The genesis of Handy History began in 2019, a culmination of many converging factors.
In May of that year, I was travelling abroad as part of my NSW Premier’s History Teachers Association scholarship, researching maritime archaeology and its integration into the history classroom. My sister joined me for the last leg of my trip in the UK. With a little cajoling (she is usually more into fabric shops than history), she accompanied me to Jorvik Viking Centre in York. This was a totally immersive experience in the world of the Vikings that even those reluctant to visit would find fascinating. You climb on a cable car that takes you on a tour of a replica Viking village, built on the footprint of a real village uncovered during a 1970s excavation. All aspects are recreated, with mannequins conversing in Old Norse, and hidden aerosols pumping out the realistically foul odours of a Viking settlement.
A view of the replica Viking village at the Jorvik Viking Centre in York
Prior to this research trip, I had already started making my own Viking artefacts to use with my Year 8 classes (including a plywood shield, turn shoes, and a leather mug) and could see the benefits of using replica artefacts in the classroom. So, when my sister broached the idea of starting our own business to engage kids with history, the dots connected, and we decided to figure out our next steps on her upcoming trip to Australia.
Reunited again in October 2019, we sat down to brainstorm and decided we would make kits of replica artefacts for the history classroom. Because of our experiences over in York and the Orkney Islands, both of which have a rich Viking history, we decided to start our business with this popular topic, with goals of developing other Stage 4 topics in the future. We made a list of Viking artefacts that we could re-create, identified similar businesses, and fine-tuned our business model and plans. Within days, we had made a few trips to Spotlight and Bunnings and were working on artefact and clothing prototypes!
Wearing early viking tunic prototypes and a historically inaccurate Viking helmet!
Some of the production and development required some intense learning curves, and of course, the coronavirus pandemic meant that our rough time frames were re-written many times over the course of 2020. Global pandemics aside, it was easy to distribute the tasks between us and play to our individual skill sets, despite the long distance.
One of the most important aspects of the development was our name, but when we came up with Handy History, we knew were in business!
