Everybody can picture a Viking helmet, and almost everybody is picturing something that never existed. There is no evidence that Vikings wore horned helmets in battle. The horns and the wings belong to nineteenth-century Romanticism — opera design and national revival, not archaeology. The real article is scarcer and a great deal plainer. Fragments of Viking-age helmets have been found, but preservation is poor and very few can be reconstructed at all: from the whole of Scandinavia there are four, and only the remains from Gjermundbu were complete enough to rebuild properly. That one is tenth-century, made of iron in four plates after the spangenhelm pattern, with a rounded cap and probably a mail aventail hanging at the neck. One reconstructable helmet from an entire culture — which says as much about what Scandinavians chose to bury as about how many men owned one, but does tell you that a helmet was not something every man in the boat was wearing.

Fritjof is wearing one, and mail underneath it, which puts him among the better-equipped men in this range — the same bracket as "Svend" Viking Defending with Sword and Shield, whose mail shirt has the same startling scarcity behind it. The axe is up and coming down; the blue shield is painted with entwined dragons, a motif that turns up on surviving jewellery of the period. Pair him with "Torgny" Viking Attacking with Axe for two axemen arriving together rather than one, and set "Bestanden" Saxon Defending with Sword and Shield in front of them — mail, helmet and round shield on both sides, which is exactly how alike these two armies had become.

Model: 62142 / W. Britain / 1/30 scale / matte finish / 1 piece set