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Berserker
In the Old Norse written corpus, berserkers (Old Norse: berserkir) were Scandinavian warriors 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.
The Old Norse form of the word was berserkr (plural berserkir), a compound word of ber and serkr. The second part, serkr, means 'shirt' (also found in Middle English, see serk). 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'.
The thirteenth-century historian Snorri Sturluson, an Icelander who lived around 200 years after berserkers were outlawed in Iceland 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 as a result of contradicting and lack of supporting evidence.
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, the wolf, and the wild boar.
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.
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.
In 1639 and 1734 respectively, two extensively decorated horns made of sheet gold, the Golden Horns of Gallehus, were discovered in Southern Jutland, Denmark. As part of its decoration, the first horn, the larger of the two, depicts two animal headed men facing each other, armed with what appears to be a sickle and a wood-splitting axe. Dated to the early 5th century, these depictions could represent something related to berserkers.
In the spring of 1870, four Vendel era cast-bronze dies, the Torslunda plates, were found by Erik Gustaf Pettersson and Anders Petter Nilsson in a cairn on the lands of the farm No 5 Björnhovda in Torslunda parish, Öland, Sweden, one of them showing what appears to be a berserker ritual.
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Berserker
In the Old Norse written corpus, berserkers (Old Norse: berserkir) were Scandinavian warriors 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.
The Old Norse form of the word was berserkr (plural berserkir), a compound word of ber and serkr. The second part, serkr, means 'shirt' (also found in Middle English, see serk). 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'.
The thirteenth-century historian Snorri Sturluson, an Icelander who lived around 200 years after berserkers were outlawed in Iceland 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 as a result of contradicting and lack of supporting evidence.
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, the wolf, and the wild boar.
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.
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.
In 1639 and 1734 respectively, two extensively decorated horns made of sheet gold, the Golden Horns of Gallehus, were discovered in Southern Jutland, Denmark. As part of its decoration, the first horn, the larger of the two, depicts two animal headed men facing each other, armed with what appears to be a sickle and a wood-splitting axe. Dated to the early 5th century, these depictions could represent something related to berserkers.
In the spring of 1870, four Vendel era cast-bronze dies, the Torslunda plates, were found by Erik Gustaf Pettersson and Anders Petter Nilsson in a cairn on the lands of the farm No 5 Björnhovda in Torslunda parish, Öland, Sweden, one of them showing what appears to be a berserker ritual.
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