Viking Village

Chris Hall outlines his plans to create a Viking village attraction in the north of the Isle of Man

Transcript

00:00So we're in the Folkvanger field at the moment. This is Meadow of the People from the goddess Freyja.

00:06This was the alternative heaven to Odin's Valhall.

00:10In this field we will be doing activities such as axe throwing and archery.

00:15There will be a small Viking farm holding over in the corner teaching traditional farming techniques.

00:21There will be a Viking boat burial out to the left where kids will be able to uncover the history from the past

00:27and see it and touch it with their hands.

00:30This is all about creating long lasting memories. We're only here for a certain amount of time

00:34and it's those memories that carry us through life so that's a great driving force in this project.

00:39From 2020 through to date we obviously put our original planning in.

00:44The last couple of years haven't been too kind with the weather

00:48which meant a lot of this ground work behind us couldn't be done because it was just too wet to do it.

00:52So we put an extension in and we've just got that for a third of three years.

00:56Recently I've mapped out in stone the outlines of where the longhouse is going to sit.

01:01The possibilities are endless of what the longhouse can be used for.

01:04The main thing is that it is used and it's used often by the community and by the island.

01:09You've got all the timber you need for construction because you've been gifted wood in a plantation up at Cornet

01:16but you need to raise I think £15,000 for equipment, transportation, process the wood before you can get started.

01:23So to keep the project on track we're really hoping to get to the point of sort of next Easter

01:28where we can open the site up to the public and say right come and build the site with us

01:32because we want everybody involved and literally put their names to the project as a permanent fixture.

01:38For us to do that we need a certain amount of logistics to be taken care of.

01:43So we need a 4x4 capable of getting up the farm tracks with a trailer

01:47for transporting the wood from the plantations down to this site.

01:51We need an old tractor to actually tow the logs out of the plantation in the first place

01:55and then once the logs are here we're going to need some tools, some safety equipment

01:59and a bandsaw mill to then process some of the timber into things like roofing shingles and so on and so forth.

02:21you