Why do Vikings need horned helmets and other facts about what the ancestors of the Scandinavians really were

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The mysterious history of the Vikings has fascinated people for centuries, causing much controversy and controversy about their lives. And while some enthusiastically praised the achievements and traditions of the Scandinavians, others, in contrast, talked about how these non-humans swept away everything in their path, sparing neither children, nor old people, nor women. So which of all this is true and who the Vikings really were, read further in our article.

The ships arrived on June 8th. Then the monks in Lindisfarne did not yet know about it. It was 793 and it was the beginning of three hundred years of bloody Viking raids on Britain and Ireland.

Light-haired, strong-built men in horned helmets, with nostrils swelling from undisguised aggression, went down to the settlements to rape and rob. That's at least the perception. But long-standing views are being questioned.

Let's start with the helmets so beloved by Scandinavian football fans and screenwriters around the world who have taken this attribute as the basis for their films. The Vikings never wore them. They were included in images only from the 19th century. Wagner made the Scandinavian legend famous with his opera Valkyrie, and horned helmets were created as props for a performance of his cycle The Ring at the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876.

The horned helmet is based on historical fact, says Emma Boast of Jorvik Center, but the thing had nothing to do with the Vikings. The British Museum houses a ceremonial Iron Age horned helmet found in the River Thames. It dates back to 150-50 BC.

The Vikings used the horns at feasts for drinking and blew on them for communication. Also, their shape was often present in jewelry (pendants and earrings). However, they never used horns to decorate their helmets, since for combat it would be a serious burden, adding extra weight to the "headdress". This stereotype is so ingrained in the modern world that it is unlikely that humanity will ever get rid of it.

However, as well as the thought that these insatiable, merciless and bloodthirsty barbarians ate meat in any form, including raw. But here, too, scientists, historians and researchers did not keep themselves waiting long, dispelling another myth, stating that the barbarians were vegetarians, not meat eaters! This is due to the fact that they spent most of their lives on campaigns and they did not always have the opportunity to hunt for living creatures, so most of their food was vegetable, with the exception of looted goods.

While other scientists are trying in every possible way to refute this theory, putting forward their own, more plausible and realistic at first glance version that the Vikings have always had venison and fish.

So this question is still open and very controversial. However, like the version that before their crushing campaigns, the Vikings were far from bloodthirsty raiders, but resourceful merchants and poets who wore leather shoes and combed their hair.

says Professor Simon Keynes, an Anglo-Saxon historian at the University of Cambridge.

. Vikings stole everything they could. Churches were repositories of treasures that could be plundered.

But most of all, the barbarians loved to plunder monasteries in Europe and capture eunuchs, as well as take boys from monasteries, castrate them without their consent, and then sell them to their trading partners in Asia.

They took cattle, money and food, took and raped women, burned entire settlements, leaving behind a complete devastation.

And unlike most armies, they came by sea, their narrow-bottomed ships allowing them to climb rivers and catch settlements by surprise. At first it was a naval blitzkrieg. But after the raids began to be repeated more and more often. The Vikings, like robbers, returned again and again, and, seizing the land, refused to leave them.

They say that Ivar the Boneless was especially cruel. According to the sagas, he put Edmund, King of East Anglia, on a tree and ordered his men to shoot at him with bows until his head turned into a bloody mess and simply fell apart.

Ella, the king of Northumbria, who had previously executed Ragnar Lothbrok, soon suffered a cruel punishment known as the Bloody Eagle for what he did.

Also, the television history of the Vikings is silent about the fact that they were slave owners who treated slaves in a bestial manner, forcing them not only to do the hardest work, but also to sleep with their masters.

Slaves ate mainly fish and table scraps, and when their masters died, they were sacrificed - regardless of whether they were ready to die or not. If a slave was found guilty of violating the rights of her masters, her arms and legs were cut off as punishment, and sometimes she was branded on her face.

For a group of people who are portrayed as putting honor above all else, the Vikings very quickly desecrated the bodies of their victims. Regardless of who they encountered, they took a special pleasure in dismembering the bodies of their many enemies.

According to Elisa Naumann, an archaeologist at the University of Oslo, there are many creepy methods of processing bodies. Some have their limbs chopped off, such as in the Viking graves in Kaupang, Norway. Some scholars believe that desecrations are meant to offer a narrative about the lives of people living at that time.

But the veracity of these stories, to this day, raises further doubts among scientists. New facts surfaced in 2010 indicated that about fifty decapitated bodies were found in Weymouth, presumably executed by Viking prisoners. So the Anglo-Saxons were unlikely to be supporters of the prototype of the Geneva Convention, as previously assumed.

It is believed that the Vikings were both invaders and settlers at the same time. They not only raided, plundered and left, leaving ruins behind, but settled in a new place, finding a common language with the locals. This becomes the story of not only conquest, but also immigration and assimilation. Many of the Vikings converted to Christianity. There were also mixed marriages. King Canute the Great, who became king of England and ruled for twenty-five years, replaced those at the top, but allowed society to continue to live. At the same time, the raiders adhered to Scandinavian names and traditions.

Hakon the Good converted to Christianity while in England. On his return to Norway, he had a hard time. His new religious convictions became very different from those of most of his subjects.

, Says Tuckley.

As it turned out, not only the Vikings were cruel, but also children's books, sometimes plunging into a shock worse than any historical facts and events. For example, it can easily boast of a certain number of far from innocuous moments, which, fortunately, were not included in the films.