Schoolchildren will be taught that Vikings “were not all white” and that some were Muslims, according to recommendations from an educational charity calling on teachers to abandon “Eurocentric” narratives, according to GB News.
The Brilliant Club has instructed teachers working in schools to abandon traditional narratives in favour of a “decolonised” approach that moves away from a Western orientation.
The guide, prepared by the charity, suggests abandoning the idea of Vikings as a “homogeneous community of fair-haired Scandinavians.” Instead, teachers are advised to explain that Vikings were a “very diverse group of people” with “diverse religious beliefs.”
The guide recommends that teachers take into account that “some Vikings became practising Muslims,” as Islamic artefacts believed to have been acquired through trade have been found in some Viking graves.
The charity says that “it is important to provide students with material that they can relate to and that is familiar to them.” The latest large-scale study of Viking DNA, conducted by the University of Cambridge in 2020, showed that the genetic diversity of Scandinavians originated from other parts of Europe and the territory of modern Russia.
The guide aims to make lessons more “relatable” for students.
The charity’s approach contrasts a “decolonised” narrative with what it describes as a “Eurocentric and colonised” version of history. The guide emphasises that making courses more accessible is not simply a matter of “adding symbolic figures of black people to the curriculum.”
Trying to change Vikings’ image
This is not the only recent case where scholars have made some pretty unexpected claims about the Vikings.
In 2017, Swedish archaeologist Annika Larsson and her colleagues at Uppsala University suggested that some Vikings in the 9th and 10th centuries were Muslims.
This hypothesis is supported by a previously discovered fragment of silk fabric embroidered with the name of Allah and the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, Ali ibn Abu Talib. According to scientists, if there were Muslims among the Vikings, this could explain the popularity of silk in Scandinavia at that time.
Earlier, researchers from the Danish Technical University suggested that many members of this warlike civilisation wore swords for decorative purposes, and last September, Oxford geneticists announced that Vikings were “cat people” and were sometimes even buried with their pets.
