A FAMILY friendly Viking adventure with storytelling, animation, live drawing and music is coming to Cornwall this month.

Written by Jack Dean and directed by Ellie Taylor, ‘Vinland’ is inspired by the Viking sagas of Erik the Red and his family. It retells the incredible and little-known historical tale of the Vikings’ short-lived settlement in North America, where they lived for a short time in a community founded by Leif Erikson in the early 11th century, nearly 500 years before any other Europeans. With the only evidence of this being for centuries in the Icelandic sagas, historians didn’t believe this to be true until the settlement described was dug up at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland only in the 1960s and 70s.

Using lyrical storytelling, animation and live music, the family show, suitable for ages eight and up, brings the audience into a world where myth and history collide with ghosts, monsters and wild gooseberries. Jack narrates the show playing multiple characters with different voices and performs an original score as well as live sound.

Young audiences will set sail with Freydis and her son Snorri on a Viking adventure that’s fun for all the family. They will join her crew of explorers as they find out they’re not alone in this strange new land and follow Snorri as he confronts an ancient spirit set on revenge, while learning the truth about himself.

Jack said: “What fascinated me about the sagas was the way they blend historical events with things we would call fantastical. Battles and cattle trading are reported alongside demonic possessions, ghostly apparitions and giant sea-beasts. For the Vikings, all of these things were equally real. It is this world of unreliable narrators and mythical histories that we try and evoke with the storytelling, animation and music of the show.”

Jack Dean & Company is a non-profit organisation set up to help tell stories of how things could be. They collaborate with inspiring and exceptional artists to create new work across many artforms. Founded by Jack in 2020, they are committed to offering people across the UK the chance to dream of a different world, whatever the current one may hold.

The show will be hosted by Endelienta, in St Endellion, near Wadebridge, at 2pm on Saturday, February 26 (see endelienta.org.uk), before moving on to Harrowbarrow Village Hall, near Callington, at 4pm on Sunday, February 27 (see harrowbarrow-hall.edan.io).