Spangenhelm

Origin

The spangenhelm is thought to derive from the helmet traditions of Central Asia and the Near East (Sasanian Persia) and to have spread across Europe through the Migration period. It was carried westward through the horse peoples of the eastern steppe and the late Roman world, and around the 6th century a style called the 'Baldenheim type' was made widely across Europe, dozens of which survive today. The method of making the bands and plates separately and assembling them was easier than the one-piece iron helmet, so it was adopted broadly from the Germanic and Frankish kingdoms to the Byzantine Empire. It was used down to about the 9th and 10th centuries, and then gradually gave way to the one-piece conical 'nasal helm' (the Norman type) beaten from a single sheet.

Features

• Framework structure made by crossing metal bands (spangen)
• Completed by filling the gaps in the frame with metal plates
• The form with a nasal (nose guard) is the most common
• Easier to make than a one-piece iron helmet, suiting mass production
• Several metals and materials could be mixed
• A representative helmet of Viking, Germanic, and Byzantine warriors

Stories

The spangenhelm was the standard helmet of the early-medieval warrior, set over a padded cap worn on the head. The skeleton of bands gathered and bore the shock, the plates filling between them turned cuts and arrows, and the nasal at the front guarded the nose and the center of the face. Some forms had a mail curtain at the back to cover the nape, and cheek plates added to guard the sides of the face. Cheaper and easier to make than the one-piece iron helmet, it was supplied widely not only to noble warriors but to common soldiers, becoming the most common head defense of the early-medieval battlefield.

Weakness

The weaknesses of the spangenhelm are the seams of its segmented structure and its incomplete frontal protection. Being made of several bands and plates riveted together, the joints were structurally the weakest, so a strong blow striking a seam precisely could spring it open or split it. And most spangenhelms had only a nasal covering the nose, the greater part of the face left open, so the face and eyes were exposed to an attack coming from the front. For these limits, in later times a helmet beaten in one piece, stronger for having no seam, gradually took its place.

Cultural Significance

The spangenhelm is a helmet that symbolizes the Migration period and the early Middle Ages, showing a form common across Eurasia, spread along the steppe roads that joined East and West. The Viking is often imagined with a horned helmet, but the real Viking helmet, like the most complete Viking-age helmet found at Gjermundbu in Norway, was a simple spangenhelm type with no horns. The horned Viking helmet is only an image created in the romantic age of the 19th century, with no historical basis. In this way the spangenhelm holds the realistic figure of the early-medieval warrior, one that put practicality and supply before splendor.

In Popular Culture

The spangenhelm appears often as the warrior's basic helmet in films, dramas, and games about the Vikings, the Germanic peoples, and the early Middle Ages. Its simple, rough look with only a nose guard captures the air of the early Middle Ages well, and it is commonly drawn on a common soldier or a raider. In games it often serves as a basic early helmet. In fiction, however, Vikings are still often given horned helmets in disregard of the evidence, far from the plain form of the real spangenhelm.

Trivia

• 'Spangen' is German for the metal bands that make up the framework, and the segmented method of crossing the bands into a skeleton and filling the gaps with plates is the source of the name.
• The familiar horned Viking helmet is only an image created in the 19th century; the real Viking-age helmet found at Gjermundbu in Norway is a spangenhelm type with no horns.
• Easier to make than a helmet beaten from a single iron sheet, it could be supplied in quantity, and the same style, like the 6th-century 'Baldenheim type', was made widely across Europe.