From 8 February until 5 June, a new exhibition at Shrewsbury’s Museum and Art Gallery will lift the lid on how the Scandinavian invaders lived – and died.
The JORVIK Group’s ‘Valhalla – Life and Death in Viking Britain’ exhibition brings together key Viking burial findings, objects that explore everyday life in Britain a thousand years ago, and the latest archaeological research techniques.
Visitors can explore evidence from York and Shropshire, including the burials of a woman and a man and objects that relate everyday life in Viking-age Britain, and children can experience a special hands-on area that uses puppetry and play to find out about Norse myths and sagas – and they can write their name in runes, too.
Sarah Maltby of York Archaeological Trust explains, “This latest pathological research gives us clues about the lives that those people led. Combine this with osteological analysis and we can tell the sex, age and height of a person, depending on how much of the skeleton was preserved in the ground. The research can also give us clues as to how that person may have died – whether from disease, injury or from natural causes.
Find out more by visiting shrewsburymuseum.org.uk/events/.