Bob CollinsThis might be the biggest news since it was revealed Lassie was a boy.
Are you sitting down?
The Vikings did not wear horned helmets, Vox is reporting today.
Minnesota, you’re living a lie.
Vox says the notion that the Vikings wore horned helmets actually comes from a costume designer for the 1876 performance of Wagner’s classic Norse saga, Der Ring des Nibelungen.
Doepler’s horned helmets were the result of some fascinating historical transposition. Germans were fascinated by Vikings, at least in part because they represented a classical origin story free from Greek and Roman baggage. That had a lot of appeal in an age of nascent German nationalism. As a result, Doepler and other scholars intertwined German and Norse history in a surprising way: They put stereotypical ancient and medieval German headdresses — like horned helmets — on Viking heads. Norse and German legends were intertwined in the popular imagination, and we still haven’t untangled them.
In other news, the Minnesota Wagners announced today newly drafted wide receiver Laquon Treadwell will wear number 11.
