Vikings were not all white, pupils to be told
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.
The last large-scale study of Viking DNA, conducted by the University of Cambridge in 2020, suggested that diversity in Scandinavian genetics came from other parts of Europe and what is now Russia.
The Brilliant Club runs a scholarship programme that places PhD students in more than 800 schools to tutor underprivileged pupils and help them get to university. Schools can apply to receive tutoring, and PhD students can apply for paid placements in Brilliant Club schools.
It has created two 'decolonising your course' toolkits to help tutors with the courses they will deliver when working within schools. The guides present them with a preferred 'decolonised' approach narrative which is contrasted with a 'Eurocentric and colonised' version of history.
It states that there is an 'imperative to provide material to students that they can relate to and connect with … part of this should be presenting them with courses where they can see themselves represented positively'.
The guidance also stresses that making courses more relatable is not simply about 'adding token Black figures into courses'.
'Anglo-Saxon' controversy
Guidance for arts courses suggests tutors should not only teach Romanticism by referencing the great Romantic poets – including Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and Byron – but find writers who are not just 'upper-class white men'.
Tutors are also asked to consider the decolonised narrative of the spread of democracy across the world, which is defined as: 'Parliamentary democratic rule, a form of Western democracy, was exported and enforced on colonial subjects for the purpose of exploitation and domination.'
The guide makes several other suggestions for tutors, including being aware of the controversial nature of the term 'Anglo-Saxon'.
It states: 'This was not the term the people then used to refer to themselves' and adds that 'the term has 'a long history of being used in a racially charged manner'.
Alfred the Great was referred to as 'Rex Angul-Saxonum', the king of the Anglo-Saxons, in the 10th century.
The Brilliant Club has said that it is not a leading expert on decolonising, but encourages tutors to reflect on inclusive and thoughtful teaching practices.
Its guidance to tutors is in line with other 'decolonising' work, which seeks to move away from Western accounts of history and science, and away from artistic canons that are seen to privilege the creative work of Western figures.
William Shakespeare's birthplace is one of a number of sites to be 'decolonised', and the practice can also include addressing imperial history and ideas of national identity that are seen to be potentially controversial.
In 2024, the University of Nottingham removed the term 'Anglo-Saxon' from its leading course over fears that the ethnonym could play into 'nationalist narratives'.
In 2023, it emerged that Cambridge taught students that Anglo-Saxons did not exist as a distinct ethnic group, as part of efforts to undermine 'myths of nationalism'.
The terminology of 'early medieval England' is the preferred replacement for 'Anglo-Saxon' by academics concerned that the latter has become a phrase surrounding white identity used by racists, principally to describe those in the US descended from white early settlers.
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