2007 VIKINGFEST (Click on a picture to see a larger version)

The 2007 Vikingfest was hosted by the Past District Masters' Club at the restaurant Nordic Fox in Downey as a fundraiser for the 2008 District Convention.

As everybody knows, the Vikings did not wear helmets with horns; these were a romantic invention of the 19th century. Some evidence have been found of  horned  helmets, but these are from Bronze Age and early Iron Age, well before the Viking age. The helmets worn by the Vikings were conical in form and hornless, like the two pictured here.  Read more about how the horned Viking helmet myth got started.

Actually, very few Viking helmets have been found by archaeologists, possibly because some were made of leather which didn't last through the centuries.

Only one Viking helmet has been found in Scandinavia, the Gjermundby Helmet, found in eastern Norway. It was found in nine pieces, and reconstructed and can now be seen in the Museum of National Antiquities in Oslo.

Another Viking helmet, the York Helmet, was found at Jörvik in England and is part of the Yorkshire Museum exhibit.

While it's easy to find plastic Viking "party helmets" for a few dollars on the Internet, it is difficult to find websites with information about real Viking helmets that aren't just selling "museum replicas" for $200 plus. But here are two, both Viking reenactment sites:

Regia Anglorum, a British Reenactment Society, has some good pictures and information, as has Hurstwic, a New England based society.