Vikings were “very diverse” and not all white, according to a guide to teaching schoolchildren.
Tutors placed in schools by The Brilliant Club, an educational charity, have been urged to ditch “Eurocentric” ideas in favour of a “decolonised narrative” that moves subjects away from a Western focus.
A guide produced by the charity suggests ditching the idea that the Vikings were a “homogenous community of blonde Scandinavians”.
Instead, tutors are told to consider teaching that “Vikings were not all white”.
The guidance, intended to make lessons more “relatable” for pupils, adds that Vikings were “a very diverse group of people” with “diverse religious beliefs” and urges the tutors to consider that “some Vikings became practising Muslims”.This claim appears to rely on Islamic goods being found in the graves of some Vikings, who traded with the Islamic world.
Read more: Vikings were not all white, pupils to be told
