a programme of craft events and talks will enable creative practitioners and the wider public to explore Viking Age designs.
2) The hidden legacy of the Vikings in place-names, inscriptions, poetry to elaborate the history of the East Midlands. Public talks and field trips for KE partners will demonstrate the legacy of the Vikings in the region and the assets that might be drawn on to retell its history to visitors. Nottingham's new status as a UNESCO City of Literature provides a platform for local, national and international outreach.
3) The potential of the region's Viking heritage to attract new audiences for museums and to the region. Working with KE partners we will explore how Viking heritage might be used as part of the region's cultural offer.

The long term legacy of the project will be key resources which ensure that Vikings and their Age will continue to inspire inhabitants of and visitors to the East Midlands. These will include:
A web-based illustrated inventory of Viking Age objects from the various museums of the East Midlands which will be available free of charge for public use and which will provide an important resource for users such as heritage professionals, researchers, school teachers and pupils and the wider public interested in the Viking period.
A web-based gallery of designs based on Viking Age artefacts, provided as scalable templates in the public domain, enabling creativity through historical accuracy.
A community of heritage and tourism professionals and researchers in the region with a new awareness of the region's Viking heritage potential in terms of their own collections and sites, and their place in a wider network of collections and sites.

There has never before been an exhibition in Nottingham focusing on the Vikings and the Viking Age. The proposed project will impact on the design and execution of the exhibition and will result in a public programme that targets the engagement of new audiences and user communities.

The project will enhance and develop the local and regional dimension of the BM exhibition through:

1) loans of objects from the collaborating regional museums which place the touring exhibition in a regional context;

2) a collection of replicas of the most relevant local and regional items for handling sessions during the exhibition (these will continue to serve this purpose in the region after the exhibition);

3) an online multimedia archive, again with a strong regional focus, for museum professionals, researchers, schools and the wide public (this will continue to serve this purpose after the exhibition);

4) a short film to allow remote access to the exhibition


In the public programme the project will proactively reach out to new audiences and user communities who may not have a previous interest in or understanding of the Vikings in the region through:

5) public engagement activities focused on topics relevant to the region (place-names, poetry, inscriptions) and to contemporary society (migration, diaspora and cultural integration), filling out the story told by the artefacts in the exhibition;

6) a series of craft events to support creative practitioners in developing new products drawing on accurate Viking designs and techniques. This will be complemented by a web-based gallery of free-to-use image templates.

7) a series of 6 KE workshops on the collections, sites and linguistic assets of the region together with heritage and tourism professionals in order to explore how greater use of the region's Viking heritage for the visitor economy might be achieved.

Key beneficiaries:

General public - the project will deliver a programme of tailored events that speak specifically to the region's Viking heritage and themes that inform daily lives. In highly multicultural cities like Nottingham, Derby and Leicester, the transformative effects of the project will be to link events of 1000 years ago with the absolutely contemporary topics of migration, diaspora and encounters between people with different languages, cultures and religions. Using platforms such as Nottingham's status as a UNESCO City of Literature will allow the project to widen public engagement with the Viking Age, for example by bringing poetry into the public understanding of the period. The poetry sessions will aim to draw in new audiences with more of a literary than a historical/archaeological interest.

Creative practitioners - the project will deliver opportunities for hands-on involvement in Viking-inspired crafts and will leave a legacy of design templates that the creative sector can use free of charge.

Museum and tourism professionals - the project will enable a more detailed understanding of the Viking period and the development potential of the Viking heritage assets in the region to attract visitors (both local and inbound). The web-based inventory of Viking assets in the region will enable museum professionals to identify and contextualise artefacts and understand the non-artefactual aspects of the Viking Age.

Student body at Nottingham and within the M3C Doctoral Training Partnership - we will offer students a variety of opportunities to become involved in the project, including the chance to do a project-based dissertation or placements based on the exhibition and/or the associated public engagement activities. This will be an important step towards a career in the heritage industry or education for these students.