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Dyflin, the former Viking village that was built over 1,000 years ago, provided the foundations for modern-day Dublin. The Dublin Viking Adventure enables you to board a Viking trade ship and negotiate the stormy seas while braving the inclement weather to explore Dublin Docks as they once were ten centuries ago.
Visitors are taught about the daily lives of the Vikings while seeing animal skins, weapons and tools that can typically be found in Viking dwellings. They are also told about the Vikings’ slow conversion to Christianity and shown the excavated Viking settlement at Wood Quay, which is considered to be the most important find of its type outside Scandinavia. A life-size reproduction of a 30-metre long Viking longship may be admired in the Feast Hall as a short audiovisual presentation will provide you with many insights about the Vikings’ shipbuilding and navigational capabilities. A comprehensive presentation and interpretation of the archaeological discoveries of recent excavations in Temple Bar is available in Dublin’s Viking Museum.
The centre makes for a highly enjoyable and educational experience and teachers’ packs are offered along with worksheets on both a primary as well as a secondary level. Among many things visitors are also told about how archaeologists painstakingly excavate, date and conserve the artefacts they find. The Dublin Viking Adventure is to be found in the Temple Bar district and opens from Monday to Saturday.
A different sort of Viking-themed adventure is the less subtle Viking Splash Tour. This will see you seated aboard an amphibious truck that’s done up to look like a longboat. The costumed Viking captain will talk about how the Vikings first settled in Dublin as the vehicle drives through the ancient parts of the city. The highlight of the trip will then be when the vehicle dives straight into the waters of the historic Grand Canal Basin and becomes a boat.
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