Viking Age Helmets - Helmets known to have been used by Norse Warriors.

Abstract

I'm an obsessive helmet collector so I figure the best place to start this blog is a post about helmets, specifically Viking Age helmets. We all know that there is only a single surviving helmet from the Viking Age found in a Norse context, the famous Gjermundbu helmet ... or do we? I used to think so until I bumped into an excellent article on the Projekt Forlǫg blog and found out that this is not quite correct. There are at least three other Viking Age helmet fragments that are much less well known than the iconic Gjermundbu helmet but they are nevertheless every bit as interesting as the Gjermundbu helmet is. So let's take a look at these four specimens one by one starting with some musings about how common helmets were during the Viking age in the first place. Then we will examine the famous Gjermundbu helmet after a small detour through the pre-Viking Age 'Vendel' period to give some added context, followed by brief descriptions of the remaining three helmet fragments and attempts at reconstructing what the originals may have looked like. Next I will discuss the possible explanations for the popularity of helmet masks among ancient Scandinavians and finally rant and rave a bit about what to keep in mind when buying a 'Viking' helmet for reenactment.

How common were helmets during the Viking Age?

This question has been debated both by scholars in academia as well as laymen on various internet forums. Some point out that helmets are extremely rarely found as grave goods, in fact so far only one helmet has been found in a grave, this being the famous Gjermundbu helmet. The other three known Viking Age helmets remains have not been found in a clear funerary context as far as I know. Thus one important question one must ask here is how likely were helmets to end up as grave goods? Are grave goods an accurate indicator of how common possession of a certain object was among the contemporary population? Perhaps there was no tradition of placing helmets in graves? ... or perhaps helmets were too expensive to be given as grave goods? These are valid points but one can counter by pointing out that a helmet cost 2 marks of sliver while a good sword could be had for 4 marks of silver and good swords ended up as grave goods along with other quite expensive items so why not helmets? ... and if shields, knives, spears and axes were given as grave goods why not helmets?  The answer to these questions seems to be that while grave goods can give a certain indication of how common various objects were, we cannot assume that grave goods are a gold standard. Another source that can be used to try and gauge how how common various items of military equipment were during the 10th and 11th centuries are the Icelandic sagas who seem to indicate that owning a helmet and a sword (though not always a good one) was something a relatively prosperous farmer was able to afford. The caveat here is that the Icelandic sagas were written in the 13th century, long after the end of the Viking Age and may not be entirely accurate. Finally there are laws which stipulate what weapons and armour a commoner was expected to own and bring with him when he was summoned for military service. The caveat here is that the earliest of these laws tend to date to the end of the Viking age and are of little help when trying to compile equipment statistics for earlier periods. My personal feeling is that during the early Viking age helmets were probably the single most common piece of equipment after the shield since Viking Age battles, like most ancient conflicts, involved a lot of arrows and stone throwing. If you survived one of those engagements I'm pretty sure you'd buy a helmet the instant you could afford one. Having said that, I do not think helmets were 'general issue' to use a modern word. I think that during the early Viking Age helmets were largely limited to rather wealthy individuals and professional solders. However, as we move closer to 1066 I think helmets and other body armour became increasingly more common until by the time of the Battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings, many  Norse warriors and Anglo Saxon Thegns who participated in these actions had access to at least a helmet (though by means all of them as the Bayeux tapestry shows). This is of course my educated guess, your milage may vary.

Helmets of the Vendel Period

Before we delve into the helmets of the Viking Age proper it is worth taking a look at the helmets of the Vendel period since they give one and interesting insight into the evolution of helmet design in Scandinavia during the post Roman period and because these designs doubtless influenced later styles  of helmets used by scandinavian warriors of the Viking Age.

The helmet from Gjermundbu farm (Norway)

The Gjermundbu helmet, as it's name suggests was unearthed in an excavation of a burial mound on a farm called Gjermundbu in Ringerike in central Norway during the Second Word war. One of the most common misconception about this helmet is that it is complete, it is not. What survives of the helmet is the 'ocular' or helmet-mask, about a quarter of helmet's dome (the front right hand quarter), several of the oval reenforcing bands (spangen), a spike that sat on top of the helmet and portions the helmet rim. This helmet may have had a 'curtain' aventail at one point since there are a couple of rings attached to holes in the helmet rim. The surviving part of the dome has battle damage in the form of what is probably an arrow hole and an oblong hole which is usually claimed to have been made by a sword but may just as easily have been made by a spear. Decorations seem to have been limited to etching grooves into the spectacles in a broadly radial pattern (reltative to  the center of each eye hole). In terms of style this helmet seems to hark back to the ocular helmets of the Vendel period but in terms of general structure and appearance it bears a strong resemblance to late Roman cavalry helmets of the 'intercissa' type. Whether this is a coincidence or whether late Roman style helmets were still in fashion in Norway during he 10th century can certainly be debated.

At left, a late Roman ridge helmet by Cult of Athena, at centre is the original Gjermundbu
helmet and at right is a reconstruction by Royal Oak Armoury. Whether Gjermundbu
helmet is a descendant of these Roman ridge helmets can be debated, they were after all made
some 400 years apart, but the degree of resemblance is nevertheless interesting.

The helmet from Tjele (Denmark)

Apart from the Gjermundbu helmet, the helmet from Tjele in Denmark is the only other Viking Age ocular helmet where we might have also have some surviving components of the helmet dome. The surviving fragments of the Tjele helmet were found during the 1850s in what was identified as a blacksmith's scrap metal stockpile and dated to the second half of the 10th century. The remains consists of a mask fragment that is missing the rim below the eyes. The eyebrows of the mask were decorated with embossed strips of bronze riveted to the mask and the helmet had a prominent lobed nasal. Found along with the mask fragment were several strips of thin metal that were interpreted as remains of the re-enforcing spangen that had once been riveted to the helmet dome. No remains were found of the plates of the helmet dome it self so the most we can conclude is that the helmet dome was of spangen helm construction with spangen about 1 cm wide which may seem rather narrow but the spangen of the Gjermundbu helmet were not that much wider and the ones found at Tjele were of course corroded.

At left the original mask fragment from Tjele (© Danish National Museum)
At right a reconstruction based on the dome of the Gjermundbu helmet made
by Konstantin Shiryaev (via Projekt Forlǫg). Note the lobed nasal whose
structure can be inferred from the lower rivet hole on the original fragment.

The helmet mask fragment from Lokrume on Gotland (Sweden)

This is a fragment of a helmet mask that was found in Lokrume parish on Gotland and is thought to date to between 950 and 1000AD. It was first described in an article in the journal 'Fornvännen' in 1907. The fragment is made of iron, plated with silver into which is carved a snake design highlighted with niello. It is interesting to compare the fragment with the older helmets from Vendel period and how the form of the mask and the styles of decoration had changed. It is unfortunately impossible to speculate whether this mask hat spectacle like eye holes like the Gjermundbu helmet or elongate ones like the fragment form Desjatinna Church.

The helmet mask fragment from Desjatinna Church (Ukraine)

This is another helmet mask fragment that was found during excavations in Desjatinna Church in Kiev in the Ukraine and is thought to date to between 950 and 988AD. It is of an elongated shape that covered the face down to below the nose. It was inlayed with silver and gold indicating that it belonged to an individual of high status. How it came to be in the church is unknown although the two most likely explanations are that it was either buried with an important individual inside the church or that it is a relic of an important individual that was stored inside the church. Such relics have been found in other Greek Orthodox churches, often buried under the altar. 

The St. Wenceslaus helmet (Czech Republic)

This helmet reportedly belonged to Wenceslas I Duke of Bohemia, also known to his people as Václav the Good. Wenceslaus died in the year 935 (some sources say 929) at the hands of a group of nobles allied with his younger brother Boleslav. In a scene straight out of Game of Thrones Boleslav invited Wenceslaus to a religious feast where three of Boleslav's men stabbed Wenceslaus wounding him badly but it was Boleslav who finished his brother off by running him through with a lance. The translation of Wenceslaus’ relics took place in 938 and he became the first slavic saint.  St. Wenceslaus' helmet is a conical nasal helmet that was formed out of a singe piece of metal. It is decorate with a silver figure of the crucified christ that occupies the nasal while christ's arms occupy the eyebrow position. Additionally there is a decorative strip that goes around the back of the helmet. The helmet itself probably came out of a master armourer's workshop in what is to day Germany or was made by a really skilled smith from that area. The silver work however is Norse in style and said to have been either done on Gotland or done by a Gotlandic silver smith employed by Wenceslaus. There seems to be a general consensus that this helmet and the mail shirt that goes with it actually belonged to Wenceslsaus which dates these manufacture of single piece helmets to the beginning of the 10th century at least. During Wenceslaus' time helmets were probably not terribly common among the armies of the time, even basic composite spangen type helmets, were only affordable to a subset of well off individuals professional warriors, prosperous farmers, artisans, merchants etc.. A single piece helmet like the St. Wenceslaus helmet, even without the silver decoration, would probably have been a quite high status item only a fairly small number of nobles would have been able to afford. The St. Wenceslaus helmet is interesting because, while it has strong religious connotations due to the nature of the decoration it still gives one an idea of what helmets worn by christian norse warriors after the period of Christianisation would have looked like. Anybody wondering what the helmets worn by Haraldur Harðráði a.k.a 'Hardrada' (brrr, the way english speakers pronounce 'Hardrada' makes me cringe) and his closest followers at the battle of Stamford Bridge would be well advised to take a close look at the St. Wenceslaus helmet and it's accompanying mail shirt.

Why maks?

While four helmets are far to small a sample to base any sweeping conclusions on, it nevertheless seems interesting to me that so many surviving Scandinavian helmets from the Vendel age and until around the year 1000 has some form of a mask. The only exception to this is from the St. Wenceslaus helmet which was probably made in Germany. Only the decoration on the St. Wenceslaus helmet is Norse and is thought to have been either done on Gotland or possibly by a Gotladic craftsman in Duke Wenceslaus' employ so this helmet obviously can't really be said to have been used by a Norse warrior even if this helmet has a Norse connection. Furthermore, masks are also a predominant feature of the Vendel period helmets.  One must therefore conclude that for some reason helmet masks were important to Scandinavian warriors for several centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire and until the first quarter of 11th century when these 'ocular' helmets disappear. The next question that presents itself is: Why put a mask on your helmet in the first place? I have worn a Gjermundbu style helmet and found that the mask provides little protection beyond what a normal nasal helmet does. The mask limits vision from certain angles and it has been pointed out that the eye holes can also 'catch' a spear or sword blade and literally guide the weapon into the eye.

So if the mask was more of a liability than an advantage why keep making ocular helmets with masks for several centuries? It has been suggested that this had to do with military fashion and that the eventual disappearance of ocular helmets was simply the result of a change in military fashion. While this is a perfectly valid hypothesis it still seems strange that Norse warriors kept opting for a feature that if anything was a bit of a liability in combat. This brings us to another hypothesis, notably that these helmet masks served a religious or supernatural purpose. Scholars have recently been rethinking a lot of what we know about the burial practices of the Norse peoples and their attitude towards death and the dead. Thanks to a variety of sources including the famous funeral description penned by Ibn Fadlan we know that Norse people of the Viking Age seem to have feared either being possessed by the spirits of the dead or being attacked by the dead. All over Scandinavia archaeologists have found graves containing bodies  that were weighed down with stones, a practice that is also mentioned in the sagas and seems to have been intended to prevent the occupant of a grave from rising up out of the grave and attacking the living. Another interesting insight comes from Scandinavian law codes dating to the time of the Christianisation of Scandinavia. These laws ban a series of funerary practices including the wearing of masks in cemeteries. The very existence of such laws indicates that mask wearing when interacting with the dead was a common practice, why else would the Church bother lobby for the passing of a law to ban this custom? The wearing of masks in cemeteries has been explained as a practice intended to prevent the dead from recognising the living as persons with whom they have a bone to pick or, alternatively, prevented the dead from recognising the living as human beings at all. It is thus not too far fetched to theorise that helmet masks may have been a device intended to prevent whomever the owner of the helmet killed from remembering the wearers face thus preventing the slain person from returning from the grave to exact revenge. The hypothesis that helmet masks served some purpose connected to pagan religion or beliefs is also supported by the fact that helmet masks disappear around the same time as the Church was busy lobbying Scandinavian kings, lords and national assemblies (Things) to ban pagan practices that the Church frowned upon such as wearing masks in cemeteries.

Re-enactment

We will probably never know for sure what the purpose for helmet masks may have been, whether they were a military fashion or whether they served to protect you from the vengeful dead (personally I like the later hypothesis). However, we can still tentatively conclude that helmet masks were a dominant feature of protective military headgear well before the Viking Age.  Judging by currently available archeological evidence, limited as it is, ocular helmets remained extremely popular up until the Christianisation of the Scandinavian peoples. If nasal spangen helms and simple spangen type pot helmets (basically a spangen helm with no nasal) were just as popular with pagan Norse warriors as the ocular ones, probability theory suggests that half the helmet finds from the Vendel period and until ~1000 AD should be of the non-ocular type. However, they are not. Almost all the helmets we have from Scandinavia from the Vendel period and until the end of the Viking Age are ocular helmets. While it is entirely possible that some pagan Norse warriors may have used mask-less helmets (with or without a nasal),  reenactors in the market for a 'Viking' helmet and who intend to portray a pagan Norse warrior should seriously consider buying an ocular helmet rather than a conical nasal helmet. There are four styles of mask to choose from and the lack of any evidence for the construction of the helmet domes of the Lokrume and Desjatinna fragments should not pose a problem. It is easy enough to put a different mask on a Gjermundbu style helmet dome or one of the simple spangen type pot helmets. Such helmets were made by the thousands during the Viking Age by the various magnets of the Western Empire (roughly today's Germany) and the Kingdom of France to equip their levies.  Depicted below are the remains of the four known Viking Age helmets known to have been used by Norse warriors and some attempts to reconstruct them:

Another option for a re-enactor to pursue would be the idea that a pagan Norse warrior who acquired a German or Frankish pot helmet or nasal helmet might have it converted to an ocular configuration (or, in his estimation, improved to add protection against haunting by the vengeful dead). In case of a nasal helmet this is particularly easy job for any blacksmith to do. All you need to do is rivet a couple of curved strips of steel between the nasal and the helmet rim, add some eyebrows and perhaps add some decoration, if only in the form of engraved lines like the Gjermundbu helmet has. If you do not feel up to modifying a commercially available helmet yourself, at least keep the above picture in mind as a guideline when buying an ocular helmet. A rule of thumb I find is useful is that if the helmet you are considering looks like it belongs on a Rohirrim from Lord of the Rings, or it looks like a helmet you have seen in an episode of 'Vikings' or 'Last Kingdom' it probably does not look like something likely to have existed during the Viking Age.