Berserker

Ulfhednar

The Bear, The Wolf, The Boar

Ancient Germanic Norse Clans

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Berserker

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker 

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In the Old Norse written corpus, berserkers (Old Norse: berserkir) were those who were said to have fought in a trance-like fury, a characteristic which later gave rise to the modern English adjective berserk 'furiously violent or out of control'. Berserkers are attested to in numerous Old Norse sources.

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The Old Norse form of the word was berserkr (plural berserkir), a compound word of ber and serkr. The second part, serkr, means 'shirt'. The first part, ber, on the other hand, can mean several things, but is assumed to have most likely meant 'bear', with the full word, berserkr, meaning just 'bear-shirt', as in 'someone who wears a coat made out of a bear's skin'.

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Thirteenth-century historian Snorri Sturluson, an Icelander who lived around 200 years after berserkers were outlawed in Iceland (outlawed in 1015), on the other hand, interpreted the meaning as 'bare-shirt', that is to say that the warriors went into battle without armour, but that view has largely been abandoned, due to contradicting and lack of supporting evidence.

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Germanic mercenaries in the Roman army

The bas-relief carvings on Trajan's column in Rome, completed in 113 AD, depict scenes of Trajan's conquest of Dacia in 101–106 AD. The scenes show his Roman soldiers plus auxiliaries and allies from Rome's border regions, including tribal warriors from both sides of the Rhine. There are warriors depicted as barefoot, bare-chested, bearing weapons and helmets that are associated with the Germani.

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Scene 36 on the column shows some of these warriors standing together, with some wearing bearhoods and some wearing wolfhoods. This is the only potential record of Germanic bear-warriors and wolf-warriors fighting together until 872 AD, with Thórbiörn Hornklofi's description of the battle of Hafrsfjord, when they fought together for King Harald Fairhair of Norway.

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Early beginnings

It is proposed by some authors that the northern warrior tradition originated from hunting magic. Three main animal cults appear to have developed:

• the cult of the bear Berserkers

• the cult of the wolf Ulfheðnar

• the cult of the wild boar Jǫfurr

Berserkers – Bear Warriors

It is proposed by some authors that the berserkers drew their power from the bear and were devoted to the bear cult, which was once widespread across the northern hemisphere. The berserkers maintained their religious observances despite their fighting prowess, as the Svarfdæla saga tells of a challenge to single-combat that was postponed by a berserker until three days after Yule.

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The bodies of dead berserkers were laid out in bearskins prior to their funeral rites. The bear-warrior symbolism survives to this day in the form of the bearskin caps worn by the guards of the Danish monarchs.

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In battle, the berserkers were subject to fits of frenzy. They would howl like wild beasts, foam at the mouth, and gnaw the rims of their shields. According to belief, during these fits, they were immune to steel and fire, and made great havoc in the ranks of the enemy. When this fever abated, they were weak and tame. Accounts can be found in the sagas.

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To "go berserk" was to "hamask", which translates as "change form", in this case, as with the sense "enter a state of wild fury". Some scholars have interpreted those who could transform as a berserker as "hamrammr" or "shapestrong" – literally able to shapeshift into a bear's form.

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For example, the band of men who go with Skallagrim in Egil's Saga to see King Harald about his brother Thorolf's murder are described as "the hardest of men, with a touch of the uncanny about a number of them ... they [were] built and shaped more like trolls than human beings." This has sometimes been interpreted as the band of men being "hamrammr", though there is no major consensus.

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Ulfheðnar – Wolf Warriors

Wolf warriors appear among the legends of the Indo-Europeans, Turks, Mongols, and Native American cultures. The Germanic wolf-warriors have left their trace through shields and standards that were captured by the Romans and displayed in the armilustrium in Rome.

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Frenzy warriors wearing the skins of wolves called ulfheðnar ("wolf-skin-ers" or possibly "wolf-heathens"; singular ulfheðinn), are mentioned in the Vatnsdæla saga, the Haraldskvæði and the Grettis saga and are consistently referred to in the sagas as a group of berserkers, always presented as the elite following of the first Norwegian king Harald Fairhair. They were said to wear the pelt of a wolf over their chainmail when they entered battle. Unlike berserkers, direct references to ulfheðnar are scant.

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Egil's Saga features a man called Kveldulf (Evening-Wolf) who is said to have transformed into a wolf at night. This Kveldulf is described as a berserker, as opposed to an ulfheðinn. Ulfheðnar are sometimes described as Odin's special warriors:

"[Odin's] men went without their mailcoats and were mad as hounds or wolves, bit their shields...they slew men, but neither fire nor iron had effect upon them. This is called 'going berserk'." 

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"Jǫfurr" – Proposed Boar Warriors

In Norse poetry, the word jǫfurr, which originally meant "wild boar", is used metaphorically for "a prince, monarch or warrior", which probably stems from the custom of wearing boar's heads as helmets or boar crested helmets in battle.

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Swine played a central role in Germanic paganism, featuring in both mythology and religious practice, particularly in association with the Vanir, Freyr and Freyja. It has been proposed that similar to berserkers, warriors could ritually transform into boars so as to gain strength, bravery and protection in battle. It has been theorized that this process was linked to the wearing of boar helmets as a ritual costume.

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Berserkers and Other Shamanic Warriors

Source: https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/others/berserkers-and-other-shamanic-warriors/ 

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The shamanism of the pre-Christian Norse and other Germanic peoples took several different forms. Among the most common of these forms, especially for men, was the attainment and use of an ecstatic battle-fury closely linked to a particular totem animal, usually a bear or a wolf, and often occurring within the context of certain formal, initiatory military groups.

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As far as we can tell today, the berserkers and úlfheðnar shared a common set of shamanic practices, with the only substantial difference being that the totem animal of the berserkers was, as the name implies, the bear, while that of the úlfheðnar was the wolf.

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These names are a reference to the practice of dressing in a ritual costume made from the hide of the totem animal, an outward reminder of the wearer’s having gone beyond the confines of his humanity and become a divine predator. It’s hard to imagine a grislier or more frightening thing to encounter on the late Iron Age battlefield.

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One of the defining features of shamanic traditions across the world is an initiation process characterized by a symbolic (and occasionally literal) death and rebirth, whereby the shaman-to-be acquires his or her powers. Candidates for Germanic shamanic military societies underwent such a process before being admitted into the group: they spent a period in the wilderness, living like their totem animal and learning its ways, obtaining their sustenance through hunting, gathering, and raiding the nearest towns.

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To quote the esteemed archaeologist Dominique Briquel, “Rapto vivere, to live in the manner of wolves, is the beginning of this initiation. The bond with the savage world is indicated not only on the geographic plane – life beyond the limits of the civilized life of the towns… but also on what we would consider a moral plane: their existence is assured by the law of the jungle.”

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The candidate ceased to be an ordinary human being and became instead a wolf-man or a bear-man, more a part of the forest than of civilization.

Thenceforth, he had the ability to induce a state of possession by his kindred beast, acquiring its strength, fearlessness, and fury. We have only the haziest idea of the techniques used to reach this ecstatic trance state, but we know that fasting, exposure to extreme heat, and ceremonial “weapons dances” were among the shamanic toolkit of the ancient Germanic peoples.

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It’s extremely likely that warrior-shamans used these techniques, alongside numerous others that have been lost in the centuries of malign neglect that have passed since these were living traditions. On the battlefield, the berserker or úlfheðinn would often enter the fray naked but for his animal mask and pelts, howling, roaring, and running amok with godly or demonic courage. As the Ynglinga Saga puts it,

“Odin’s men [berserkers and úlfheðnar] went armor-less into battle and were as crazed as dogs or wolves and as strong as bears or bulls. They bit their shields and slew men, while they themselves were harmed by neither fire nor iron. This is called “going berserk.”

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In the biting or casting away of their shields, we see a reminder that their ultimate identity is no longer their social persona, but rather their “unity with the animal world” that they have achieved through “self-dehumanization.”

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A warrior’s shield and weapons were the very emblems of his social persona and status; they were given to a young man who had come of age by his father or closest male relative to mark his newfound arrival into the sphere of the rights and responsibilities of his society’s adult men. In biting or discarding the shield, the mythical beast triumphed over the petty man, and “Odin’s men” tore through the battle, psychologically impervious to pain by virtue of their predatory trance.

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Like other northern Eurasian shamans, Germanic warrior-shamans are occasionally depicted with “spirit-wives,” in this case from among the valkyries, the female attendant spirits of Odin.

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In the polytheistic system of the pre-Christian Germanic peoples, wherein different sorts of people venerated different sorts of deities, the berserkers, úlfheðnar, and other warrior-shamans were exemplary devotees of Odin, the Allfather of the northern gods and the giver of óðr, “ecstasy/fury/inspiration.” Óðr is the source of poetic inspiration and philosophical insight as well as battle frenzy (“going berserk,” Old Norse berserksgangr).

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Thus, it should come as no surprise that many of “Odin’s men,” such as Egill Skallagrímsson and Starkaðr, were also warrior-poets. These were no ordinary soldiers; their battle frenzy, with all of its grotesqueness and violence, was of a rarefied, even poetic, sort – and, being a gift from Odin, it was inherently sacred.

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Pictures Videos Music and Additional Reading

Warrior with boar crested helmet on the Gundestrup cauldron.

Warriors with boar crested helmets on one of the Torslunda plates.

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berserker, in premedieval and medieval Norse and Germanic history and folklore, a member of unruly warrior gangs that worshipped Odin, the supreme Norse deity, and attached themselves to royal and noble courts as bodyguards and shock troops.

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The berserkers’ savagery in battle and their animal-skin attire contributed to the development of the werewolf legend in Europe. It is unclear whether the berserker warriors wore bear and wolf skins into battle or fought bare-chested (i.e., without byrnies or mail shirts); tapestries and other sources represent both possibilities.

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The berserkers were in the habit of raping and murdering at will in their host communities (thus going “berserk”), and in the Norse sagas they were often portrayed as villains. In an Old Norse poem, most of which dates from the 9th century, berserkers are recorded as the household guard of Norway’s king Harald I Fairhair (reigned 872–930).

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/berserker 

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