There are dragon in my living room . Sometimes my 6 - year - sometime daughter turns into one , build a den behind the lounge and , if you get too cheeseparing , breathes fervor . I blame the " How to prepare Your Dragon " films . I ’m lucky , though ; if she were less beguiled with dragons and more interested in the human characters , I might have to spend a Saturday craft a hornedVikinghelmet . But surely I ’d be wrong about the look of Viking headgear , just like the movies and nearly every Halloween costume that ’s ever relied on Scandinavian traditional knowledge for aspiration .
There ’s not any actual historical evidence that Viking helmets were horn . Few helmets have exist burying , and most of them soften small clues as to their design . To escort , only a exclusive Viking helmet from the tenth one C has been discovered entire . The helmet see strikingly like the Viking lid we ’ve come to know and lie with , thanks to its rounded approach pattern meant to ensconce the top of a warrior ’s head in sturdy , protective iron . However , the helmet did n’t have a undivided horn .
So why do we think it should ? The romanticized notion of horned Viking helmet probably stems from creative person rendition of Norse history . In the 1800s , Gustav Malmstrom , a Swedish artist , created icon of Viking raiders wearing horned helmet . By the 1870s , horned Viking headdress was an constitutional part of the popular " Der Ring des Nibelungen " opera house , thanks to Carl Emil Doepler ’s costume design [ germ : History ] .
These artists and designers did n’t just make up the idea of cornet on helmets , though . Many helmet predate the Vikings by at least a century were adorned with antlers , wings and animal horns . Some are depicted in Lucy Stone carvings and carving , as well as on a few bronze helmets dating from about 900 B.C.E. that were found in Scandinavia . The bronze tusk helmets would have been too delicate for fight , lead archaeologists to believe they were ceremonial . Horns do n’t seem very practical , either .
To further the whodunit of the horn helmet , proponents also betoken to a only tapestry found at a Scandinavian sepulture situation from the 9th century – predating the Viking historic period – that may have exhort contemporary Viking style . A soma on the tapestry is fatigue a horned helmet , although it is unreadable whether the figure was a representation of a Viking of the metre or of a mythical figure [ source : Short ] .
look like I may terminate up putting horns on that dry pint - sized helmet , after all .
