VK-SHOE.pdf

Viking Shoe Kit

Product Code

VK-SHOE

Contents

1 finished shoe

1 unfinished shoe

Bone needles (pack of 3)

Twine

Introduction

An introduction to early medieval leatherwork.

Leather

Leather and animal skins have been used for clothes and shoes for thousands of

years. Almost all animal skins can be turned into leather. Skins were obtained in two

ways; from hunting and from killing domesticated animals.

Once the animal has been killed then it has to be skinned. The skin, which is also

known as a hide, is stretched and all the hairs are removed from the outside.

The fat is scraped from the inside. You are then left with a skin that will rot and smell

if not treated. To turn the skin into leather you need to tan it. This is done by putting

the skin into different vats of water that have increasingly greater amounts of oak

bark added to the vats. The vats are then heated to get tannin out of the oak bark

and this mixes with the water and creates a dark liquid that soaks into the skins

changing them into leather. (N.B. This is a very simplified account of the process).

Leather Objects

All types of things have been made from leather. A few examples are bags, belts,

leather armour (bernies), sheaths for knives, scabbards for swords, quivers for

arrows, cups and water vessels. Without doubt, however, the most important things

made from leather are shoes*. Early mediaeval shoes had no grips on the bottoms

and no heels.

Some shoes were very complicated whilst others were made from a single piece of

leather. Most shoes were stitched inside out then turned, so the nice side of the

TTS-Group Ltd, Park Lane Business Park, Park Lane, Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, NG17 9LE

Tel: 0800 318686 Web: www.tts-shopping.com Email: sales@tts-group.co.uk

Viking Shoe Kit

leather was facing out but the stitches were inside the shoe. This was called a turned

-shoe.

* A pair of shoes can be purchased to accompany this leaflet, with the stitching on

the outside, though the design could be used for a turned - shoe.

Suggestions

This resource is great for encouraging children to look at the way people lived in

Viking settlements and the different activities that may take part there (related to

section 2 & 7 of QCA unit 6C). Understanding can be developed more through role-

play where these shoes can be used to highlight trade and encourage children to

think about how Vikings may have felt producing these shoes all day, how happy

they were to be at the final stages of a long process, were they happy after travelling

all this way to be sitting and making shoes?

The shoes also illustrate the high level of craftsmanship the Vikings held; it’s a highly

interactive way to introduce construction and ways of living. With craft and

construction being so important this could lead onto investigation into the building of

long boats that Vikings used to travel so far from heir homelands (section 4 of QCA

unit 6C). This also highlights the way that Vikings great craftsmanship was integral in

their travelling and thus their invading and settling.

TTS-Group Ltd, Park Lane Business Park, Park Lane, Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, NG17 9LE

Tel: 0800 318686 Web: www.tts-shopping.com Email: sales@tts-group.co.uk

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