Will+R’s+OpEd+Article



When you think of vikings, what comes to mind? Horned helmets? Dirty? People who only rape and pillage? Well I am about to change your view on them. I chose this topic because it makes me extremely angry that people keep on continuing this false view on my ancestors. I am very proud of who my ancestors were, that's why I make sure to always wear my Thor's hammer mjolnir around my neck. While Christians have their crosses, I have my thors hammer mjolnir. Not really to represent Norse Paganism (even though it is awesome) because I am an atheist but more of a representation of I share the values and I am proud of my ancestors.

In reality, the vikings were the opposite of how pop culture has made them look today. Let me get started by taking down the first myth. The vikings DID NOT wear horned helmets, contrary to popular belief. I am not very sure how this whole horned helmet phenomena happened but there has been no recorded evidence or artifacts that have been found indicating horned helmets. It may have started with early English opera or people who were afraid of the viking raiders and wanted to make them look more terrifying by adding horns. Horns on a helmet was not a good idea logically anyways because an enemy could grab the horns and use it to his advantage. Also, when it comes to armor, they didn't wear any plate armor or pieces of random leather armor on their body. They wore a simple chainmail tunic, a simple helmet (shown above), and had a round shield. No, Skyrim is not an accurate source for looking at what the vikings wore, because that is a sad misrepresentation.

Another thing is people believed that the vikings were dirty, when in fact they were pretty clean relative to the times that they were in. There have been many find including versions of combs, razors, and "ear scoops". They had a bath day every Saturday called Laurdag. They even had soap, which had the effect of dying their hair blonde. Yes not all vikings were born with extremely blonde hair, it partly came from a dye that was in the soap they used. The eastern vikings (They traveled through what is now known as Russia to get to trade with the Arabs) washed every morning. Sure they used the same bowl, and even blew their noses into it, but it was still more cleanly than a lot of Europe at the time. They also changed and washed their clothes very often. They tended to wear more brightly colored clothes, because brightly colored clothes was their style and was what they liked to wear.

Now, I will address the main misconception about vikings. All of the vikings did not pillage. In fact, a lot were just farmers and traders who went to places to settle and trade. Yeah, there was a good amount who did pillage, but nothing compared to what people think today. They raided things like monasteries not because they were against Christianity (even though it brutally destroyed the viking culture), but because the priests and monks were stupid enough to keep valuables out in the open and had a lot of valuables.

Sword were something that were not widely used. Sword were very expensive and signified if you were a rich warrior. Most used things like axes, that were not double sided. They were one sided and look a lot like axes that we use today.

I hope that this had cleared up some of the myths and misconceptions that you may have had about the vikings.