Medieval Historian Ranks The Most Famous Helmets From The Middle Ages | History Ranked

this might be really really unpopular I would imagine this is quite disorienting and I'm just going to give it 10 out of 10 hi I'm Matt Lewis the host of The Gun medieval podcast this this is not working at all I'm Matt Lewis the host of the gone medieval podcast and medieval presenter for history hit as you can probably tell today we're talking about medieval helmet what might you have worn if you were going to charge into battle more importantly for this what would I have [Music] worn so in front of me I've got this tier list which goes C all the way up to a and then we've also got an S tier for anything that is absolutely outstanding so I'm going to work my way through the pictures that we have of each of these helmets and think about where I would put them on this scale from worst to best and this is always going to be my subjective opinion you're free to disagree with me tell me in the comments where I've got it wrong and which one you might have worn into battle so first up the Viking helmet I mean this is absolutely iconic everybody knows this is a Viking helmet that Vikings wore into battle but they didn't no one in the medieval period ever wore that horned helmet this is a creation of 19th century operatics who thought Vikings would look great in a big horned helmet nobody ever wore it it's not even getting on the ranking board next up a spangle Helm and so this is sections of metal held together by Loops of metal that are riveted onto and this is the most basic functional form of head protection used throughout Europe in the early medieval period you can see sometimes they added a bit of nasal protection on here quite often there was chain um CS that went round it as well so there would be extra protection for various parts of the head but this was a nice fairly simple to produce fairly mass-producible helmet that was common during the early medieval period I'm going to try give each of these helmets a rating as we go out of 10 for the protection that it would offer the restriction on your visibility that it might give you and the comfort that I think you would have wearing the helmet so if you think about a spangle Helm in terms of the protection for the period it's doing quite a good job but it's only really looking after the top of your head you might add a nasal piece to it which could add a tiny bit but this is doing nothing for your neck it's doing nothing for your face is doing nothing below the line at which that helmet would stop so I'm going to give this a solid five out of 10 for protection and what we think about visibility for this there should be nothing really to restrict your visibility maybe if you've added the nasal piece to it you're going to catch that in your vision but otherwise this shouldn't prevent you from seeing everything all around you on the battlefield I think we can probably give this a 10 out of 10 for visibility and if we think about comfort but this is kind of cobbled together from several pieces of metal riveted together you'd want to be wearing something underneath this I think to add protection to your head although that's true of every helmet that we're going to think about none of these would have sat directly on your head so I'm probably going to give this a 7 out of 10 for Comfort should be fairly comfortable so It's tricky to know what to do cuz this is a really early one but this would have saved an awful lot of people's heads in the early medieval period so I think I'm going to start off with a solid B this is a a solid start to our efforts to find ways to protect our heads but it will probably be overtaken by later developments so next up the Sutton who helmet so this is quite often associated with an Anglo-Saxon King we don't really know who it belonged to it's definitely from the Anglo-Saxon period in England it was uncovered in 1939 when the Sutton who burial ship was found and we can see it has a strong resemblance to the spangle Helm of the period it's got some some added cheek guards down the side some neck protection at the back and then it's got this interesting face plate on it so this may have acted as something like a crown this would be easily identifiable and this would broadcast power and wealth and position so how would we rate the suton who helmet it may have been designed more as something like a crown it's really distinctive but if you were to wear this into battle the protection level seems like it would be actually quite good they've taken something like a spangle Helm and they've added cheek protection neck protection and that face plate so it's protecting as much of your face as it possibly can with as few gaps as possible I guess we could give this a 9 out of 10 for protection if it was used on a battlefield in terms of visibility adding that face plate and those cheek pieces is really restricting your visibility you've got two eye holes which should allow you to see pretty well straight in front of you but I think you're probably going to struggle with any kind of peripheral vision so anybody who's running in at you from the side you're probably not going to see that hit coming so I'm probably going to have to give this a four out of 10 for visibility and in terms of comfort I think although this would have been designed for someone prestigious and possibly a king it doesn't look massively comfortable to me to wear it's not the sort of thing I think I'd want to run into battle I think I'd be worried about the cheek pieces flapping around and this face plate flapping around I feel like this wouldn't be the most comfortable helmet to wear so I'm going to give this a 3 out of 10 for comfort so I think this is maybe more for show than for protection and I think maybe I'm going to give this a c it's kind of a fancy pants battle helmet but I'm not sure I would have wanted to wear it if I was going into a fight and the next helmet that we have is a kettle Helm so this is possibly the successor to the spangle Helm as being the most ubiquitous form of head protection through the high medieval period we can see that it's constructed from a single piece of metal so if a sword blow was coming down onto the head it would slide off this the idea being that it wouldn't make it to your neck or your shoulders or your back so there's that extra level of protection that we didn't have from the helmets before I mean this is a fairly standard piece of headwear almost anyone that's fighting in the medieval period particularly the high medieval period is likely to be wearing something like this if they're not the nobility so in terms of protection it's doing a good job much like earlier Helms at protecting the top of your head this flare here is adding some protection to the face and the neck to blows that are coming down on you so I'm probably going to give this a s out of 10 for protection it's not really doing anything for your face and your neck or anywhere like that but a solid job on the top of your head in terms of visibility there's almost nothing with this to obstruct your visibility I think you should be able to see everything on the battlefield we've got nothing blocking your field of vision so I probably have to give this a 10 out of 10 for visibility you should be able to see really really clearly all around you that's at the expense of the protection of course and in terms of comfort this is a mass-produced helmet it's not going to be designed specifically to fit my head so I'm going to have to put up with with whatever they think is the standard size of a medieval soldier's head it may not be the most comfortable because it's not specifically made for me but there's no reason to think that that's particularly uncomfortable with a little bit of padding added to it so I'm maybe going to give it an 8 out of 10 for Comfort this is cheap and easy to produce from a single piece of metal and so becomes incredibly common I guess it's the equivalent of the spangle Helm for the latest medieval period so I'm probably going to give that a b as well it does a solid job of protecting the wearer but it's pretty unspectacular so a Norman Helm called a nasal Helm too and again this has a strong resemblance to the spangle Helm that we saw but is made from harder metals and again the addition of the nose protection becomes more common to protect the user's face from any kind of blow to that area it's slightly Limited in terms of the protection that it offers still it's looking after the top of your head it's doing nothing for the sides the neck we don't have the flare that we see on the kettle Helm that might protect you from a sword blow that's coming in like that so if we think about rating our Norman or nasal helmet in terms of protection it's doing a good job of looking after the top of your head it's building on earlier helmets in terms of its strength and its ability to protect those areas it's adding in some solid nasal protection to try and protect at least part part of the face from blows that might come in across I'm probably going to give this 7 out of 10 for protection in terms of visibility with the exception of the the nasal piece there's nothing there to restrict your visibility at all so maybe that's going to get in your eyeline a little tiny bit but I'm probably going to give this a 9 out of 10 for visibility you should be able to see pretty much everything around you you can turn your head freely and have a a pretty full field of vision if you're wearing this helmet and in terms of comfort I'd imagine this would be fairly comfortable uh I you know what I hate things resting on my nose it's one of my pet hates so I might struggle if this helmet didn't fit me properly and this was bouncing around whacking my nose while I'm running around a battlefield but maybe if it's done properly that's not an issue so I'm going to give this an8 out of 10 for Comfort I think it's got some pretty good scores but it hasn't really developed on what the spangle Helm was doing for you hundreds of years earlier so I feel like this is is a fairly bog standard mass-produced helmet for the masses who maybe the leaders of the army aren't too worried about protecting them they're worried about getting something cheap on their head I'm going to give that a c I think it's quite an iconic helmet I guess being a Norman one but maybe not one I would want to be relying on in battle all right and talking of iconic next we've got the great Helm so this emerges as part of the crusading movements as we go into the 12th and 13th century and I guess for a lot of people this will be the medieval Helm this will be the one that you would imagine and in contrast to virtually all of the other ones that we've seen it protects the whole of your head and your face I've actually got so a real great Helms I'm going to try and show you the problems with this so if I pop this great Helm on if I think about the protection that I'm getting from this I'm protected everywhere so top of my head the sides of my face the back of my head it's doing a really good job of keeping me safe so I'm probably going to have to give this a 10 out of 10 for protection pretty much every bit of me is as safe as it can possibly be in terms of visibility I mean I can see next to nothing I've got a very thin strip of the room that I can see I can't see over to the side I can't see anything above me I'm getting absolutely lost in this helmet I'd imagine this is quite disorienting I wasn't going to give this a a three out of 10 for visibility and maybe I'm being generous maybe it should be a two what do you reckon and what about Comfort I mean I would say that I'm wearing this on my head and any self-respecting Knight who's going to go and try and fight in this is going to be wearing padding on his head he may well be wearing a male koif over the top of that so there will be lots to bulk his head out so that's the reason my head is getting slightly lost inside this helmet without all of that so it would be designed to make it as comfortable as possible but it's quite clustr phobic I've got a bit of ventilation right in front of me here but it's still quite claustrophobic and if I'm out of breath am I going to want to be in here desperately trying to breathe while I'm sweating and trying to fight whoever it is that I can manage to see in front of me I'm probably going to give this a five out of 10 for comfort and it just feels really claustrophobic in there so you're getting maximum maximum protection from your great Helm but it comes with the Restriction of your field of vision and some of your breathing too I mean I guess if you can cope with that breathing it might end up somewhere really high up on the tears but for me the lack of vision that you're going to suffer from in this drags it right the way down I'm going to plun this in a SE as well I don't think I would want to wear that I might feel safe but I also wouldn't have a clue who was trying to hit me from where the next helmet I've got to rank is a pig-faced helmet so these are developments of these closed face helmets that seek to offer as much protection as they possibly can this covers all of your head and your neck it also covers your face with a visor that will quite often lift up and the pig nose at the front is really designed to increase the ventilation so here we're trying to combat the problem that you might get with something like a great Helm I think this is a much better version of a full head covering there's much more visibility because there's a single slit instead of the two separate eyes although it's still really really restrictive and the ventilation has got to be better in this if you're charging around a battlefield out of breath I think you've got a better hope of being able to get some fresh air into this without having to lift it up I think in terms of protection this is doing a really good job it's a a full face whole head system that is protecting as much as it possibly can do so I'm probably going to give this 9 out of 10 for protection in terms of visibility we are stuck with that narrow row slit that is really going to hamper our visibility we're not going to be able to see anybody coming from the sides we're going to struggle with anything from behind us above and we're not going to be able to see our own feet if we're worrying about tripping over anything so I'm going to have to give this a 4 out of 10 for visibility and in terms of comfort I think there's no reason to think this wouldn't be uncomfortable I think it would possibly be quite comfortable for a closed face helmet in the sense that the pig nose is designed to give you much more ventilation make it much easier for you to breathe and therefore keep you comfortable while you're on the battlefield but it still is something covering your face while you're trying to fight so I guess i' probably give it six out of 10 for comfort so I think I quite like this if I was going to wear a closed face helmet I think it would be something like this so I'm probably going to give this an a next up we've got a barbute so these develop really we can see similarities to the kettle Helm in that it's got this flaring which would deal with any kind of Sword blow but it's adding to the protection that you're going to get from the sides around your cheeks we we can also see sometimes you get this nasal guard added for Extra Protection quite a lot of bar boots as well will have either a t-shape or a y shape which allows for ventilation of the mouth we can see strong hints of of ancient Greek helmets in here so it Hawks back to Corinthian Style helmets and perhaps they've returned to something from the ancient world that just worked really really well protection I think this is doing a solid job it's protecting the top of your head it's looking after your neck for you the cheek pieces are protecting the sides of your face you can even add some nasal protection if you really want to I guess it's not protecting the front of your face as well as some closed helmets might do so I'm probably going to give it an8 out of 10 for protection if we think about visibility it's only restricting your visibility at the extremes of the the periphery of your vision I think those cheap plates might just get in the way of you being able to see things but otherwise it seems to be working quite hard not to restrict your visibility too much so I'm going to give it eight out of 10 for visibility too and in terms of comfort there's no reason to think this is uncomfortable I'm looking for an excuse to give a Barbie to 10 out of 10 because I love it so I'm going to imagine that this is an incredibly comfortable helmet to wear really snug easy fitting and I'm just going to give it 10 out of 10 I think if I'm going into a medieval battle probably this is the helmet I'm going to wear so I'm going to put this right at the top on my my super tier and that's probably going to be the one that I'm going to wear next up we've got a salot quite often here when we talk about a salot we're talking about just this helmet bit at the top the throat and Chin armor is added on as an extra piece and for me this is essentially a slightly too big Kettle hat it's like wearing a kettle hat that's going to come and sit over your face so it's got to have that icelet in it somewhere and so if you think about ratings for a salot in terms of protection it's doing a fair job of protecting the top of your head again it's going to protect your neck a little bit if any blows are coming in from that kind of Direction so I guess I'd give it a s out of 10 for protection without this extra additional armor it's doing nothing for your face and neck still in terms of visibility it's kind of the worst of Both Worlds it's only protecting the top of your head effectively but you've got that narrow slit to hamper your vision too so I'm going to give this a three out of 10 for visibility and for Comfort I feel like it would just be an uncomfortable helmet to wear I just don't like a salad so I'm going to have to give this I guess a five out of 10 for Comfort I don't think this does a particularly great job for me it's kind of the worst worst of Both Worlds it's almost a closed Helm but it isn't protecting your whole face unless you add another piece of armor to it it's almost a kettle hat but it's restricting your visibility and everything else so this might be really really unpopular I don't like salads I am going to stick this down on the D tier and wait for everyone to tell me how wrong I am all right next up if I survive putting a salad on a d tier is just a closed Helm so again this is a variant on the idea of protecting your whole face we've got a visor with some ventilation in there and we've still got that narrow strip for visibility in terms of protection again it's doing a really really good job of that the ventilation around the face maybe would allow some things to get through it has to have an IET so I guess we're going to give this 8 out of 10 for protection it's protecting your whole head your neck your face if we think about visibility it's going to be severely restricted in this still we've got a single eyelet instead of it being divided into two which might tip it up a tiny little bit but you're still not going to see anything in your peripheral vision you can't look up you're going to struggle to look down without raising your visor so I'm probably going to give this a four for visibility and in terms of comfort I mean I imagine this would be reasonably comfortable it's got a bit of ventilation in the front so if you're running around the battlefield getting out of breath you can at least try and get some fresh air in through those vents so I guess I'm going to give this seven out of 10 for comfort so again you're sacrificing visibility and ventilation in favor of protection here I think it does a good job of both I'd probably prefer this to a great Helm but I wouldn't like it as much as my frog nose Helm if that's going to give me more ventilation and more room to breathe these become incredibly common throughout the medieval period and and even into the early modern period but I think I'm probably going to stick this on my b it's maybe an hour average helmet and next up we have a frog mouth helmet designed to look a little bit like a frog's mouth the issue I have with this I guess is that this is not something anyone would ever have worn into a medieval battle this is strictly a jousting helmet there is no ventilation anywhere around your mouth and the the angle at which the isolet sits is designed for jousting it's designed to stop splinters going into your eyes and absorb as much of the blow of the Lance without the possibility of injury so the Frog mouth helmet if I was going to rate this in terms of the protection it's giving you it's designed to give you the absolute maximum protection there are as few holes and gaps in this helmet as there could possibly be even though it's not designed for fighting on a medieval Battlefield I guess we probably have to give it 10 out of 10 for protection it's doing an incredible job on that front in terms of visibility this is literally designed so that you can see directly in front of you in a straight line line and nothing else there is no room for any Splinter to get at you from any other angle so your visibility is going to be hugely impaired while you're wearing this I'm going to give it a two for visibility I'm sure you can see what you're meant to see in a jousting helmet but really not much else and in terms of comfort I think I'd probably just give this a solid seven I imagine it's not uncomfortable there's no ventilation in front of your mouth for when you're breathing but for a jousting helmet you're only wearing it for short periods too I guess it would be okay if I'm going into a joust I might want to wear this helmet if I'm going into a medieval battle I'm definitely definitely not wearing this so this is going to go and sink all the way down to my D tier I'm not fighting in that so next up we've got the Moran helmet and this becomes really popular I guess in the 16th 17th century we would probably associate it with the idea of the Conquistadors it's a classically Spanish look the first conquistadors to make it to the Americas probably wouldn't have been wearing these helmets yet they come a little bit later than that has strong similarities to the kettle hat with even more flare out here to prevent blows from moving down the body and this Crest that moves across the top was designed to strengthen the helmet further so to make it even firmer and better to use and again this is fairly cheap mass-- producible I mean we see versions of things like this reemerging in World War I and World War II when British soldiers are given essentially tin hats to prot protect their heads even from Modern Warfare in the 20th century in terms of protection it's going to give you a great deal of protection to the top of your head any blows coming in from here are going to be dealt with and taken away doesn't really do anything for the the face or the neck at all so I'm going to give it maybe a seven out of 10 for protection visibility I mean it's not blocking your visibility really in any direction unless something was coming from above so I'm going to give it nine out of 10 maybe just for having a wide brim on it and in terms of comfort I should imagine these things were fairly comfortable despite the fact that they're mass-produced and they're for the lower ranks of soldiers mainly I'm going to give this an8 out of 10 for comfort so I quite like the Moran I mean it looks a little bit Flash and fancy maybe but I think it's going to do a really good job maybe a better job than the original Kettle hat that it's replacing so I'm going to put this up on my a tier I might actually want to wear that if I didn't want anything covering below my head and the next one that we have the horned helmet of Henry VII this was a gift that was given to Henry VII by the emperor maximilan the Holy Roman Emperor I'm not sure what it says that Maximillian thought about Henry I mean it's not exactly attractive it's got Devil's horns it's wearing spectacles this is part of a jousting set of armor again never meant to be worn in battle or in anger so I think in terms of protection I'm not sure I mean it covers the whole of your head is it actually going to protect you in a fight I'm not sure I'm going to give it maybe a seven I think in terms of visibility you're not going to see a fat lot out of this helmet it's designed for jousting when you don't have to see too much that's coming but the visibility is going to be pretty awful in that I'm going to give it a two for visibility and I don't know whether that would be comfortable it's designed for a king it's designed for him to be worn I guess when he's jousting Henry is going to want to be comfortable so maybe we have to give it a nine for Fort was made by an emperor for a king if I had an etier I might put it on the etier as a bit of a joke but no one's ever going to wear this it's going to have to sit down here on the D tier I think I hope you've enjoyed me trying to rank medieval helmet I'm sure you'll think I've got some of these maybe all of them wrong let me know in the comments which one should have been at the top and which one should have been at the bottom I know there'll be rean actors out there who maybe wear one of these helmets and want to tell me where I've gone horrendously wrong in my rankings and my ratings if there's anything else you'd like to see us rank in this kind of way then please let us know we're always looking for more ideas pop a comment below as always like this video And subscribe to history hits channel for more from the greatest channel in [Music] history

Channel: History Hit

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Keywords: history hit, history hit youtube, top ten, middle ages, ranking, ranking history, tier list ranking, medieval armour tested, best medieval helmets, evolution of medieval helmets, rating medieval helmets, cool medieval helmets, weird medieval helmets, top 10 medieval helmets, best and worst medieval helmets, medieval history, middle ages history, gone medieval podcast

Id: 1qUtihlkTrM

Length: 25min 34sec (1534 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 12 2024