The Vikings: Myth vs. Fact - Anglophenia Ep 40

Watch this wonderful and claryfying  video about the Vikings and do the following exercises:

1.- Mark the following sentences as True or False:
- The Viking invasions occurred between 1800 and 1150 AD.
- Over 2,000 people left Scandinavia then.
-They made London their capital.
- Alfred the Great  used secret war tactics to beat the Vikings.
- Alfred stole food from the Vikings.
- After the war a treaty was signed.
-The Vikings were in all class of weapons and helmet with horns.
- They preferred to fight on foot.
- They were extremely brutal.
- The Vikings didn't look after their hygiene so much.
- Wealthy Viking women had the right to  request divorce.
- The Vikings didn't influence the English language.
- Odin possessed a magic belt.
- Freya was male.
-There are no Vikings nowadays.

2.- Watch the video again and answer the following questions.
- Why did the Vikings leave their homeland?
- How did Alfred the Great  manage to beat the Vikings?
- What was arranged when the treaty was signed?
- What was captured king Edmund used for?
-What happened to the archibishop of Canterbury?
- What is the "blood eagle"?
- How do we know the Vikings looked after their appearance?
- Why did the Viking women have more freedom than other women of their time?
-  Why would they change the names of the places they settled in?
- What was Odin associated with?

Martin Luther King

February is the Black History Month in the USA. Click here do do an interactive activity related to" I Have a Dream"  speech, which was delivered on August 26, 1963

Shakespeare: fact files

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was ____________ in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire and was __________a few days later on 26 April 1564. His father, John Shakespeare, was a glove maker and wool merchant and his mother, Mary Arden, was the daughter of a __________landowner from Wilmcote, South Warwickshire. It is ___________ Shakespeare was educated at the local King Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford.

Marriage
The next documented event in Shakespeare’s life is his marriage at the age of 18 to Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a local farmer, on November 28, 1582. She was eight years ________ than him and their first child, Susanna, was born six months after their wedding. Two years later, the couple had twins, Hamnet and Judith, but their son died when he was 11 years old.
Again, a gap in the records ___________ some scholars to refer to Shakespeare’s life between 1585 and 1592 as 'the lost years'. By the time he reappears again, ___________ in a London _________- , Shakespeare has made his way to London without his family and is already working in the theatre.

Acting career
Having gained ____________ as an actor and ___________Shakespeare had clearly ruffled a few feathers along the way – contemporary critic, Robert Green, described him in the 1592 pamphlet as an, "upstart Crow".
As well as belonging to its pool of actors and playwrights, Shakespeare was one of the __________ partners of the Lord Chamberlain's Company (renamed the King's Company when James succeeded to the throne), whose actors included the famous Richard Burbage. The company acquired interests in two theatres in the Southwark area of London near the banks of the Thames - the Globe and the Blackfriars.
In 1593 and 1594, Shakespeare’s first poems, 'Venus and Adonis' and 'The Rape of Lucrece', were published and he _________ them to his patron, Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton. It is __________  Shakespeare also wrote most of his sonnets at this time.

Playwright

Shakespeare was prolific, with records of his first plays beginning to appear in 1594, from which time he produced __________two a year until around 1611. His hard work quickly paid off, with signs that he was beginning to prosper emerging soon after the ___________ of his first plays. By 1596 Shakespeare’s father, John had been granted a coat of arms and it’s probable that Shakespeare had commissioned them, paying the fees himself. A year later he bought New Place, a large house in Stratford.
His earlier plays were mainly _________and __________  such as 'Henry VI', 'Titus Andronicus', 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', 'The Merchant of Venice' and 'Richard II'. The tragedy, 'Romeo and Juliet', was also published in this period. By the last years of Elizabeth I's reign Shakespeare was well established as a famous poet and playwright and was called upon to __________ several of his plays before the Queen at court. In 1598 the author Francis Meres described Shakespeare as England’s _________ writer in comedy and tragedy.
In 1602 Shakespeare's continuing success enabled him to move to upmarket Silver Street, near where the Barbican is now situated, and he was living here when he wrote some of his greatest __________such as 'Hamlet', 'Othello', 'King Lear' and 'Macbeth'.

Final years
Shakespeare spent the last five years of his life in New Place in Stratford. He _________ on 23 April 1616 at the age of 52 and was buried in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. He left his property to the male heirs of his eldest daughter, Susanna. He also bequeathed his 'second-best bed' to his wife. It is not known what _____________ this gesture had, although the couple had lived primarily apart for 20 years of their marriage.
The first collected edition of his works was ______________in 1623 and is known as 'the First Folio'.



 COMEDIES         MANAGING         SIGNIFICANCE       BAPTISED        PUBLICATION        TRAGEDIES    WELL-TO-DO      THOUGHT       LIKELY           LEADS    PUBLISHED PLAYWRIGHT      MENTIONED          DEDICATED  PAMPHLET          DIED    PERFORM   BORN        OLDER    RECOGNITION      ROUGHLY       HISTORIES        GREATEST


HERE YOU HAVE THE KEY

Captain Scott

Read the text and complete the chart below with a word from the list that comes after the text. Every word can only be used ONCE. There are five words that you do not need to use. Question 0 has been answered as an example.

Robert Falcon Scott (1868 – 1912)

‘Scott was a naval officer and explorer, who died 0) __________ to be the first to reach the South Pole.
Robert Falcon Scott was born on 6 June 1868 in Devonport. He became a naval cadet at the age of 13 and served on a number of Royal Navy ships in the 1880s and 1890s. He attracted the notice of the Royal Geographical Society, which appointed him to command the National Antarctic Expedition of 1901-1904. The expedition – which included Ernest Shackleton – reached 1) __________ south than anyone before them and Scott returned to Britain a national hero. He had caught the exploring ­­­­2) __________ and began to plan an expedition to be the first to reach the South Pole. He spent years 3) __________ funds for the trip.
The whaling ship Terra Nova left Cardiff, Wales in June 1910 and the expedition set 4) __________ from base the following October, with mechanical sledges, ponies and dogs. However, the sledges and ponies could not 5) __________ with the conditions and the expedition carried on without them, through appalling 6) ____________ and increasingly tough terrain. In mid December, the dog teams turned back, leaving the rest to face the ascent of the Beardmore Glacier and the polar plateau. By January 1912, only five 7) __________: Scott, Wilson, Oates, Bowers and Evans.
On 17 January, they reached the pole, only to find that a Norwegian party led by Roald Amundsen, had 8) __________ them there. They started the 1,500 km journey back. Evans died in mid-February. By March, Oates was suffering from severe 9) __________ and, knowing he was holding back his companions, walked out into the freezing conditions never to be seen again. The remaining three men died of starvation and exposure in their tent on 29 March 1912. They were in fact only 20 km from a pre-arranged supply depot.
Eight months later, a search party found the tent, the bodies and Scott’s diary. The bodies were 10) __________ under the tent, with a cairn of ice and snow to mark the spot.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/scott_of_antarctic.shtml

          ATTEMPTING   COPE                  OUT                    STAYED
BEATEN             FROSTBITE        RAISING            UP
BUG                    FURTHER           REMAINED       WEATHER
BURIED              LED                     RISING               WON

0) ATTEMPTING

Robin hood's grave dug up

Read the text and complete the chart below with a word from the list that comes after the text. Every word can only be used ONCE. There are FIVE words that you do not need to use. Question 0 has been answered as an example.

ROBIN HOOD’S GRAVE ‘DUG UP’

The bones of legendary 0) __________ Robin Hood may have been dug up in the mid-18th Century, according to a history buff.
Author Richard Rutherford-Moore, who has published two books about Robin Hood, bases the 1) __________ on research and a series of experiments with a bow and arrow.
According to most Robin Hood legends, the 2) __________ brigand determined his own burial site by shooting an arrow from his death bed.
He is said to have died in the gatehouse of Kirklees Priory, in West Yorkshire.
A monument in the privately owned 3) __________ is said to mark Robin Hood’s grave, but Mr Rutherford-Moore says it is impossible the bandit’s final arrow could have travelled the full 650 metres from the gatehouse.
Using measurements of the old priory building and his knowledge of 4) __________ in the 13th Century, Mr Rutherford-Moore fired 20 “test arrows” to re-enact the event.
He 5) __________ the experiment near his home in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, because it was unsafe to do so at Kirklees.
The tests were based on research and a number of “6) __________ assumptions”, such as the position of the former priory building relative to the bed, the type of bow being used and Robin Hood’s health at the time.
Based on his shots, Mr Rutherford-Moore believes he determined the probable arrow 7) __________ site to within a five-metre radius.
8) __________ research has shown bones were removed from an unmarked grave at that spot during estate improvement work in the mid-18th Century, he says.
The 9) __________ of those bones is unknown.
So if these bones were uncovered, were they the remains of history’s most famous bandit?
Earlier this year, a Cardiff-based academic announced that Robin Hood never existed, basing his conclusion on 20 years of study.
The idea of finding Robin Hood’s bones sounds 10) __________ and, by Mr Rutherford-Moore’s own admission, some of his research is based on legends dating back hundreds of years.
But it is also founded on legitimate research and the bones found at Kirklees 250 years ago may have been significant, he says.
Mr Rutherford-Moore says: “Bones were found when they were laying a lead pipe… and they are at the exact spot where I calculated an arrow would have landed.
“That is a pretty big coincidence.”
However, like any tale about Robin Hood, the truth will never be known for sure.
“You can never totally prove it, but people can make their own conclusions.”
Adapted from © BBC 2012

          AILING               EDUCATED        LANDING          REALISTIC
ARCHERY           FANCIFUL          MEASUREMENTS   SETTING
CARRIED            FORMER            OUTLAW           SUBSEQUENT
CLAIM                GROUNDS         PERFORMED    WHEREABOUTS

0. OUTLAW