Myth: The Vikings Wore Horned Helmets

As with many historical myths, we can thank Hollywood for this particular misconception, as popular films helped perpetuate the image of horned-helmet-clad Vikings looting and pillaging their way across Europe. And yet the common depiction of these seafaring Scandinavian troublemakers goes back even further, to the initial staged performances of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen operas in the late 19th century. In reality, the only extant helmet found in Scandinavia and confirmed to be from the Viking era, which covered the ninth through 11th centuries, has no protuberances. Two other horned helmets, unearthed from a bog in Denmark in 1942, have since been found to predate the Vikings by two millennia, and were more likely used for ceremonial purposes than for protection in combat.