 These delusionals are your wife, Rastas. They're big Marley fans. They think they're black. Semi-political, but mostly smoke a lot of weed. Don't even get me started on YouTube. I live in the Bay Area, which means every August, except the past two, half the population of my town gets all done up to go to something in the desert, and I end up seeing a lot of this. If you don't understand why this frustrates me, you really need to stick around for the rest of this video, which is sponsored by Wondrium more on them later. What frustrates me even more is when one of them tries to talk to me about their hair. You know, because I used to be a hairdresser and people do that, and tells me, well, the vikings in the ancient Celts had dreadlocks, so it's okay for me. Buddy. Buddy. Hi, I'm V, former hairstylist, current fashion historian, and not a fan of this look. And here I am to tell you how we ended up with this ridiculous myth in the first place, what the vikings and ancient Celts might have done with their hair instead, and what your options are if you're a white person who likes the burner aesthetic, but doesn't want to look like a culturally-appropriative racist dingus. The hairstyle we're talking about is commonly called locks, but there are plenty of abbreviations and alternate names. Many people consider the term dreadlocks to have negative connotations, but there are also some people who prefer that term. For simplicity, I'll be using the word locks spelled with one C for the rest of this video. Before anyone goes off about how confusing this is, it's not like white people never disagree on the right word for something either, so if this is you, please do examine why this particular bit of linguistic variance bothers you so much. Locks have a long and established history in numerous African cultures, beginning with the ancient Egyptians, and if you want to learn more about that history, go watch this video by Muse of Muse and Dionysus. Listen to a black person instead of having to hear it from my pale face. Because I am going to spend the rest of this video talking about all the things that are not locks, I do want to make sure we have a working definition of what locks are. I'm not saying this because I think I am the most qualified person to talk about locks. I'm not. Don't get me started on how little cosmetology school teaches about natural hair. Source info can be found in the upper corners, some further reading is linked in the description, and then my Patreon has my full annotated bibliography with all this snarky commentary too. However, listening to me is not a substitute for listening to black people talk about black culture and should not be treated as such. Locks are formed by strands of coily hair locking into place around each other. With different styling and maintenance methods, the hair can form styles from freeform locks to sister locks and everything in between. They are one of many ways to protect coily hair from damage and breakage. Coily hair can be extremely delicate with very fine strands, and the belief that it is always coarse comes from ignorance and racism. Another racist myth is that locks are never washed and are, by their nature, dirty. Caring for locks absolutely does involve washing them. How frequently depends on the person's individual life and hair routine, just like with any other hairstyle. Most people with locks wash their hair far more often than most medieval Europeans did, and will often care for their locks daily by misting or oiling the hair. The whole not-ever-washing thing comes from uninformed white people and carries plenty of racist ideas about black people and their hair being inherently dirty. Locks are not gross, but this myth sure is. One of the most important distinctions between locks and this nonsense is what the hair is actually doing. Locks rely on the hair's coil for their structure. My hair may be curly, but it's not curly enough to truly lock. Similar-looking hairstyles on straight hair have a different structure because they don't have the coil in their texture. They're basically long cylindrical tangles, which I refer to as mats. Lock-like hairstyles do have long histories in certain non-black cultures, especially ones with trade connections to Africa. They have an extremely long history in Hindu religion and may also have been worn by the ancient Hebrew Nazarites. Lock-like styles also have a history among some Tibetan Buddhists, indigenous North Americans, indigenous Australians, and possibly the Aztecs. However, none of these people are white. The Minoans are often brought up as an ancient white culture that wore locks, but Muse's video does an excellent job stepping through the issues with that conclusion. TLDR, they likely picked the style up from ancient Egyptians, who were African, and the Minoans would not fit well into our modern idea of whiteness. A lot of the artwork held up as evidence for their wearing locks is not detailed enough to tell whether it's showing locks or braids or individual curls of hair. If you're a costumer who can distinguish the difference between, say, 1870s versus 1880s Western bustle dresses, then you can, in fact, tell the difference between two visually similar styles that are very different in the details. You have that skill. You just haven't learned to apply it in this context. Let's get to the myth-busting. The idea that ancient Celtic peoples had locks or mats is often traced back to a supposed quote from a supposed Roman source, note my repeated use of the word supposed, that says they had hair like snakes. However, there does not appear to be any solid source for this quote. We can't find who said it, or when, or in what context it was written down. It does not appear in the primary sources we do have about the Romans' interactions with the Gauls or Britons or any other Celtic peoples. This is not a source that can be relied on. Even if this quote did have a solid source, it has no context at all suggesting it refers to locks rather than any other hairstyle the Romans would find unusual or want to denigrate. It's not like they were bound for being fair and understanding of foreign cultures. They definitely didn't invent a word for literally every non-Roman culture that is still used as an insult today. The ancient Celts did do some pretty interesting things with their hair, some of which are misinterpreted as evidence for locks or mats. A Roman source that we can actually pin down describes the hair of the Gauls, a Celtic people living in France at that time. Apparently they would wash their hair in a lime solution, lime as in the mineral limestone, not the citrus fruit. This bleached, stiffened, and fluffed up the hair so it could be spiked if short or have a ton of volume if longer. The chemistry of how this works is pretty cool. A limestone solution would have a very high or basic pH, which raises the outer layers of the hair cuticle, making the hair more fragile and tangle-prone, but also fluffier. Playa dust is also high pH and is known for affecting people's hair, so you might get yourself some historical accuracy points, just maybe not the ones you meant to. We also have records of the Irish wearing a hairstyle called glibs or glibs. I've seen people say a glib refers to braids bound with yarn, but what we have actual evidence for is this thing. It's often called the reverse mullet by modern costumers where hair is shaved on the back and crown of the head and grown into a long fringe at the front and sides. Interestingly, this style might have also been worn by the Viking Age Norse. There's a letter from sometime between 990 and 1010, where a Saxon monk called Elfridt chides his brother, you adorn yourself in Danish fashion with baird neck. And then we see this hairstyle on the Normans in the Bayeux Tapestry who were descended from the Viking Age Norse. As for the Irish, though, our sources for it are from the 16th century. Laurent Vitell, who wrote a chronicle of Archduke Thurden and the first visit to Ireland, says they were shorn and shaved one palm above the ears, but on the forehead they leave about a palm of hair to grow down to their eyebrows like a tuft of hair which one leaves hanging on horses between the two eyes. Much of the speculation about the glib being a matted style comes from one Edmund Spencer writing around 1596 that the Irish went into battle without helmets and trusted their glibs to protect them from swords. But firstly, he writes this in an anti-Irish propaganda leaflet and secondly, he never described the hair as matted, only as a thick curled bush of hair. So this should be taken with a large helping of salt. To sum up, bleached spiked hair? Check. Reverse mullet? Also check. Anything remotely resembling locks? Not a thing. Something I struggle with when doing this kind of historical research is that, well, I know. It's not that I think I need a degree to do good research, but the background and context from lecture classes can be super helpful. Enter Wondrium, the sponsor of this video. An educational video subscription service with hours upon hours of courses, documentaries, and series on just about every topic you might wonder about. They're constantly releasing new programs too. They have one called America's Great Trails coming out this month that any hikers in the audience should love. There are pattern drafting classes. There are political science shows. And there is a 36 episode long history lecture course called The Vikings that goes all the way back to the Bronze Age. It covers nearly every aspect of Viking society, even technical details like shipbuilding. Apparently Viking-age ships were literally made to bend with the waves when sailing, and could be as thin as one inch in the hull planks, which is terrifying, but also incredibly impressive. Obviously this course will not get you college credits, but it will also cost you a lot less. Wondrium is offering my viewers a free trial, so if you want to support my channel and get more of your history fix, please visit wondrium.com slash snappy dragon, or click the link in the description to start your free trial today. So, Viking-age Norse hairstyles. This is probably the one I hear most often, despite how contrary it is to the historical record, guessing that's got something to do with the frequent appropriation of Viking-age Norse imagery by white supremacists. Records of what the Norse actually did with their hair are pretty thin. However, we have so many primary sources that talk about the Norse combing their hair, often daily and or more often than other cultures. The off-sided Ahmad ibn Fadlam traveled from the Abbasid Caliphate in what is now Syria to the Rus' Vikings in the 10th century, and though his account probably contains much embellishment and pearl clutching because weird foreigners! He does describe the Norse men combing out their hair in a basin of water every day. A little later on, the equally oft-quoted John of Wallingford complained that the Danes living in England were want after the fashion of their country to comb their hair every day. He then goes on to list all the other reasons that English women preferred Danish men such as bathing weekly and changing their clothes, and therefore all the Danes in England must be killed off, right? Daily combing was a common method of hair care in Western Europe during the early Middle Ages, and I've tested its effectiveness out myself. Here's the thing, you cannot comb locks or mats. That's just not a thing that works, unless you're combing them in an attempt to remove them. The absolute closest thing to evidence for the Norse ever wearing matted hair is a story that actually emphasizes how unusual matted hair would be. In one of Snorri Sturluson's Heimstreinless Sagas, this Norse king called Herald, fancies a woman called Gudda, who says she won't sleep with him until he conquers all of Norway. Which… look. If a woman in a folk story ever says, I won't sleep with you unless you do this extreme thing, understand that she just means no. Lookin' at you, kibukwa murder ballads. But I digress. Herald says, actually, that's a great idea. I won't cut or comb my hair until I've done it. This is supposed to be a sign of hyperbolic, epic fantasy narrative device-level commitment that he would give up something as fundamental as basic haircare until he's finished his conquest. Dude gets nicknamed Herald Tangle Hair until he's king of all Norway, then cuts his hair and is re-nicknamed Herald Pretty Hair. As for women's hair, we know even less about specific haircare practices, but we do have some artistic depictions of a hairstyle where long hair is tied in a large overhand knot at the nape of the neck. And to once again preempt someone saying that those lines represent locks or mats, can I point out how the same sort of line work is used at the bottom of the figure's dress? There are only so many ways you can represent texture in teeny little metal figures. So this is not evidence of anything other than the artist wanted to show that this is hair. The Viking Age Norse might well have worn interesting hairstyles, they might well have worn braids, they might well have decorated their hair in different ways than other cultures. But the information we have about their haircare goes directly against the possibility that they wore mats or locks. Literally the only record we have of a European culture wearing anything that remotely resembles locks if you squint is the Polish plat. But this is a very specific hairstyle with a very specific history. In this region there were folk beliefs that a large tangle or mat in the hair was caused either by illness leaving the body or by supernatural means such as curses or fairy-like beings. Cutting the mat off could offend those supernatural forces and cause worse illness, so people kept them and sometimes created them using waxy or sticky hair products. During the 17th and 18th centuries the Polish plat became the focus of classist and ethnic discrimination against Poles, as well as anti-Semitism because anti-Semites will take any excuse. We do have some extant Polish plats as in literal sections of hair, so we know that this was a real thing that existed. However, because of the prejudice associated with them, it's uncertain how much we can trust any sources from outsiders that may have been depicting them pejoratively. If you're of Polish heritage and want to do this with your hair, sure. But the rest of us need to understand that this is, once again, a different thing than this. So where did this myth actually come from? It's literally just cultural appropriation and white supremacy. There's no historical evidence at all that would lead someone to believe that either the ancient Celts or the Viking Age Norse had locks unless that person had already made up their mind and was looking to invent a justification. There's not even much to base a made-up justification on. I also think it's very telling that white folks didn't become interested in locks at all until celebrities like Bob Marley and Whoopi Goldberg popularized them in the 70s and 80s. From then until today, white hippies' matted hair is praised for being free-spirited and bohemian, even when it's very poorly cared for. White fashion designers are complemented for the edgy choice to put fake wool locks on white models. While white people do all this, black people face extensive discrimination for wearing locks, to the point where the US literally needed to make a law against hair discrimination. It's good that we've done it, but infuriating that we need it. This is the crux of what cultural appropriation is, taking a culturally significant practice, especially from a marginalized group, out of context, performing it incorrectly or without understanding, or in a way that disrespects its original significance and then benefiting from doing so while the originating culture faces discrimination for it. We don't live in the time of the ancient Gauls or Britons. We don't live in the Viking Age. We live in the 21st century, and in the 21st century, white people appropriating black hairstyles is a huge problem. It does ongoing and significant harm to black people, right now, today. So what I really want to know is, why do folks care more about finding vague historical justifications than about hurting people through their actions in the present day? Some obscure quote from the Romans isn't going to undo centuries upon centuries of accumulated ongoing racism. It would not change things for any of my black clients who had me straighten their hair before job interviews because they knew they'd be lowballed otherwise. To say nothing of the black folks who have been fired, suspended from school, or had their hair cut or shaved against their wishes, in the modern world, any scraps of history are nothing to what's still going on. They do not matter. Let's say you're a white person going to Burning Man or some other event, and you want something historical or protective or cool looking to do with your hair. The good news is you have lots of other options. Unfortunately, historical-ish TV shows like The Vikings appropriate a lot of African braiding into their hairstyles because it's considered cool and edgy when white people do it, and that's not what I'm talking about. Let me know if you're interested in a video breaking down the differences, and I'll see what can be done. Europe has its own long and rich history of braided and protective hairstyles, which can be great for situations where modern hair washing isn't an option. I've tested some of them, and there are some really knowledgeable medievalists and historical customers on YouTube and elsewhere who have done even more. You can do any number of beautiful, festive, and damaged reducing things with your hair, and you will look all the better for them not being based in racism. I have wanted to make this video for literally longer than I've had my channel, and I am so glad to be sharing it with all of you. Seriously. I was making angry Facebook posts about this in 2018! Send this video around to your burner friends, or any of your friends who you think might need to see it, and tell me in the comments about an interesting hairstyle or hair care practice from your culture's traditional dress. Don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe for more hair history myth-busting. Y'all can help me get some use out of that cosmetology training now that I'm not doing hair. If you're coming back from the playa, I hope you had a fun and safe burn. Now go clean your hair, you dirty hippies! Also hydrate hippies.