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Horned helmets were worn by many people around the world. Headpieces mounted with animal horns or replicas were also worn since ancient history, as in the Mesolithic Star Carr Frontlets. These were probably used for religious ceremony or ritual purposes, as horns tend to be impractical on a combat helmet. Much of the evidence for these helmets and headpieces comes from depictions rather than the items themselves.
A pair of bronze horned helmets, the Veksø helmets, from the later Bronze Age (dating to ) were found near Veksø, Denmark, in 1942. Another early find is the Grevensvænge hoard from Zealand, Denmark, (, now partially lost).
The Waterloo Helmet, a Celtic bronze ceremonial helmet with repoussé decoration in the La Tène style, dating to , was found in the River Thames, at London. Its abstracted 'horns', different from those of the earlier finds, are straight and conical. Late Gaulish helmets () with small horns and adorned with wheels, reminiscent of the combination of a horned helmet and a wheel on plate C of the Gundestrup cauldron (), were found in Orange, France. Other Celtic helmets, especially from Eastern Europe, had bird crests. The enigmatic Torrs Pony-cap and Horns from Scotland appears to be a horned champron to be worn by a horse.
A depiction on a Migration Period (5th century) metal die from Öland, Sweden, shows a warrior with a helmet adorned with two snakes, or dragons, arranged in a manner similar to horns. Decorative plates of the Sutton Hoo helmet () depict spear-carrying dancing men wearing horned helmets, similar to a figure seen on one of the Torslunda plates from Sweden. Also, a pendant from Ekhammar in Uppland, features the same figure in the same pose and an 8th century find in Staraya Ladoga (a Norse trading outpost at the time) shows an object with similar headgear. An engraved belt-buckle found during excavations by Sonia Chadwick Hawkes in a 7th century grave at Finglesham, Kent in 1964 bears the image of a naked warrior standing between two spears wearing a belt and a horned helmet; a case has been made that the much-repaired chalk figure called the "Long Man of Wilmington", East Sussex, repeats this iconic motif, and originally wore a similar cap, of which only the drooping lines of the neckguard remain. This headgear, of which only depictions have survived, seems to have mostly fallen out of use with the end of the Migration period. Some have suggested that the figure in question does not portray actual headgear, but a mythological object of a god like Odin. A one-eyed figure with similar headgear was found at the site of Uppåkra temple, an alleged center of an Odinic-cult activity. A similar figurine from Levide, Gotland, lacked an eye, apparently removed after its completion. This would link the headgear as a mythological representations rather than depictions of actual helmets. Note that the similar crests to the animal figures on the helmets of the warrior's depicted on the Sutton Hoo helmet has been demonstrated on helmets from Valsgärde, but the depicted crests where grossly exaggerated.
Indo-Persian warriors often wore horned or spiked helmets in battle to intimidate their enemies. These conical "" were made from plated mail, and usually had eyes engraved on them.
Contemporary Viking Age texts and stories regularly mention helmets, but never mention horned headgear. Christian writers, who were keen to portray the Vikings as barbaric and uncivilized, did not mention horns. The few period helmets found thus far do not feature horns, instead coinciding with the construction of earlier Vendel Period spectacle helmets. The helmet descriptions found in the period epic poem Beowulf also coincide with the Vendel era helmets, as well as earlier Germanic boar helmets, which also lack horns. The only find of Scandinavian horned helmets are the Bronze Age Veksø Helmets and depictions of ceremonial "bird horned" headgear on Migration Period trinkets – see . Historians generally believe that if horned headgear existed during the Viking Age, it was not worn regularly. This misconception has been debunked repeatedly by historians and archaeologists, but it persists widely in pop culture due to its strong visual symbolism.
A 20th-century example is the Minnesota Vikings American football team, whose logo carries a horn on each side of the helmet. The comic strip character Hägar the Horrible and all male Vikings in the animated TV series Vicky the Viking are always depicted wearing horned helmets, as are numerous characters in the DreamWorks How to Train Your Dragon franchise and in The Lost Vikings video game series. Another popular culture depiction is the homage to Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen by Merrie Melodies in the Chuck Jones-directed cartoon What's Opera, Doc?, which depicts Elmer Fudd wearing a magical horned Viking helmet as he chases Bugs Bunny.
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