Hello there you all, you must excuse me that my first post is also a question.

I was wondering if there is any pictorial or archeologic evidence for helmets in 900-1000 with full facemasks in scandinavia or england. I often see helmets like these offered as 'viking helmets' on the internet but I haven't been able to find any discussions about it.

http://www.kovexars.cz/routines/new_window_pi...vodoznak=1

Here is a example.

To the best of my knowledge, the only existing archaeological helmet that is certainly viking is the Gjermundbu helmet. Pictorial evidence also shows simple rounded caps with nose guards, without the spectacle plate on the Gjermundbu. So no, there is no evidence that I am aware of for a full-faceplate Viking helmet - I would assume that the one you linked is intended for some type of HEMA or the like, where face protection may be required.

Naturally, lack of evidence is not itself evidence for the lack of something. If you want something a little more 'out there' in terms of what is considered normal, take a look at some Vendel helmets. The Gjermundbu helmet bears a close resemblance to some Vendel helmets, so I personally wouldn't consider it unreasonable that other Viking helmets did as well. The Gjermundbu helmet is dated to the 10th century IIRC.

As for English, I'm less familiar. However, the Sutton Hoo helmet (7th c I think?) has a full face mask.

Hope that helps some,
Pete

you have the Gjermundbu helmet, which is similar to a few faced vendel helmets.

The thing you posted looks more like a early transitional norman helmet from the 11th or early 12th century rather than a viking helmet

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Agreed that the example given seems closer to the attached Spoleto Becket Martyrdom wall painting than the (big picture) Viking Gjermundbu.
Here's a decent paper on the topic.
http://www.gav.org.uk/Research/Viking%20Age%20Helmets.pdf


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I think the Rus had helmets that sound like you are referring to. If you consider the Rus to be Vikings. The early ones certainly were.

There are examples like the Sutton Hoo find as well.

So far, there are no full face helmets from the Viking period. The Sutton Hoo, and the helmets from Vendel and Valsgärde in Sweden are pre-Viking. There is also a remnant face from the island of Gotland, (Broa) which was from a helmet, but this, too, was pre-Viking.

These aren't viking either but the kipchaks and other horse cultures around Russia and the black sea in the 8th to 11th centuries and later area were well known for having fluted helmets with detachable face masks.

Hi David, as you suggest this may be a bit off-topic.

However, you are, of course, correct in much of what you say, and all historical periods are artificial constructs; just convenient starting points in our study of the past. You are right, too, in that the 'Vikings' did not really begin with the raid on Lindisfarne, as people from around the North Sea were migrating, visiting, raiding and trading long before that, and had probably done so for centuries. There is ample evidence that Scandinavians were coming to England from very early on, at least from what we normally call the Migration Period and perhaps never stopped until the Late Saxon times, if even then. The culture/world view that we attribute to the 'Vikings' existed long, long before the official start of the period and was not unique to Vikings.

It is the English tradition that begins the Viking period with the raid on Lindisfarne, Scandinavian scholars tend to have other dates for the start of the period.

This does not alter the fact that the Swedish helmets and that from Sutton Hoo are early and not really 'Viking'.
The consensus on the dating of Sutton Hoo is that the burial took place about 625 A.D. There have been scholars who have suggested a slightly later date, mainly based on coin dating, but they have not been able to prove their hypothesis and a definite date eludes us. The consensus is based on the idea that it may be Raedwald's burial. Many of the artefacts, including the helmet, may have been quite old, perhaps a hundred years or so, by the time they were deposited in the tomb.

Helmets of this sort, with or without faceplates, occur only in a certain part of Sweden and Anglo-Saxon England (so far) - where they were made is a big question. Dies of the type that make the pressed plates have been found in a number of places, including England and Sweden, but to say, as you do, " The artifacts are not native to England,...." is not safe. By the time the Sutton Hoo artefacts were made, the families of the people who made them, even if originally of Scandinavian extraction, may have been in England for a couple of generations or more. The Staffordshire Hoard pressed plates (pressbleche) and the Caenby, which would appear to have come from similar types of helmets show that there may have actually been a much wider geographical spread for the use of such helmet types in England, than burial evidence in Sweden would indicate there, where (so far) they are confined to the area relatively close to Uppsala. Not one of those helmets, incidentally, has a full face-plate.

Then there is the helmet found at Benty Grange, Derbyshire, in 1848 by Thomas Bateman, which almost certainly had pressed plates of silver fixed to it. This has only been understood fairly recently when the archaeologist Kevin Leahy re-read Bateman's report and realised that what he was describing were likely to be the same type of plates that were fixed to the Sutton Hoo and the Swedish helmets. In 1848 no-one had seen examples of them and so the fragmentary silver plates were not thought important enough to worry about and were not kept.

Cheers,

Paul