After the recent discussions in soc.history about whether viking helmets have horns or not I decided to put together this page with some pictures of helmets and links to some good sites. I have found that pictures of real helmets seem hard to come by. The reason for this is that no real Viking helmets have been found! A helmet has been found in a Viking grave at Germundbu in Norway but it is most likely from an earlier period. It was probably already an antique when it was placed in the grave. One reason that no Viking helmets have been found is that they were probably not made of metal, but of leather or toughened ox-hide. This would explain why other metal artifacts such as swords, parts of shields and parts of horses harnesses have been found, but no helmets.

Horned helmets were conceived sometime during the romantic nationalistic part of the 19th century, but this view of them is very widespread, especially outside Scandinavia. I even found horns in my old English history book from school, some were more like rounded bumps while others were proper animal horns. I guess they couldn't make up their minds.

An example from the pre-Viking Era is this Helmet at Historical Museum in Stockholm. It is from the 7th century and is a comtemporary of the finds in Sutton Hoo in England. A very good example from the end of the Viking Era is of course the Bayeaux tapestry, but unfortunately my browser is too narrow to accomodate it.

http://www.bluetail.com/~rv/viking-helmets/