Mr. Cornwell,

Thank you for all your great works.  I am reading all your Saxon Stories and enjoying them immensely.  In the Last Kingdom’s Historical Notes you mention no horned helmets among the Danes.  Having married into a Norwegian family from Sunnmore I discovered evidence in Sagas that recount Norse blood feuds with Greenland Skraelings.  Apparently, cattle were pushed out of Norse houses in front of the homesteaders during battles with the natives.  Having never seen such creatures, the Skraeling fled… horns on helmets represented societal hegemony for the rowdy Norse who opened the then newest geographic frontier… might as well have flaunt it, parading the streets of Rome, as I understand they did.

Mark Small