The History of Drinking Horns
Drinking horns have been known since classical antiquity, particularly in the Balkans, and were used for ceremonial purposes throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period in some parts of Europe, especially in Germanic Europe and the Caucasus.
Drinking horns remain an important accessory in the culture of ritual toasts, particularly in Georgia, where they are known locally as "kantsi."
The ancient Greek term for a drinking horn was simply keras (plural kerata, meaning "horn"). This is distinct from the rhyton (plural rhyta), a drinking vessel in the shape of a horn with an opening at the pointed end.
The Germanic peoples of the Migration Period copied glass drinking horns based on Roman models. A beautiful Merovingian example from the 5th century, made of olive-green glass and found in Bingerbrück (Rhineland-Palatinate), is kept in the British Museum.
Some of the skills of Roman glassmakers survived in Lombard Italy, as shown by a drinking horn made of blue glass from Sutri, which is also housed in the British Museum.
The two Gallehus horns (early 5th century), made from around 3 kg of gold and electrum, are usually interpreted as drinking horns, although some scholars suggest they may also have been intended as horns for blowing.
Following the discovery of the first of these horns in 1639, Christian IV of Denmark converted it into a usable drinking horn by adding a rim, extending the narrow end, and sealing it with a screw-on knob by 1641.
These horns are the most spectacular known examples of Germanic drinking horns from the Iron Age but were lost in 1802 and are now only known from drawings from the 17th to 18th centuries.
Some notable examples of drinking horns from medieval Europe were made from the horns of the aurochs, the wild ancestor of domestic cattle, which went extinct in the 17th century. These horns were carefully crafted and their edges were adorned with silver. The remains of a remarkable example were found in the burial at Sutton Hoo.
The British Museum also holds a beautiful pair of Anglo-Saxon drinking horns from the 6th century, made from aurochs horns with gilded silver fittings, and these came from the princely grave at Taplow, Buckinghamshire.
In all pagan Germanic societies, from the Roman Iron Age through a millennium to the Viking Age, numerous elaborate drinking vessels have been found in women's graves.
Viking Drinking Horns
Drinking horns are documented in Viking Age Scandinavia. In the Prose Edda, Thor drank from a horn that secretly contained all the seas, scaring Útgarða-Loki and his kin by drinking a significant portion of its contents. They also appear in Beowulf, and fittings for drinking horns were found in the Sutton Hoo burial.
Fragments of Viking Age drinking horns are rarely preserved, suggesting that both cattle and goat horns were used, but the number of decorative horn fittings and horn mountings unearthed archaeologically shows that drinking horns were far more widespread than the small number of preserved horns might suggest.
Most Viking Age drinking horns likely came from domestic cattle and held just under half a litre. The much larger aurochs horns from the Sutton Hoo burial would likely have been the exception.
