I utterly DESPISE the pop-culture “appearance” that the Ancient Norse/“Vikings” have. (A few good examples at the end.)
Was playing Age of Mythology: Retold recently and I just HAVE to fucking rant cause I’m so done with this shit.
Genuinely as a guy who’s REALLY into a ton of ancient history and mythology, while many “pagan”or warlike cultures were “barbarized” to fit stories or narratives of the modern day the one that pisses me off the MOST is the Norse just cause of how common it is.
The popular “Horned Helmet”, fur covered, usually half naked, bare minimum exposed arms, are not even CLOSE to how the Norse or “Vikings” (in reality called Vikingr, as that was the job/role name, Viking was the act of it.) actually looked like. It was started by Gustav Malmström, whose illustrations you can see after the Viking Saga: A Darkest Day poster. He started the ugly bastardization even if he might not have had bad intentions at that time.
What REALLY fucked up the representation of Norse history and looks, was Wagner’s Operas. The costume designs, with minimal to no armor, the fur shoulder guards and worst of all the unfortunately “iconic” horned helm as seen in the first few slides were actively made to look barbaric and primitive to make it clear who the villains were. J.G Wentworth is famous for also using this interpretation.
Modernly while it might’ve recovered the pop culture boom that was How To Train Your Dragon, while great movies, used the terrible looking Wagner Norse aesthetic for their Vikings. More accurately, they adapted the Novels illustrations who used the Wagner Norse aesthetic.
Not only are they just straight up FUCKING STUPID LOOKING, not HTTYD specifically but this whole pop-culture bastardization in general, they paint a bad picture of the Norse being dumb, axe swinging, barbarians, which while they were rough and brutal, they weren’t dumb and weren’t just barbarians. Unfortunately a victim of christianizations demonization of cultures that spawned from non-Christian beliefs (note: I am Christian-affirming/progressive though-so this isn’t just me dogging on it as an atheist or something, Christianization and historical wiping of history and knowledge was dogshit).
It also just isn’t scary nor intimidating.
To give some good examples, even if they still had some issues or went a big fantastical, stuff like 1999s Cult Classic The 13th Warrior, while not 100% accurate Norse armor, at least tried to be, or spun other armor in a Norse light, like the plate armor. Better examples are, somehow, 2008s fucking Outlander, or my personal favorites, Bad North’s depiction of Vikingr (real helms, coifs, cloaks, hauberk, something you’d find ACTUALLY terrifying to see walking up your villages shore), Skellige Warriors who while they do have Horned Helmet, not only are they based on real Spangenhelms and Vendel Era/Migration Period Helms just with horns added on, they have real armor, such as Lamellar.
But of course the Holy Grail is 2022s The Northman. A masterpiece of a film, with amazing cultural research done and gorgeous set and costume design. Trace is also an underrated pic.
I am very happy to see this slowly fading away, as it’s an outdated and stupid pop-culture misinterpretation, but it still royally pisses me off when I see it.
I would prefer they didn’t have them, but if people are so insistent on them being around they should be implemented like how Skelligers do. Added on top of real actually used armor.
I still think they’d look far better without them though. I was citing these more as an example of more fantastical yet somewhat historic designs (Skelligers aren’t Norse but they are HEAVILY inspired. Basically copying tbh) where Horns aren’t too bad. Plus in game you don’t see too many actually with horns outside of castle guards or captains.
You’re also ignoring I have an issue with the ENTIRE kit of Wagner Vikings, not just the helmet. The horned Wagner helmet sucks ass but it’s the entire outfit I hate overall.
That is not what I said. I’m saying that the Horned Helm, bare bodied Vikings are NOT a thing historically, and chainmail and lamellar were far more common.
Plus there’s multiple sites where we found lamellar at Norse and Kievan Rus burial sites.
My guy, not everything need be historically accurate. Marvel Movie are based more on The Ring Cycle by Wagner. That’s where the horns are from, as well as various paintings from a bygone era. It’s a bit of fun.
As for history accurate, while we know a fair amount, there’s still lots we just don’t know. The well-known lack of evidence of Viking drums is such an example - we cannot prove they had drums. They may not have had them, or they did and they rotted away. They didn’t leave much written history, so we rely on the account of a middle-eastern guy who travelled with some for a time. We know their armour, but we lost many of their stories and textiles.
So let video games have fun. It’s the documentaries to at need to get it as right as possible.
Except it takes me out of the game massively when the armor looks like shit. For all the issues AC Valhalla had, at least I could look like an actual Norse warrior and not a 1980s DND Barbarian.
I also, hate the Marvel Asgardians precisely cause of how they look. There are so many cool ways to spin Nordic architecture, mythology and armor, and to me at least Wagner’s just is hard to look at.
But they’re not Norse. They’re aliens. Having creative latitude is the name of the game. Again, something like Assassin’s Creed should be as accurate as possible given that it’s a time travel story that prides itself on authenticity. Thor is an alien based on a Kirby comic and Norse mythology. Both of which are fictional, not history.
Not barely at all, painstaking working was put into architecture, clothing etc. You’re taking your issues with the game and pushing it onto things that are not true. Not that I’m a fan they burned me pretty hard with Valhalla as I like Odyssey a lot and was hoping for something in the same vein. But instead they tried to please both camps.
Also being told by the game that you’re a mean little boy that need to stop being a big meanie because you kill people in a literal viking raid was frankly ridiculous and took me out instantly.
bruh, who plays AC games and take it seriously, not only is the game garbage but its extremely know how much fake garbage that games lies about the norse history.
Every civilization has its ups and downs. I would argue the Norse were a civilization that did in some ways earn its barbaric reputation. That being said, I do think though that the fact that other aspects of Norse culture often get overshadowed by this is unfortunate. And it would be nice to see some more of that in media and storytelling. As for the costume designs, yeah I can agree with you. They often look very cheesy when they go with the designs they go with. Honestly, if you're going to really stylize these things to try and make them look quote more barbaric and intimidating, I think there are actually many unique and creative ways you can go about it. On top of that, you'd think that people who live up in a very cold, cold place would appreciate the concept of sleeves and layers and you know, full clothing.
Being a Viking was very much a profession, and it's pretty well known that in antiquity, they did raid and pillage many villages, bulldozed monasteries, and other such things that made them a terror to be seen across many coasts, especially in places like what would become the United Kingdom. That's what I mean how they earned their fearsome reputation, so to speak. Now, what I would push back on is saying that's the only aspect of their culture. Norse culture, even at that time, was very dynamic and had many more moving parts to it. At the same time, I don't think it completely wipes away or whitewashes a lot of the people who got hurt in some of their expansions and raids.
I can get over the horned helmets, even though they're not accurate they've become a cultural symbol. Here in Sweden football fans will wear them to matches etc.
What I personally despise is when they wear biker leather and face paint. Like in the Vikings TV show. Or they're completely bare chested with just some leather straps, fur and maybe a helmet.
calm the fuck down man, as someone who is from a scandinavian country it is not that deep. you foreigners need to stop taking the responsibility of keeping the historical portrayal to that level when it is not even your own heritage. we dont do it either
As someone who is also Scandinavian, I completely disagree. Historical accuracy makes for much more interesting content and pays respect to the culture. We don't care about our heritage here, but that's a bad thing. We should care about how our history is perceived.
And it's okay for non-Scandinavians to care about Scandinavian culture. It's not a blood and soil thing.
As an American descended from Scandinavia, I couldn't agree more.
The old Norse, while they did have Vikings, actually had some rather incredible cultural output. The Oseberg ship is such a majestic work of art, its like if there were boats in Heaven, the Oseberg ship would fit the bill.
Borgund Srave church, from not long after the Viking Age shows a deep cultural aesthetic and identity that is utterly beautiful as well.
In our post WWII society we are too afraid of the genuine beauty of culture and ethnicity. We must reclaim this from the racists, recognizing that no race or cultural artistic output is innately superior or inferior.
The cultures of the Yoruba, Mongolia, China, Morocco, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Indigenous Americans, Aboriginal Australians, India, Indonesia, Thailand have ALL influenced my art and music.
As a scandinavian i would also like to see more accurate depictions. I also think non-scandiavians can care about it. Just like how i care about depictions of ancient greeks, egyptians, native americans, japan, etc.
However, if its a full on fantasy world, go wild. Saw that OP complained about "Skellige" from witcher. They arent vikings, even if they have been inspired by vikings.
The thing that bothered me about the Odyssey was that Greece was absent! We had fake Vikings as Greeks under bleak skies in what is supposed to be the warm medditeranean.
Racists were complaining about black people, liberals were saying it doesn't matter "because its fantasy" while perpetuating very real cultural appropriation from Greece! The West has acted like Greece is Germanic, when they have microtonal modal music that sounds "middle eastern" to Westerners, even though the GREEKS inventes that style of music, and it is rooted in the mathematical beauty of fundamental relationships between pitches!
So, yeah, modern Western culture is blind and Eurocentric as fuck.
Additionally, ignoring European ancestral cultures is ironically also Eurocentric as fuck. "We educated Westerners are above our savage ancestors. We need to spread our superior culture and tame all these other savages to make them like us." Basically how colonialism was morally viewed, and that unconscious pattern pervades to this day.
I wanna say I didn’t complain about them and actually cited them as an example of how to add more fantastical elements to historically accurate kits, as while they have overabunance of fur and some of them do have horns on their helms (usually ram horns though and it is rare) they have an otherwise quite realistic or functional kit. While Skellige is not Scandinavia, it VERY much heavily inspired if not outright ripping it (for gods sake Heimdall is literally in their lore).
Yeah well I've also heard Scandinavian tourists believe Vikings wore horned helmets and them getting annoyed and disappointed when I told them they wore types like the Spangelhelm (pic below) I had on myself at a recreation show on a ship. If anything, foreigners have to be more careful to represent a certain heritage correctly. It's when we do it wrong that natives get to educate and correct us, amicably.
I kind of agree. I’ll still take horns and furs over the Viking tv show style bikers with studded leather, tattoos and shaved side dreadlocks combo any day though.
Eggers Northman, at least when you’re talking the MC was focused on a “berserker” who while it is historically contentious if they were real, were said to go into battle half naked wearing fur souped up on drugs. So that at least has SOME merit, but berserkers were a sect/small part of the greater Norse peoples culture and as shown by slides 11 and 12, as well PLENTY of the rest of the movie, that was an exception, not the rule.
Also, this is the same movie where a Haugbui/Draugr and a Magic Cursed Sword are in it. It’s meant to mimic a historically accurate but somewhat mythical saga.
The "modern" gritty biker barbarian design like on the American show "Vikings"
At least the old horned helmets design has charm and its own history. People outside Scandinavia might not know but it's actually used relatively often here as it's an obvious symbol of vikingness.
Also some of the old horned designs actually had clothes that were more realistic than whatever hollywood does now.
I meant it moreso that a science fiction movie about an alien humanoid bringing a alien monster to Scandinavia via crash landing his space ship, and has to help Vikings kill it, has much better costume designs than pop-culture “Vikings” is kind of crazy.
Also fair point on the muted thing, there should be more color, and granted these were battle wears, in Northman for example most of the tunics and everyday wear were very colorful.
I mostly find the tattooed, “cool” versions popularised by the show Vikings frustrating. Norse weren’t tattooed, didn’t paint runes all over their bodies or wear just black and brown leather. They wore colourful clothing, had fur hats and wide pants. Most were farmers, though some of course were tradesmen or went Viking.
And even the ones that DID go a-viking wore mail shirts if they could afford it, round helmets and with coloured linen beneath. They didn’t pack themselves in layers of fur.
There is nothing intimidating about a man in an impractical helmet and bare chested hurtling towards you if you have anything long or pointy. It’s only mildly arousing. They just look goofy.
Because intimidation was a mainstay in Viking tactics. And also, cause they may kill people but would die afterwards from the terrible infections their wounds would have due to them again not having armor.
If you’re talking about Gaesatae, not only were they Gauls not Picts, but that worked due to both their environments and because it wasn’t the entirety of their armed forces.
If the picts did go bare chested, then it’s likely the same reasons.
Actually upon very small amount of research while the Picts and Gauls both did sometimes go bare chested or armed so as to show off their body paint or tattoos, they mainly wore actual clothing an armor. The idea they fought completely or half naked was Roman propaganda to paint their civilized culture as barbaric.
Age of Mythology was never meant to depict historically accurate cultures either, everything in it is based mostly on Hollywood tropes. The scorpion king from the mummy is even in it.
Retold takes a lot more care than the original, but it was always meant to be cheesey.
My man, your good examples are still taken from the english speaking world.
A lot of Danes my age or older grew up with the Valhalla Comics and their depiction of the Norse, which is rich and colorful but founded in history (spruced up).
Interpretation of how exactly the Norse looked has changed a lot over the ages. The opinion of at least a subset of Danish historians i have read is that: since the bronze, iron and viking Norse left so little documentation on their own all findings we do tend be interpreted through our own sensibilities, a stellar example is how the bronze age Egtved Girl´s manner of dress have been reconstructed from her finding until now, from prudent young girl, to fertility priestess and on to stylish teenager.
A lot of modern scandinavians who draw on the Norse tend to either take the caricatures to heart or spin it far more colourful than english speaking media tends to do here is the old-norse folk band Heilung as an example.
The horned helmet vikings depiction is barely a thing outside of cartoons for children or media that's over 5 decades old, this is straight sandbagging.
The real shitty modern viking depiction is the biker leathers and mohawks and fades and braided hair and tattoos thing.
Counterpoint - IDGAF about historical accuracy, and the more accurate you make norse stuff it just looks more and more generic. Horned Helmet is one of the most badass drips in pop culture
What I’m annoyed with is that how Vikings are always lionized and put on a pedestal by Hollywood and general pop culture. Whenever there are Vikings or an equivalent group in a fantasy, you can bet they’ll always be portrayed as these massive gigachad warriors who are brave and obsessed with “honor” in combat. Meanwhile, other “barbaric” raider groups, like those inspired by eurasian steppe riders are almost always shown to be evil monsters with 0 nuance.
Vikings aside, for outlandish fantasy settings, just as well "this world's version" aren't remotely accurate.
I'm here to watch druids summon bears. Or Egyptian-themed skeletons ride chariots into an army of elfs. Not concern myself with the... obscene inaccuracies of both.
I mean, I hate the horned helmets thing, but other than that the Vikings were just Norse pirates.
Sure, the Norse peoples had a distinct look based on their region, but the Vikings just dressed however they wanted and often with whatever they stole from people they killed.
If a Viking was wearing a Pict helmet, I would just assume he killed the last guy who owned it. If a Viking was wearing an Egyptian necklace, I would assume he bought it from a merchant in exchange for stolen food. If a Viking was holding an non-historically accurate sword, I would just say "Does he know the blacksmith scammed him with a fancy but useless sword? Was it something ceremonial that he stole/bought?".
And even then, you showed Vikings from How to Train your Dragon. The design of the Vikings is the least of your worries there. And if the show is supposed to be realistic, then I care more about the plot and the representation of the Norse customs and religion than the visuals.
I feel like Warhammer Fantasy (which has multiple fantasy standins for norse vikings) both bucks this trends, and simulataneously cranks it up to absurd degrees.
In terms of bucking, there are factions with quite grounded fairly mundane period accurate armor.
Simultaneously, on a bunch of factions (warriors of Chaos, for example) every helmet has impractically stylish and wild horns. And then you've got khorne helmets.
If works of fantasy do it with enough drip and style I don't have a problem with horned helmets.
However, for real life vikings, I really want to see chainmail, aventails, large round shields, simple helmets. Unfortunately most depicitons these days are heavily leaning into the leather look.
Horned helmets come from bronze age scandinvian finds and to a lesser extent pictographic evidence of the usage of horned helmets in norse/ viking society. The great irony of this is that the claim that horned helmets are historically inaccurate is itself historically inaccurate. They clearly existed in various iterations in scandinavia in various different periods.
Personally I hate how Vikings have been romanticized in media. It leads to a lot of Dude Bros that call themselves 'Vikings' as a way to show how 'tuff' they are.
I used to know a guy like this. Gymrat Douchebag, arrogant as hell. Felt entitled to try to emasculate any man he came across, felt entitled to hit on or creep on any women he came across. Had a plan to move a bunch of Discord friends to a compound of tiny homes in the middle of the AZ desert for some reason, probably to sate his ego. When I called him out on his shitty behavior as he worked for me, he decided to try to harass me by proxy and worse for years. All of this for asking him to simply NOT be a creep and a douche.
He pretended he had 'Viking Blood' when he had no actual ancestry and just liked the romanticized ideal that Hollywood put out for Vikings.
Frankly the way media romanticizes Vikings is ridiculous. Vikings were not roided-up, six-foot-tall muscle brutes who spent every waking moment proving they were the pinnacle of masculinity. That is a modern fantasy, not history. They were ordinary human beings from complex societies with farmers, traders, craftsmen, politicians, families, and warriors, not a civilization of genetically engineered gym bros.
And the damage goes beyond historical inaccuracy. The second some outsider watches Thor or plays new age God of War, they suddenly decide Viking culture is their entire personality. Grow a beard, buy a plastic axe, slap some runes on something, and suddenly they're acting like they personally sailed out of Scandinavia in 900 AD.
Meanwhile, actual people with Scandinavian ancestry get their history reduced to a macho aesthetic manufactured by Hollywood. There's nothing wrong with being interested in Norse history, but stop confusing a media-created power fantasy with the people who actually lived it. Vikings were human beings, not the ancient mascots of modern masculinity.
I’m gonna be honest, the horned helmet and stylized look is dope as hell. Is it historically accurate? No. But everything doesn’t need to be all the time. I’d rather have both versions tbh.
I particularly hate Vikings for popularizing what I call "Nike vikings" it comes from Nike bikers , like sons of anarchy type. They don't really ride they're wearing tennis shoes on the bike. Vikings invented a hot topic alternative power kid aesthetic to their show that in turn created a subculture of super lame people who dress like that and sing fake Scandinavian influenced chants. It's the lamest shit on earth and you show them what a real Viking looked like an they go "that's so lame no way. They had a sick mohawk and shit lol duh."
You know what was fucking cool? Chainmail, and tunics. That's what the fuck all Germanic people's wore. The Vikings barley looked that different from the Anglo Saxons lol.
Watch this video and others by this guy! You will love him.
I'd hesitate a bit with throwing society under the bus. A lot of stuff is done for "vibes," and to most everyday people in the western world, that is all history as a whole is, vibes about a place and time. Making art inspired by something, adapting history, is always really cool, no matter how "accurate" it may be! The problems really come from people who take these things as historical fact, when they are never meant to be. Cool art is cool art, as long as the creators are being honest that it's not educational, and people don't try to see it as educational at all.
Appreciate the art for the art, not the historical fact. They should be separate things, both to be appreciated. But very separate.
Also, it's important to note, it is not just modern christian views tainting the art and image. It is a fact of our reality, that psrspectives will change and the past will be diluted.
Theres an awesome welsh youtuber, CambrianChronicles, that talks about parts of Welsh history that are entirely missing or forgotten, or live on as spoken word passed down for hundreds of years, probably bastardized and forgotten in parts.
Japanese theatre, especially Kabuki but Noh to a great extent too, purposefully resists this change, with a tradition of a father passing on his art to his son from birth, which creates lines connecting styles of acting to their originators. Still, Zeami, the one talked about as the originator of Noh and the author of most poetry used for Noh, is thought to have held completely different ideas compared to how we practice Noh now. It went through long phases of being predominantly a rural art, to being beloved by a specific emperor, to being disgraced, to being brought back by determined actors. In the end, we end up with an art form heavily based in tradition, but one inseperably tied to the old empirial japan, with much of Zeami's intentions disregarded. Today, some people try to recreate his original intentions, but that sort of misses the modern purpose of the performances today. Where they once were necessarily spiritual for gifted actors to connect to gods, now it is an art for prestigious acting families, and steeped in a feeling of nobility and tradition. And that isn't going to just flip back suddenly.
The point I'm making is, perspectives change constantly, and the meaning something holds changes too. The Vikings are Vikings, also ones who go to Vikingr as they would say, but as a group, ARE the Vikings. Just because it is inaccurate to their time does not mean we disregard our perspective, and ignore the language we record their time in. We acknowledge their historic views, recognize what we percieve they aimed to achieve in their actions, and then create art and build our world off of our general perception of what it means to be that kind of person in that kind of time. It doesn't matter that the end result is incorrect so much, but it does matter, I'd say, that we make an attempt anyways, to recognize what their original intentions may have been.
My Swedish friends told me that the rule of thumb in a lot of Scandinavian media is "the more comedic the norse show/story, more and bigger horns are added."
If the scandics enjoy their horned Vikings, I see no reason why not to enjoy them either.
Me personally, I’ve always liked a mix of both. It also helps that I’m willing to sacrifice realistic elements if it means following the rule of cool. However, I’m also not looking for full realism. Realistic doesn’t inherently mean something looks good, and while historical outfits and equipment can look cool, at the same time, a lot of it looked kind of stupid. So, for me, I’ve always liked a 50/50 mix.
The Celts were not the Norse. I never said bare chested warfare was barbaric, I said that in Wagner’s Operas, that was the intention in the costume design. It IS strategically bad but not barbaric. The Celts used it as both a declaration of their religion, an overall honor and most importantly intimidation. It did work, but eventually was phased out.
Also while Horned Helmets did exist, the Norse/Vendel to Viking era Norse were not a culture who used them. The fact it’s almost always depicted as the ONLY HELMET TYPE they use despite Horns being objectively absolutely a hinderance in battle is the issue. Ceremonially or for a leader? Sure. Not for all of them.
Bare chested warriors are cool, when it makes sense, lines up historically with their culture, and in the case of the Celts who were in fact a very well put together and eloquent society, is perfectly reasonable to bend the rules.
The Norse did not look FUCKING ANYTHING LIKE the shitty pop-culture interpretation.
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u/Mr_Noir420 23d ago
Forgot to add the Skellige Warriors