Randall,

Thanks for the information. That was an interesting helmet. I guess leather wouldn't last long. Neat helmet though. Thanks again.

That MRL helmet reminds me of something that the Horse Clans in the Ring Trilogy films would wear. My bet is that MRL was doing a bit of closew copying but not quite close enough to get into copyright trouble.

As to such things as the Coppergate Helm or the Sutton Hoo Helm, these are such distinctive pieces that wearing them will make you stand out and mark you as some form of special person. If you want to be an Anglian king froim the 7th Century, go ahead and wear a Sutton Hoo Helm, it will be appropriate and, if you want to be a Eorl from the northern parts of 9th-11th Century England, then the Coppergate Helm might be appropriate. But the average warrior, if he had a helmet, would have been wearing something a bit less distinctive.

OK, Guys.

I have just made some edition to my previous post and I added some comments to the photos of helmets. If you would like to know anything more, just ask - probably I will be able to write something more. It just would take to much time writing about every helmet. ;)

Hugh Fuller wrote:

As to such things as the Coppergate Helm or the Sutton Hoo Helm, these are such distinctive pieces that wearing them will make you stand out and mark you as some form of special person. If you want to be an Anglian king froim the 7th Century, go ahead and wear a Sutton Hoo Helm, it will be appropriate and, if you want to be a Eorl from the northern parts of 9th-11th Century England, then the Coppergate Helm might be appropriate. But the average warrior, if he had a helmet, would have been wearing something a bit less distinctive.

That is good opinion, Hugh! Especially that helmets like Vendel/Valsgarde had silver/gold very thin and delicate foils and decoration. There is something very important for early society, what in ethnology and anthropology is called : prestige. It was very important to show one's wealthy etc. From Migration Era and Early Medieval time we know for example many silver or gold toilette utensils like ear-spoon etc. They were just fro show, not for using. Or another example : very decorated and expensive clothes with silver or gold application - I am sure they weren't for normal days use, but for very important situation or even specially for burial (some researches says that some of clothes that were found in Viking graves have been used only once - for burial).

Randall Moffet wrote:

I really am not sure I agree that these helmets were only intended for display or burial. The boats buried there were not decorative boats nor many of the other items buried there, why assume the armour was then? In a warrior culture to me it would seem an insult to bury one with a plaything. Imagine a wooden sword and wooden horse buried with them. Not much sense to me.

Randall, do you really think that so-called Viking culture was a warrior culture? I think that this is one of the myth about Vikings, like helmets with horns. Scandinavian people we are talking about, were rather traders than warriors. I don't know why everybody talk about fighting, when "Vikings" were also great craftsmans, traders, raisers...
BTW : when Goths (Vikings predecessors) came on Polish land at the just before the beginning of Migration Era, they buried their people without any steel items or with destroyed weapon. Iron in graves was something forbidden, it was some kind of tabu. And we know that Goths were rather brave people. ;) What do you think about that, Randall? ;) Things are sometimes more difficult than we think. :)

Best regards,
Thorkil.

Thorkil,

I am well aware of the common stereotypes associated with vikings but the fact they were tied heavily to war is clear to anyone who has read any saga or history from their era. They might not be there with horned helmets killing and looting but even in the east where they came often for trade they still did their fair share of killing and plundering.

Any culture that buries their men with arms and armour has a good chance at being called a warrior culture but this is only a small aspect of the whole. The highest levels of society are warriors. The ones who make the policy and in many many ways the society are warriors, so yes I think there is more than enough evidence to argue that they are a warrior culture. The fact some people were merchants would be lost on the fact that most of the people were farmers, but they were not making the policies in the society. A culture without farmers and such services would surely be hard to maintain.

The vendels and others in the area before the viking period are also a very warrior based culture. If you'd like some reading on this there are a great deal of books out on the early medieval/ late iron age inhabitants of scandinavia. Martin Carver has written a great deal about them. The idea that the warrior class rules them all would seem to be key to warrior culture. The fact the Goths do not bury their dead with arms does not make them less of a warrior culture as that is but a small part of it. I do not think it really related to the fact that the early scandinavians and vikings buried their dead with weapons and armour just differences in culture.

The main issue with people's claims that items are only for show is that they have little evidence to prove it. There is always the' face plate makes it impossible to use on the Sutton Hoo helmet, It has to many decorations, etc. etc.' This is in many ways without any founding. The sutton hoo helmet as is now would fit a person well and provide very good protection according to people who have worn fairly close replicas of it can avouch is fine. We need to think what does a leaders helmet have to say? Is it saying I am the leader so follow me to my men? Is it pointing me out to my men as a rally point? Is it to cow my enemies on the field or off it? Just because it has decoration does not make it less of a weapon or armour until it makes it ineffective in that role by a feature that detracts from it. If the decoration on a blade makes the blade unusable it is in this catagory for example. So I very much disagree that these helmets are not all made to be functional as well as decorative.


RPM

(edit to add last paragraph and correct some Spelling errors)

I like your Spangenhelm. Pity that it doesn't come in a size to fit a 24.5" head or I very well might order it. But that Fantasy Celtic Helm just does not cut it.

Hehe it's a good seller though, historical accuracy isn't really an issue for LRP!
Sadly I don't work for them any more, had to go my own way at last. Clearing through the old bits in my workshop i found the start of a spangenhelm from last year hmm..................

Matt

Sorry for not responding for a while, but I was very busy.

At the beginning:

Quote:

If you'd like some reading on this there are a great deal of books out on the early medieval/ late iron age inhabitants of scandinavia.

I really know what I write and my knowledge came from good books and from my wife, who studies archeology and is writing now her thesis about Vikings in Poland. So... please, respect me as interlocutor in discussion interlocutor, who knows what he writes, not as a child who extracts the knowledge from internet . I would be grateful for that.

Randall Moffett wrote:

Thorkil, I am well aware of the common stereotypes associated with vikings but the fact they were tied heavily to war is clear to anyone who has read any saga or history from their era.

Yes, they were tied heavily to war, like every other nation at that time. Sagas are great stories. We can learn a lot from them about history and live from that time. But, archeologists are really careful with considering sagas as serious evident. Why? Because they were wrote by Icelandic bards in 1200-1400 AD , so this is many years after Viking Era. Else Roesdahl wrote in "Vikings" (1994) that many of written evidents about Vikings we have now should be consider as historical novels. Also, they were written to add splendor to some families (stocks) and to strengthen their rights to some regions etc. She also writes that it is very difficult to establish what is product of unfettered imagination and what is embellished by symphaty version of real event; where the supplementations and corrections for assurance coherent narration ends and where begins the relation of real event. Sometimes all story is a fiction with the exception of the names of main heros - for example Jómsvikings Saga.
I have another citatation from that great book, one of the best about Vikings. I will try to translate it from Polish, as I have Polish version of it. "[...]The image of the violent Vikings, rubbing churches, murdering and kidnaping, is the classic, but narrow/one-sided vision. This image was created by contemporary, literate West European priests, who most often, were noting events of violent character, also the image was supplemented by bards and historians, authors of Iicelandic sagas inter alia, who were searching for dramatic scenes for their national mythology (E. Roesdahl, 1994, The Vikings, new edition, Introduction, page 9th in Polish translate).
Else Roesdahl is professor of Arhus University and Nothingam University and she is universally recognized as an authority on the subject of the Vikings and Early Medieval.
Of course, we can find in Sagas many interesting and real facts, customs etc, but this is the fact that sagas are treated very carefully by archeologists. Like many others written evidences from ancient times, like Herodotusworks, for example.

Quote:

They might not be there with horned helmets killing and looting but even in the east where they came often for trade they still did their fair share of killing and plundering.

The same : like many other nations did.

Quote:

Any culture that buries their men with arms and armour has a good chance at being called a warrior culture but this is only a small aspect of the whole. The highest levels of society are warriors. The ones who make the policy and in many many ways the society are warriors, so yes I think there is more than enough evidence to argue that they are a warrior culture. The fact some people were merchants would be lost on the fact that most of the people were farmers, but they were not making the policies in the society. A culture without farmers and such services would surely be hard to maintain. The vendels and others in the area before the viking period are also a very warrior based culture. If you'd like some reading on this there are a great deal of books out on the early medieval/ late iron age inhabitants of scandinavia. Martin Carver has written a great deal about them. The idea that the warrior class rules them all would seem to be key to warrior culture.

And here is maybe the cause why we are disagree.
For me "warrior culture" means that majority of the nation live on war, fight etc. The example of this is nomadic culture . Nations like Huns, Bulgarians, Tatars didn't have homes, o land they cultivate. They were attacking settled, agricultural nations to rob them, live on their labour, replenish diet with vegetable protein from fruits of the earth. This is warrior culture. Your description of warrior culture fits to majority of cultures of that time: Slaves, Germans, Romans, etc. etc., beginning from the start of our world to the time much later than Medieval. For all this time the highest level of the society was warriors For most of us war is something strange, unfamiliar, but in Viking Era (and time before it, and time after it) war something normal, it was inscribed in live. Nations were attacking nations to rule them, there were never ending war on border-lands, even in Late Medieval. So, would you name Late Medieval culture, for example France, a warrior culture? In Poland, like in many other countries, till XVIIIth century the gentry was ruling caste. Would you name Polish culture a warrior culture?

Quote:

The fact the Goths do not bury their dead with arms does not make them less of a warrior culture as that is but a small part of it. I do not think it really related to the fact that the early scandinavians and vikings buried their dead with weapons and armour just differences in culture.

I think you haven't understood my allusion. ;) Of course that Goth were very brave man, it was question for you. You wrote that you can't imagine that warrior culture buries their dead without arms or with "a plaything", so I gave you example that it is not so obvious. ;) And : Goths are also early Scandinavians. ;)

Quote:

The main issue with people's claims that items are only for show is that they have little evidence to prove it. There is always the' face plate makes it impossible to use on the Sutton Hoo helmet, It has to many decorations, etc. etc.' This is in many ways without any founding. The sutton hoo helmet as is now would fit a person well and provide very good protection according to people who have worn fairly close replicas of it can avouch is fine. We need to think what does a leaders helmet have to say? Is it saying I am the leader so follow me to my men? Is it pointing me out to my men as a rally point? Is it to cow my enemies on the field or off it? Just because it has decoration does not make it less of a weapon or armour until it makes it ineffective in that role by a feature that detracts from it. If the decoration on a blade makes the blade unusable it is in this catagory for example. So I very much disagree that these helmets are not all made to be functional as well as decorative.

Do you really claim that "people who have worn fairly close replicas of it" are fighting in those very expensive and delicate helmets with head shots and with using steel weapons??? :eek: I am making now really close replica of Valsgarde 8 and customer who ordered it, assured me that he would not fight in it with head shots. He even was afraid that decoration made of silver plates could be destroyed by the accidental bit.
The cause many people think that Vendel/Valsgarde parade helmets weren't made for fight is not just because "it has decoration", but what kind of decoration it has. Decorated panels are made of very thin silver plate. Also, the construction of the crest is, in spite of many opinion, very delicate, because it was made of few elements made of bronze plate. If those helmets were made for fight, so those must be a one-shot-helmets.

And something, what is my own and my wife's idea : we know from Viking and Pre-Viking graves only those highly decorated helmets, like from Vendel and Valsgarde and Ultuna. If we assume that those were helmets for show, to establish respect, to mark high position of the owner, we could wonder that maybe there was the rule, that only that kind of helmets (only for show, not for fight) could be buried in grave in Scandinavian culture. We know from pictorial depictions, for example, that helmets were worn by warriors (for example depictions of simple conical and spangenhelmets), but none of them has been found so far in Scandinavia, when there are finds of that kind of helmets from Poland, Germany, France, Czech Republic etc. This is very intriguing, in my opinion.