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Maybe too late for the Viking month, but...

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  • Maybe too late for the Viking month, but...

    I read somewhere that Vikings never had helmets with horns. How exactly then became the "helmet with horns" Viking so prominent? Movies, toys, whatever, in many of them you see them wearing helmets they - probably - never had.

    Who can bring light into this mystery?

    Also, the smiley needs a change then
    Blah

  • #2
    Re: Maybe too late for the Viking month, but...

    Originally posted by BeBro
    Also, the smiley needs a change then
    If it's true, then yes. Also, we need:
    -frog
    -vomit
    -better crying
    smilies.
    THEY!!111 OMG WTF LOL LET DA NOMADS AND TEH S3D3NTARY PEOPLA BOTH MAEK BITER AXP3REINCES
    AND TEH GRAAT SINS OF THERE [DOCTRINAL] INOVATIONS BQU3ATH3D SMAL
    AND!!1!11!!! LOL JUST IN CAES A DISPUTANT CALS U 2 DISPUT3 ABOUT THEYRE CLAMES
    DO NOT THAN DISPUT3 ON THEM 3XCAPT BY WAY OF AN 3XTARNAL DISPUTA!!!!11!! WTF

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    • #3


      Here's my theory: without horns, you could never tell if you see a really cool Viking in the movies or so, or just some ordinary dark ages thug.
      Blah

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      • #4
        They were the Dark Age thugs par excellence...

        -Arrian
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        • #5
          Basically the horns were "invented" by the Victorians in Britain. Most of the engravings in books of this period gave Vikings - and particularly representations of the norse gods - horned helmets.

          There is some evidence of ceremonial horned helmets from Bronze Age Scandinavia but definitely not from the 9th to 11th C Viking era.
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          • #6
            Originally posted by Arrian
            They were the Dark Age thugs par excellence...

            -Arrian
            Of course, but there were lots of other thugs around, so somehow those Vikings needed to distinguish themselves from them....nah

            Cerberus, interesting, I'm just wondering if it is known why this stuff was "invented".

            Two things come to my mind - first, a simple misinterpretation of non-Viking helmets you mentioned as "Viking helmets" (if they were known back then).

            Or, maybe some overboard 19th century fantasy that painted Vikings as evil in a good old "OMG teh dark ages" fashion and those who did portray them as such added horns to make a link from heathen to antichrist/devil or so.

            Or something completely different
            Blah

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            • #7
              Horny horny horny.

              Welcome to the British Museum - discover two million years of human history and culture.



              Horned helmet

              A helmet for a god?

              Iron Age, 150-50 BC

              From the River Thames at Waterloo Bridge, London, England

              This 'helmet' was dredged from the River Thames at Waterloo Bridge in the early 1860s. It is the only Iron Age helmet to have ever been found in southern England, and it is the only Iron Age helmet with horns ever to have been found anywhere in Europe. Horns were often a symbol of the gods in different parts of the ancient world. This might suggest the person who wore this was a special person, or that the helmet was made for a god to wear. Like the Deal Crown, this was more of a symbolic head-dress than actual protection for the head in battle. The person who wore the helmet would need a modern hat size of 7.
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              • #8
                Cool helmet

                But maybe it's from an ancient Till Ulenspiegel

                Blah

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by BeBro
                  Or, maybe some overboard 19th century fantasy that painted Vikings as evil in a good old "OMG teh dark ages" fashion and those who did portray them as such added horns to make a link from heathen to antichrist/devil or so.
                  Very probably.
                  Just like it was Coca Cola who painted Santa Claus in red and white and now noone can imagine him without these colors, whereas the historical Sinterclaas didn´t wear these colors.

                  Or Milka which used violet cows in commercials, which leads to many schoolkids now believing that cows are really violet
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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by CerberusIV
                    Basically the horns were "invented" by the Victorians in Britain. Most of the engravings in books of this period gave Vikings - and particularly representations of the norse gods - horned helmets.

                    There is some evidence of ceremonial horned helmets from Bronze Age Scandinavia but definitely not from the 9th to 11th C Viking era.
                    You got it mostly right, but not on who "invented" it(see quote underneath). As said, the Vikings never had horned helmets, it would be mighty impractical btw.

                    I let Wikipedia speak:


                    Apart from two or three representations of (ritual) helmets – with protrusions that may be either stylized ravens, snakes or horns – no depiction of Viking Age warriors' helmets, and no actually preserved helmet, has horns. In fact, the formal close-quarters style of Viking combat (either in shield walls or aboard "ship islands") would have made horned helmets cumbersome and hazardous to the warrior's own side.

                    Therefore it can be ruled out that Viking warriors had horned helmets, but whether or not they were used in Scandinavian culture for other, ritual purposes remains unproven. The general misconception that Viking warriors wore horned helmets was partly promulgated by the 19th century enthusiasts of Götiska Förbundet, founded in 1811 in Stockholm, with the aim of promoting the suitability of Norse mythology as subjects of high art and other ethnological and moral aims.

                    The Vikings were also often depicted with winged-helmets and in other clothing taken from Classical antiquity, especially in depictions of Norse gods. This was done in order to legitimize the Vikings and their mythology, by associating it with the Classical world which has always been idealized in European culture.

                    The latter-day mythos created by national romantic ideas blended the Viking Age with glimpses of the Nordic Bronze Age some 2,000 years earlier, for which actual horned helmets, probably for ceremonial purposes, are attested both in petroglyphs and by actual finds (See Bohuslän and Vikso helmets[31]).

                    The cliché was perpetuated by cartoons like Hägar the Horrible and Vicky the Viking, and the uniforms of the Minnesota Vikings football team.

                    The regular Viking helmets were conical, made from hard leather with wood and metallic reinforcement for the regular troops and the iron helmet with mask and chain mail for the chieftains, based on the previous Vendel age helmets from central Sweden. The only true Viking helmet found, is that from Gjermundbu in Norway. This helmet is made of iron and has been dated to the 10th century.
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