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Why does nobody talk about how wrong the 'Viking helmet with horns' myth still is...
I was at a museum last weekend and saw a display with horned Viking helmets, and it drove me crazy. We've known for decades that no actual Viking helmets had horns, that was a 19th century opera costume thing. But the exhibit kept it up because they said visitors expect it. It matters because it teaches people the wrong history, and we have the real artifacts to prove it. Has anyone else seen museums keep this myth alive just for show?
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craig.tessa7d ago
Oh, tell me about it! I had almost the same thing happen at a history fair last fall - there was this big plastic helmet with horns on a mannequin and I pointed it out to my friend and the guy running the booth got all defensive. It's like, we have actual Viking helmets buried in Norway, they're simple iron caps with no horns, you know? (I even pulled up a photo on my phone of the one from the Gjermundbu site, but he just shrugged.) It drives me nuts that museums will go for the "looks cool" factor over just telling people what's real. I swear, it's like the myth has its own fan club at this point.
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paige_ellis597d ago
Play the other side for a second. Museums are there to get people excited about history, and let's be real, nobody's lining up to see a boring iron pot helmet. If the horned one gets kids interested and maybe leads them to learn the real story later, that's not the worst trade-off.
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