Life in a Viking Village
An information text about how ordinary Vikings lived, with eight questions on finding facts, word meanings and explaining why.
Read the passage
Who were the Vikings?
The Vikings came from Scandinavia, in the north of Europe. They lived more than a thousand years ago. Some Vikings were famous for attacking other lands. Most, however, were farmers who worked hard to feed their families.
The longhouse
A Viking family lived together in a long wooden house. The walls were often made from planks or from twigs covered in mud. The roof was thatched with straw or covered with turf. There were no chimneys. A fire burned in the middle of the floor to give heat and light, and the smoke escaped through a hole in the roof.
Daily work
Everyone in the village had jobs to do. The men and women grew oats and barley, and they looked after cows, sheep and pigs. Families also caught fish in the rivers and the sea. Women made clothes from wool, and the blacksmith made tools and nails from iron.
Ships and trade
The Vikings built fast, strong ships called longships. A longship had a sail and a row of oars, so it could travel across the sea and up rivers. Some Vikings sailed to other countries to trade. They swapped furs, wool and iron for silver, silk and spices.
Answer the questions
- Where did the Vikings come from? (1 mark)
- What were the roofs of Viking houses covered with? (1 mark)
- Find and copy one word from the first section that means “fighting”. (1 mark)
- Why was there a fire in the middle of the floor of a longhouse? (1 mark)
- How did the smoke get out of a longhouse? (1 mark)
- The text says that most Vikings were farmers. What evidence in the “Daily work” section supports this? (2 marks)
- Why do you think a longship needed both a sail and oars? (2 marks)
- Write one sentence to sum up how most Vikings lived. (2 marks)
Answer key for parents and teachers
1. Scandinavia, in the north of Europe. (1 mark)
Finding information (2b). A fact to find in the first section.
2. Straw (thatch) or turf. (1 mark)
Finding information (2b). Finding a detail in the right section.
3. attacking (1 mark)
Word meaning (2a). Matching a word to its meaning.
4. To give heat and light. (1 mark)
Explaining from the text. The child links a fact to the reason for it.
5. Through a hole in the roof, because there were no chimneys. (1 mark)
Explaining from the text. Two facts in the same section have to be joined.
6. They grew oats and barley and looked after cows, sheep and pigs. (2 marks)
Inference (2d). The child checks a general claim against the details in the text.
7. The sail used the wind for fast sea travel and the oars let them move when there was no wind or on narrow rivers (any sensible reason). (2 marks)
Inference (2d). The text gives the facts but not the reason, so the child has to work it out.
8. One mark for farming or hard work and one for family or village life, for example: Most Vikings were farming families who lived in wooden longhouses and worked together in their villages. (2 marks)
Summarising (2c). Choosing the key ideas from a longer text is the skill of summarising.
What this practises
Finding information (2b), Word meaning (2a), Explaining from the text, Inference (2d), Summarising (2c). The codes in brackets are the reading content domains from the national curriculum test framework. Marks and answers are a guide: accept any sensible answer that is backed up by the text.
Now try the writing task
Imagine you live in a Viking village. Write a diary entry about your day, using at least two fronted adverbials.
Aim for eight to twelve sentences. Read it back aloud together and fix anything that does not sound right.
Want feedback on your child's own writing?
You mark the worksheet yourself with the answer key. LiteracyLab AI is different: it reads what your child has written and gives specific feedback, such as what worked, one thing to try next, and a corrected version, matched to their year. The Free plan includes 3 pieces a month and needs no card.
More Year 4 worksheets
- Growing Up in Roman Britain
- The Muddy Footprints
- Where Does Rain Come From?
- The Secret in the Garden Shed
Free to print and copy for your own family or classroom. Please do not sell or republish. The passage and questions were written for LiteracyLab AI.