When you think of Vikings, you think of horned helmets. Don't even act like you don't. It's ingrained in our mind, thanks in part to the National Football League's Minnesota Vikings and their iconic helmet design, as well as the long-running Hägar the Horrible comic strip. However, the Vikings did not, in fact, wear horned helmets ... though other people did.

The origin of the horned helmet–sporting Viking goes back to fin-de-siecle Europe, or a bit earlier, to legendary composer, conductor, and theatre director Richard Wagner. The German opera man wrote his epic, Norse-inspired Der Ring des Nibelungen in 1876, in which costume designer Carl Emil Doepler decided to stick some horns on his epically badass—at least for the opera—outfits, thus spawning the myth that Vikings wore horned helmets.

Though the Vikings may not have sported horns on their headgear, others did—including the warriors of ancient German mythos. According to Vox, late-19th-century Germans—well into nationalism already, by this point—found Viking history appealing, "in part because they represented a classical origin story free from Greek and Roman baggage." So, thanks to Doepler, "stereotypical ancient and medieval German headdresses—like horned helmets" were melded together with Viking imagery, and thus "Norse and German legends were intertwined in the popular imagination, and we still haven't untangled them."

In other words, we can all blame the Germans for lying to us about Vikings and their horned helmets. Furthermore, horned helmets wouldn't have been particularly protective in close combat, as they'd allow  the enemy to more easily snap your neck. The Vikings were probably more clever than that. But the hats still look badass.

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