Dilemma of horns
Sir: Your excellent magazine carried on its cover the picture of a Viking warrior bring- ing inspiration to your worried Prime Min- ister (13 June).
Unfortunately your artist, Peter Brookes, has equipped the Viking with a horned hel- met. The first such helmet was created in connection with the premiere in New York in 1882 of the Niebelungenring opera by Richard Wagner. Since then it seems that the cowhorns have become stuck to our forefathers' helmets, whenever they are depicted.
Try to imagine yourself as such a Viking, waiting behind the row of protective shields and the ropes of his Viking drakeship as it is approaching the enemy drake. You're dressed in a coat-o'mail, have a heavy shield on your left arm, a longsword in your belt and a double battle-axe in your right hand. Your gruelling task is to jump over the shields, between the ropes, over a few feet of water, land over the shields clear of the ropes, all the time swinging your axe to kill the enemy. While doing all this you must make sure the protruding cowhorns don't get caught! You get the picture?
Historians and archaeologists agree thor- oughly — there has never been a Viking helmet with horns.
Alf R. Bjercke
Norwegian Member of the Board of Stewards, York Archeaological Trust, Drammensveien 82, 0271 Oslo 2, Norway
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