The project secretariat was contacted in January by Mrs Christian Duckworth, who is a teacher for the youngest classes in this Catholic school St Mary & St Andrew's Primary School in Barton, near Preston in England. She got the idea for Erik after a visit to the Viking Ship Museum. “I was so sorry that my schoolchildren weren’t there to see the impressive ships and so I had to find some way for the children to travel here”, explains Mrs Christian Duckworth.
Erik is a miniature Viking – a 30 cm high felt doll. When he first saw the light of day in 2001, the children in the third-year class found out what clothes the Vikings wore and gave him trousers, tunic, a leather belt, and a beautiful green cloak with the characteristic brooches the Vikings fastened their cloaks with.
The idea was that Erik should be sent off in the footsteps of the Vikings and send pictures and e-mails home to the children. Via a group of Scandinavian teachers, he went to Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland. He visited Viking sites, including the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Kaupang in Norway, Nassaq in Greenland, and L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.
The children made a travel map to go with Erik’s pictures and wrote down all the information they received from Erik’s hosts. “The children were particularly interested in the traces the Vikings left behind in Scandinavia, and they began to look for traces in their own local area”, says Mrs Christian Duckworth.
The map got bigger and bigger and filled a whole corridor in the end. Then the children started writing to Scandinavian schoolchildren in the towns Erik had visited so they could make a dictionary of English words with Scandinavian origins.
The pictures Erik had taken on his travels were also put on a CD and sent to the Scandinavian classes as teaching material.
Now Erik is ready for a new adventure. "The new third-year class had heard about Erik from their older brothers and sisters, and when I told them about the Sea Stallion’s voyage, they immediately asked if he could go too”, says Mrs Christian Duckworth.
The plan is to follow the Sea Stallion’s voyage on the website and make a blog about Erik in IT lessons. In their History lessons, the children will write small books about Erik’s journey and in Design and Technology classes they will learn about boat-building.
When we got an e-mail about this at the secretariat, we couldn’t resist the opportunity of giving the children the travel experience involved in the Sea Stallion’s voyage. It is a fantastic idea appealing to children to use their imagination, become explorers themselves, and create their own history lessons. Now all we need to do is find a responsible and enthusiastic member of the crew to look after Erik and take pictures for the children.
Erik has been such a big success that St Mary & St Andrew’s school now has a Roman soldier and a teddy bear that they have also sent out into the world.