Year 4 - Create Viking kennings

In English, Year 4 have been creating their own kennings to describe Viking objects, such as longships, swords and shields. This is particularly appropriate for our topic this term, since kennings actually originated in Anglo-Saxon and Norse language. In a kenning, an object is described in a two word phrase which is linked with a hyphen, such as ‘whale-road’ instead of ‘sea’. Some kennings can be more obscure than others, almost becoming a riddle. When the children developed a series of kennings to create a poem, they thought carefully about how to order these. They soon realised that the most obvious clues were best left until last, in order to keep the reader thinking and engaged. Discussing ideas and acting out movements helped the children to think of powerful verbs to show what the Viking objects could do. They also used a thesaurus to improve their vocabulary further. Below are some examples of the great kennings they created. Can you guess which Viking object these all describe?

Ship-decorator

Round-facer

Damage-taker

Army-ambusher

Rival-ruiner

Opponent-crusher

Body-obstructor

Arrow-interceptor

Sword-deflector