Horned helmet
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European Iron Age helmets with horns are known from a few depictions, and even fewer actual finds. They were probably used for religious ceremonial or ritual purposes.
An early find dating to ca. 800 BC, is a figurine of a man with a horned helmet, found in Zealand, Denmark. One find of a bronze horned helmet, possibly of Celtic origin (dating to ca. 800-400 BC) was found near Viksø, Denmark.
A pre-Roman Celtic bronze helmet, dating to ca. 100 BC, was found in the River Thames, in England. Its 'horns', different from those of the earlier finds, are straight and conical. Late Gaulish helmets (ca. 55 BC) with small horns and adorned with wheels, reminiscent of the combination of a horned helmet and a wheel on plate C of the Gundestrup cauldron (ca. 100 BC), were found in Orange, France.
A depiction on a Migration period (5th century) metal die from Öland, Sweden, shows a warrior with a helmet adorned with two snakes or dragons, arranged similar to horns. A decorative plate of the Sutton Hoo helmet (ca. 600 AD) showed a depiction of a similar helmet. This strange headgear, of which only depictions have survived, seems to have fallen out of use with the end of the Migration period. There is a single depiction on a Viking Age amulet found in Uppland, Sweden that shows a figure with two snakes or dragons on its head.
There is one other instance of a possible depiction of a Viking Age horned helmet, a dubious illustration on a tapestry found in the Viking age Oseberg ship burial.
Thus, although horned helmets are in popular culture often associated with Vikings, there is no evidence that Viking Age Scandinavians have ever worn them. The attribution probably arose in 19th century Swedish Romanticism. There is some evidence that they featured in Norse mythology, however: Odin's chosen warriors, the einherjar, reputedly wore helmets horned like bulls and beaked like eagles.[citation needed]
During the High Middle Ages, fantastical headgear became popular among knights, in particular for tournaments (see, for example, the depiction of Wolfram von Eschenbach and others in the Codex Manesse). Some coats of arms, for example that of Lazar Hrebeljanovic depict them. It is sometimes argued that Iron Age helmets would not have been worn in battle due to the impediment to their wearer. However, impractical adornments have been worn on battlefields throughout history.
Overall, there have been so few discoveries of horned helmets that it appears unlikely that Vikings really wore horned helmets to battle. The depictions of warriors could represent ritual war dances as well as actual combat. The most likely explanation is that this helmet type originated in Celtic religion, possibly related to Cernunnos, and that then it was adopted, changing the horns into snakes, by Germanic tribes during the Migration age, and continued to play a certain role in religious ritual up to the 9th century or so.
Horned helmets have also revealed presence in Asia, where soldiers of ancient kingdoms such as Goguryeo are noted to have worn helmets with large horns on top.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- British Museum Iron Age horned helmet, ca. 1st century BC.
