Vikings from the British Museum gives cinema audiences an exclusive private view of the BP exhibition “Vikings: Life and Legend”, the British Museum’s first major exhibition on the Vikings in over 30 years.
Introduced by historians and broadcasters Michael Wood and Bettany Hughes, and featuring Exhibition Curator Gareth Williams and British Museum Director Neil MacGregor, Vikings from the British Museum will take the viewer through the exhibition, getting up close to objects and exploring the global contacts of the Vikings — ships and swords, burials and beliefs, language and legacy.
The exhibition and cinema event focus on the core period of the Viking Age – the late 8th to the early 11th century AD. The extraordinary Viking expansion from the Scandinavian homelands during this era created a cultural network from the Caspian Sea to the North Atlantic, and from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean. Warfare and warrior identity are at the center 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, armor and weapons. But there is also fine jewelry, sculpture and metalwork which was traded as well as raided across the globe.
At the center of the exhibition and cinema event is Roskilde 6, the longest Viking ship ever found. Kristiane Straetkvern, conservator at the National Museum of Denmark, will talk about the exciting find, excavation and conservation of the ship timbers found in a Danish harbour. Yachtsman Robin Knox-Johnston will relive his transatlantic voyage testing Viking navigation. Craftsmen from the National Maritime Museum in Cornwall will construct the prow of a Viking ship to show what made these vessels so spectacular. A replica ship will be installed in front of the Museum and a Viking burial will take place, culminating in a theatrical boat burial lit by a ritual procession of flaming torches carried by Viking warriors.
This special feature will also explore how through our languages, our poetry, our 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 Viking objects in the exhibition, the Vikings from the British Museum cinema event will be a reminder of how the Vikings have shaped our modern lives.