The Sword of Summer

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Which Norse gods can you name? What media have you read, watched, or played that involves stories about the Norse gods?

Teaching Suggestion: Students’ prior knowledge about Norse mythology is likely to vary widely. After students respond to this prompt, they might use these or similar resources to gain background knowledge to read The Sword of Summer effectively. Following this, students may enjoy discussing aloud the works, reading materials, and games they have encountered that involve Norse gods and Norse mythology and analyzing their shared characteristics.

• This article offers a succinct introduction to Norse mythology, gods, and goddesses.
• This 4-minute video provides a brief overview of a wide variety of Norse gods and goddesses. To connect with the content of the video, students might note 3 gods or goddesses with whom they are familiar and 3 that are unfamiliar but intriguing.

2. What is Ragnarok? What does this concept tell us about the worldview of the Norse peoples who believed in it?

Teaching Suggestion: Many students’ ideas about Ragnarok will be based on pop culture and thus may include some accurate and some inaccurate information. Students may also struggle to understand how this concept reveals key ideas about the old Norse culture. Accordingly, students might consider resources like these for background information before they attempt to respond to this prompt.

• This 2-minute video from History depicts the events of Ragnarok.
• This library guide explores how the concept of Ragnarok is related to the Old Norse worldview.

Short Activity

Create a trading card for one of the Norse gods or goddesses. Illustrate your card with a picture of the god or goddess on one side; list key facts about them on the reverse. Include information about their powers, their role in the Norse pantheon, and traits and events for which they are most well-known.

Teaching Suggestion: If your students have individual access to the internet, this activity can be completed quickly, using online images or clip art and a card-making site like the one linked below. If this is not feasible in your classroom, students might hand-draw their cards with a bit more time. Sharing the cards and comparing work will offer students useful repetition of information related to Norse mythology and help consolidate this information in memory. Students can share their work in person through small groups, or, if you have access to a class website, by posting their work in the online classroom.

• This site from NCTE’s Read Write Think offers students a way to make trading cards online.
• This site offers key facts about many of the Norse gods and goddesses.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students with visual disabilities may not be able to complete this assignment as written. A reasonable alternative might be for these students to write a paragraph of key facts about their chosen god or goddess. Students with aphantasia are likely to need access to reference images in order to create their cards; if your class is completing this activity without internet access, you might print some reference pictures for these students to consult as they draw.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the text.

Why might stories about seemingly ordinary people who discover that they are secretly extraordinary be so popular? If you were to discover that you have an amazing secret identity or set of skills, what would you want it to be, and why?

Teaching Suggestion: In The Sword of Summer, Magnus is a seemingly ordinary 16-year-old who discovers that he is the son of a Norse god. Besides highlighting a common literary motif for students, this prompt will generate interest in the novel by asking students to connect Magnus’s experience with their own fantasies about having an extraordinary identity.