Viking Summer Camp!

"Had I thought you might live for ever, I'd have reared you in my wool-basket. But lifetimes are shaped by what will be, not by where you are."

These wise words were spoken by Earl Sigurd Hlodvirsson's mother to her son before giving him the Raven Banner and are worth bearing in mind when your son puts on his first shirt of chain mail.

Today we went to the first day of the Orkney History 'Viking Village'. Orkney History are a young group of historians, archaeologists and actors who run Ghost and History walks around Kirkwall. The village is a new venture and at the moment it shows a Viking Summer camp, a small group of tents based on designs found in the Gokstad Ship burial in Norway. Vikings show you around and tell you about the vikings in Orkney, daily life, slaves, warfare and other vikingly business. They hope that it will be a success and in the next year or so they will be able to expand and build a viking longhouse.

We had a great time. The boys got to try out various armoury and discuss the merits of a sword versus an axe. Campbell was chuffed to bits when told if he could lift the chain mail shirt he could try it on. As you can see he did manage it, but very quickly realised that a chain shirt is very, very heavy and shortly after I took this pic he started to keel over.

We tried to sell the boys as slaves for the Summer, but the vikings seemed a bit scared by this prospect... I can't blame them really.