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The whole "Vikings wore horned helmets" myth finally clicked for me
Kept seeing it in movies and comics so I figured there had to be some truth to it. Then I read a paper about a 1942 costume designer who made that up for a Wagner opera and it spread everywhere. How do we even label things as "common knowledge" when it's based on a stage prop from 80 years ago?
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blake3223mo ago
You ever stop to think about how much of what we "know" came from a theater prop? Like, I remember being a kid and thinking pirates always had parrots because of Treasure Island movies, turns out real pirates barely had time to eat let alone keep a bird. Makes you wonder if in 100 years people will think we all walked around wearing newsboy caps and drinking from mason jars just because of Instagram. But hey, at least you're not the guy who still argues the earth is flat because of a YouTube video from 2012.
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holly_henderson863mo ago
Right there with you. I believed the horned helmet thing for years and felt super dumb when I found out it was basically a fashion accident from an opera. My whole life I've been walking around thinking I knew history when really I was just repeating a costume designer's mistake from the 1940s. Makes me wonder how many other "facts" I have stored in my brain are actually just stuff from movies or comic books. Guess my brain is like a messy closet full of random info where some of it's true and some of it's just theatrical leftovers. At least now I can sound smart at parties by correcting people about Viking helmets.
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