Britain claims Vikings’ trade mark

Selleck settles Powerball row

Whenever a horned helmet appears on film or on stage, it is invariably worn by a Viking marauder or a Wagnerian maiden.

This traditional view is bunk, according to the British Museum, which is using a new exhibition to claim the horned helmet for Celtic warriors based in Britain.

Celts, which opens in September, will feature a bronze helmet dragged from the mud of the Thames, near Waterloo bridge – proof, it believes, that outlandish headwear was a firm favourite among early Britons.

There is evidence that decorated helmets were worn in Scandinavia, but the adornments bear a closer resemblance to plumbing fittings than the conical horns seen on modern depictions of Vikings.

Julia Farley, curator of European Iron Age collections at the museum, said that the myth that Vikings were responsible for horned helmets probably stemmed from Richard Wagner’s epic opera The Ring Cycle, which featured Norse characters in such headgear when it opened in the 1870s.

‘‘I feel that we can now reclaim the horned helmet,’’ she said. ‘‘We have the horned helmet dredged up from the River Thames, and on the Gundestrup cauldron it shows people wearing horned helmets. It seems that the head, and the adornment of the head, was very important.’’

Farley said the Waterloo helmet was likely to have been used in warfare. ‘‘When you look at the things that people are wearing and using in war – for example, a spearhead with over-the-top decoration – people say that they are too fragile and too beautiful to have been used on the battlefield. I think they were used in war, and that war was much more of an exercise in display.

‘‘This helmet is clearly something that’s being used to intimidate. When we see these headdresses, they’ve quite often been used by warriors. I think this is a way for people to exaggerate their status in a context to do with war. But we can’t rule out that it was something to do with a ritual specialist [like a priest].’’

The exhibition will will explore the revelation that the Celts were not a single people, but various groups at the northern fringes of the Roman empire whose cultures were similar.

The Times

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