Some months back I noticed a relic German helmet for sale on the internet. It was advertised as an "SS Nord" helmet on a well known and reliable website. Knowing that helmets of this kind are only very rarely found in Finland 70 years after WW2 I immediately contacted the seller and asked about more information regarding the area it had been found and possible information on who might have found it and in which year.

Worried that this piece of history might eventually be lost to the international collector market without a proved provenance, I contacted the seller and we managed to come up with an agreement on how to move forward in order to get the helmet to a reognised war museum in Finland. The helmet will be subject to detailed analysis during which we will try to find out as much as possible about it´s history.

The scientific work with researching this helmet has only just started. I would be very grateful if the community here would help us out on issues that might turn up during the journey. I believe crowdsourcing is an important part of WW2 conflict archaeological research. The results of this crowdsourcing will be part of my doctoral dissertation at the University of Helsinki dpts of archaeology and history.

I will post detailed pictures of the helmet in a couple of days.

Best, Jan