Ancient Celtic & Viking Hygiene and Hair Care

We always see in many depictions of Celts, and especially the Vikings, showing they were filthy and uneducated.  This is far from the truth.  In fact, we have much proof from archaeology grave sites and many ancient writings from persons, not at war with the Celtic tribes, that shows otherwise.

Lets consider more evidence if we can;

The Celtic tribes of England were written about by Ceasar but these negative things we must take with a grain of salt, as he is a conqueror who wanted their land and in order to justify his wishes to his people, he had to make the Celts sound uneducated and barbaric.  The same way the Elite who control the Government today, does through media.  If you want people to have a certain race controlled to take their resources or country, set up lies about them in the media.  But I digress.

Celts had particular written laws written in their Brehon laws about when they were to bathe and about personal grooming.  The Viking Danes we know took baths on Saturdays and combed their hair and changed their clothes often. An English cleric complained of this because they might also entice their own women.  Another Arabian scribe writes that the people of the Norway have a serving girl bring a basin of water every morning where they wash their face and hair then clear their nose in it and split.  The writer shows disgust in this practice.  This author is disgusted is because in their culture they did not bath as often as they could only bathe in running water. 

And lastly on their hygiene, it was the Celts themselves who introduced soap to the Romans.  The Celtic warriors had to bath prior to the evening meal along with clothing washing laws are detailed from nobles to common foster children.  They even discuss brushing ones hair daily, fingernails and makeup.  Some reports say they invented soap.

The Vikings too, had to wash their hands prior to meals.  In some of the stanzas written, the book also speaks of bathing.

Many bone combs have been found or ones of ivory.  Also other grooming tools such as ear spoons, tweezers ad razors.

They even took the time to create elaborate hairstyles that could include braiding.  Hairdressers or Barbers were wonderful and hired by Chieftains and Royalty.  Neither the Celts nor the Vikings had one specific hairstyle.  This too was based on the tribe itself mostly.  In Vikings the salves had their hair short and the others had medium to long hair.  The tribe that Pliny speaks of apparently the men bleach their hair more than the women.

The Gaulish tribes reddened their hair and of course the Germans close to this area.  One carving, in a Norman grave, shows an almost goatee style of beard with a really short bowl cut on top of head.  Some statue carvings show bangs, others not.  Some with waxed look pointed mustache ends curved upwards.  A bronze head of Odin also shows this.  Many vikings in fact have full mustaches and clean shaven chins.  For Viking women, they seemed to favour the blonde hair.  The women servants also wore short hair.  Some say the married women wore a cap over their locks and had to wear their hair up in a knot.

There was a burial site found where a Celt wore a Mohawk.  others have been described as having scary white cones that stood up, much like the kids today with their gel.  We also know they wore elaborate braiding styles especially on good occasions.  There have been numerous styles of hair ornaments were used;

1) Hollow golden balls worn worn at the ends of a tress of hair just like we have beads today in the famous Bo Derek look.

2) The mythologies write about gold, silver, or bronze hair circlets or fillets, some with gold plates that charioteers wore on their forehead.

3) Hair combs, ribbons, feathers and Hair pins were also used.  They were made of metal, bone, glass beads, stone gems, or horn.  Metalwork adorned most all.

4)  Women carried a comb bag with these cherished items.  Some included razors and mirrors.  

Now lets look at the myth they were uneducated.  Celtic people show they were well educated by claiming the strength of their oral tradition makes them stay connected as a tribal people.  Immigrants of Belgic tribes and most of these people even retained their original tribal names - lineage is power they believed.  Higher-Educated Celts were called Druids, and these included the healers, bards which were trained as musicians and poets with magical ways to change a mood, lawmakers and so on.  These schools so advanced that even other countries would send people there to be educated.  The Druid caste lasted until aprox 1200 years ago until it was slowly converted to Christianity.

Now lets look at wealth.  We see they made their own stamped bronze and gold coins, iron ingots of fixed weights, imported copper and used tin.  Not uneducated barbaric savages here either.

We now turn to livestock.  According to their law books, some tribal areas thought it unlawful to eat geese, hares and fowl if their clan totem was of the same.  In this case these animals were to be raised for pleasure and amusement.  We have foreign writers describing how a certain tribe wore skins, dyed their bodies with woad, and have long hair but shave their entire bodies except head and upper lip.  Long hair we now know was worn by the freemen or commoners who owned land shared by the Chieftain of the tribe. There is also the myth the myth that they didn't write anything down.... obviously false.  It was only certain things that they couldn't for they believed words could manifest reality thus only left to bards etc.

By Laurie-Lee Mills

Copyright Notice:
The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material. Permission is granted to use this material to distribute for non-commercial educational purposes provided the copyright notice is and my permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Ancient Celtic & Viking Hygiene and Hair Care - Copyright 2010, Laurie-Lee Mills August 4th, 2010.  Please ask for permission from Author.

Bibliography
Ancient England - Nigel Blundell and Kate Farrington.