Jackson Crawford, along with many Norwegian archeologists, do not believe that vikings had horns on their helmets. I agree that horns on a battle helmet would make it cumbersome, but a ceremonial helmet would be adorned with many things, so why not horns? And you must take into account that the ancient Scandinavian record is limited and scarce. Just because horned helmets are not mentioned, does not mean they didn’t exist. Look at ancient Egypt. They have hieroglyphs, tablets, mosaics, that survived thousands of years. Ancient Scandinavia has 1/100 of that.
Speaking of ancient Egypt, I saw a video about the historical accuracy of the movie, The Ten Commandments. He mentioned that guards with horned helmets really existed in that era. So horned helmets were not unusual.
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1ojij6j
Posted by callycumla
3 Comments
I think that antlers would be more prevalent in the nordics than horns from a bull. Old British texts painting Danish Heathens as “devils” gives them that shape on the horns as well. In the art that we’ve found on stones, or carvings, we don’t see any depictions of horns like that, but we DO see antlers. Even the god Freyr takes up an antler after losing his sword for his wife. I have what I believe is a shaman from one of the stones tattooed on my leg and he’s wearing antlers and blowing a goat horn. I just doubt guards would wear helms that impractical.
Basically, we can’t rule it out from a ceremonial standpoint, but why would they use horns or antlers in any practical way?
The horn helmets comes from an opera i think.
I guess the horn idea have may come from stave churches where horns where use to let light in, since they are translucent.
Not this again. I don’t know where this hornless theory comes from. Some people seems to think they only had horns some of the time, but I can confirm with certainty that our ancestors were horny all the time.