Fantasy Vikings or imaginary Vikings are fictional and fantasy depictions of the Norse (a Germanic folk of the first millennia), popularly known as Vikings, found in various popular culture, implementing various imaginary artistic features. Such features, although sometimes inspired by historical examples or myths, more than often, directly contradict scientific knowledge of the historical basis, instead striving towards artistic ideas and creative freedom.
Fantasy Vikings are traditionally imagined with cattle horned helmets as their distinguishing trait, but modern depictions are often more varried in design.
The Norse were a Germanic group of people which continued the European pre-Christianization pagan traditions into the Early Middle Ages and conducted vast amounts of naval raids between the 8th to 12th century, so called Viking raids, as well as naval exploration and trade, with people conducting such being called Vikings (entailing naval warrior, explorer and trader), which have given rise to the name Viking Age for the period.
The Vikings have since become heavily romanticized in the modern world, inspiring lots of fantasy stories.
Popular motifs are blue-eyed, often blond, Scandinavian stereotypes, featuring muscular men and women, with long, sometimes braided or beaded, hair, including the facial hair for the men,[3][2] living in extreme portrayals of the Northern European landscape, such as fjords, coniferous forests and tundra.[4] Their clothing often coincides with the fantasy barbarian, consisting of patchy fur clothing,[5] sometimes intermixing elements from historical Norse and Medieval Celtic clothing,[6] but various styles of tunic is also common. In modern media, men are sometimes depicted partly or fully bare chested,[7] taking inspiration from the now obsolete myth of berserkers (Norse totem warriors) fighting bare chested without armor.[8]
Classic depictions often show fantasy Vikings wearing combat gear such as horned or winged helmets – conical helmets or spangenhelms featuring a pair of cattle horns or bird wings on each side[9] – taken directly from various classical operas covering Norse legend by Wagner,[10] which depicted the Vikings wearing helmets with horns and wings, popularizing this motif. Females are sometimes depicted with a pair spherical breastplates, one over each breast, also found in some Wagner attire. Modern depictions of fantasy Vikings, however, often leave out helmets altogether,[7] instead opting to show various hairstyles,[1][2] facepaint[11] or tattoos.[12][8]
The culture of fantasy Vikings often mix various elements from history, such as historical Viking raids and events, historical descriptions (such as Ahmad ibn Fadlan's meeting with the Rus' people and the Varangian ceremonies in De cerimoniis aulae Byzantinae), Norse mythology and legends, as well as Old Norse religion and elements from other pagan beliefs from around the world. Modern depitions often feature magical ornamental runes, engraved on weapons, clothes and tattoos, as well as on buildings, picture stones, rock faces and trees, etc.,[12][13] often taking notes from modern paganism, were each rune has its own meaning, including bind runes and other made up symbols. It is not uncommon for them to call their people by the name Viking.
Similarly to the fantasy barbarian and mythological berserker, fantasy Vikings are often depicted as being fearless barbarian elite warriors from uncharted land, hardened by long winters, a common spoof trope in animated media, such as, for example: Asterix and the Vikings and How to Train Your Dragon, among others.
Modern depictions of Vikings wearing horned and winged helmets is an invention of the 19th-century Romanticist Viking revival,[14] mainly popularized by the Norse operas of Richard Wagner, beginning in the 1870s, which depicted horns and wings on the helmets of the Vikings. The depiction of these helmets as historical is a fallacy was part of the construction of great Norse myths to be adopted by Germans, who wanted their own ancestral myths.[15]
In 1876, Carl Emil Doepler created horned and winged helmets for the first Bayreuth Festival production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, which has been credited with inspiring this, even though the opera was set in Germany, not Scandinavia.[a][10] There were also a few earlier, lesser known depictions that inspired Doepler.[15] Another 19th-century propagator was Swedish painter Johan August Malmström, who used them in his illustrations for the Nordic sagas.[16][17]
A 20th-century example is the Minnesota Vikings American football team, whose logo carries a horn on each side of the helmet. In Scandinavia, it is common for football supporters to wear horned helmets to games in support of their team, including other modern social events.[3] The comic strip character Hägar the Horrible and all male Vikings in the animated TV series Vicky the Viking are always depicted wearing horned helmets, as are numerous characters in the DreamWorks How to Train Your Dragon franchise and in The Lost Vikings video game series, among many other. Another popular culture depiction is the riff on Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen by Merrie Melodies in the Chuck Jones-directed cartoon What's Opera, Doc?, which depicts Elmer Fudd wearing a magical horned Viking helmet as he chases Bugs Bunny.
It should, however, be mentioned that some Norse and Scandinavian Bronze Age art feature characters with horns, such as one of the Vendel era Torslunda plates and various Bronze Age petroglyphs in Denmark and Sweden, as well as some Scandinavian Bronze Age helmets, specifically the Veksø Helmets.
Fantasy Vikings wearing horned helmets, as well as horned Viking helmets on their own, have become symbols for various institutions around the world.
In the United States, the horned helmet Viking is used by, among others: the American football team Minnesota Vikings, Pleasant Grove High School in Utah, Northwest Guilford High School in North Carolina and Bryan High School in Texas.
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