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Misconceptions abound aboutVikings . They are often show as bloodthirsty , unwashed warrior with winged helmet . But that ’s a pitiable picture show based largely on Viking depicting in the 19th hundred , when they featured in European art either as romantic heroes or exotic savages . The literal Vikings , however , were not just the material of legend — and they did n’t have wings or horn on their helmet . Here , we expose seven myth about the Vikings .
concern : Hårby Valkyrie : A 1,200 - twelvemonth - onetime gold Viking Age cleaning lady sporting a sword , shell and ponytail
The Vikings wore helmets with wings and horns.
This idea can be trace to the 19th - century German creative person Carl Emil Doepler , who limn Germanic gods likeWotan ( Odin)wearing winged helmet in his costume for Richard Wagner ’s " annulus oscillation " of four epic Opera , called " Der Ring des Nibelungen " ( " The Ring of the Nibelung " ) in German . Wagner draw on Germanic mythology , but the idea adhere that the related Norse , some of whom were Vikings , also wore helmets with wing . The impression that Viking helmet had horns originated in 19th - century painting , and it was repeat in Hollywood film . The myth also may have been inspired byceremonial helmets with hornsfound in Denmark in 1942 , but those date to about 900 B.C. — over a thousand years before the Vikings .
The Vikings executed enemies with the “blood eagle.”
" Blood eagle " execution is describe in chivalric Scandinavian textbook , but it may have just been a gruesome estimation , rather than a actual practice . harmonize to someNorse saga , some Viking male monarch executed their enemies by cutting their ribs from their spine and pull out their lung out the back to resemble wings ; and the sagas give what seemed to be two disjoined examples of this"blood bird of Jove " punishment . But experts call back the sagas may have been overstate for striking effect , and there isno archaeological evidenceto support the notion that this ever happened . Its comprehension in nineteenth stories about Vikings and in some modern television shows , however , has cemented the idea .
The Vikings were only raiders.
It is undeniable that many Vikings were despoiler . But not all of them were , and they were also keen monger andintrepid IE . artefact like Arabic flatware coins show that Viking trade networks stretch from Byzantium to the British Isles , and thesettlement at L’Anse aux Meadowsin Newfoundland , Canada , shows that Vikings achieve portion of the Americas from Europe as too soon as A.D. 1000 , almost 500 years before Christopher Columbus did . The Vikings were famous for their trade in fur , walrus tusk and amber , and some modern historians intimate the economic and cultural ground for the Viking expansion were as of import as raid and taking slaves .
The Vikings were extraordinarily violent.
It is also undeniable that the Vikings were sometimes violent — OK , often . But they lived in a violent historic period whenmany societies were equally violent , and there is no grounds that the Vikings were more violent than anybody else at the time . celebrated incursions , like theraid on the British island of Lindisfarnein A.D. 793 , assured the Vikings of violent notoriety . But brutal wars and carnage were received throughout early medieval Europe , and the notion that the Vikings were exceptionally more violent than everyone else seems to have been a straight-laced conception .
All Vikings were blond.
The idea that all Vikings looked " Nordic " — that is , tall , blond and blue - eyed — may have originated in the racial possibility of 19th - century Europe , but the Vikings were a ethnic grouping rather than an ethnic one . Recent DNA studiesof Vikings have give away an admixture of Scandinavians with Southern Europeans , Slavs and even some Saami ( or Lapps , a semi - nomadic people from the very north of Scandanvia who traditionally herded reindeer . ) Vikings often travel far abroad , to places like Byzantium and the Islamic world , and it is likely that some Vikings had stemma from those regions . As well , deoxyribonucleic acid evidence from the grave of Viking warriors indicates some had drab hair’s-breadth and wide-ranging feature article , rather than divvy up a racial uniformity .
The Vikings were unhygienic.
The popular prototype of a Viking is of an vulgar ( and smelly ) warrior , but the Vikings were actually quite blank for their fourth dimension . Artifacts from Viking gravesshow that grooming was a priority , with comb , tweezers and ear spoons for removing wax ; while the fragments of Viking bowls indicatesoapwas often used . Bathing was uncommon at this time , so this Viking custom stood out . The Arab explorerAhmad ibn Fadlannoted in A.D. 921 that the Vikings in the mediaeval eastern Slavic region of Rus wash every day — a recitation he viewed as odd .
The Vikings were “tamed” by Christianity.
It has sometimes been suggest that the feast of Christianity throughout the Viking world , which supplanted the worship of theirNorse graven image , eventually made the Vikings less prone to violence — but the idea may just be Christian propaganda . Indeed , the Vikings set forth out as pagans roughly in the 8th century , and by the 10th hundred , Harald Bluetoothbragged that he had converted Denmark to Christianity . But the Vikings seem to have been brutal throughout their history , and there is no grounds that Viking violence subsided after their adoption of Christianity;evidence from mass gravesindicates that Viking with Christian feeling also slaughter great numbers of people .
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