While rumaging in Viking blogs I spotted this (http://norseandviking.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/some-further-discussion-of-article-on.html).
I haven't read it but the abstract seemed interesting eg.
"A critical review of Old Norse literature shows that berserkir do not go berserk, and suggests that berserksgangr was a calculated form of posturing and a ritual activity designed to bolster the courage of the berserkr."
Um ... the link is to the genomic female Viking blogpost.
The blogger links to this (http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/28819/) article about berserkers, which I assume is the one Anthony is refering to.
Agree . . . the abstract is of interest.
Makes me think and or reflect upon posturing in warfare . . . appearing taller (with plumed helmets), or more fierce with "paint" and similar decorations.
Mr. Barker spoke of berserkers in DBA or DBM, I believe.
Some rule sets allow them, some do not, as is their right.
To The Strongest! represents these as heroes as opposed to the "formed" units in other sets.
I am sure I read about them in that Vikings book reviewed recently . . .
Chris
Quote from: Andreas Johansson on September 26, 2017, 09:16:41 PM
The blogger links to this (http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/28819/) article about berserkers, which I assume is the one Anthony is refering to.
Thank you Andreas and apologies to everyone for the mistake - what happens sometimes when you are doing a pile of copy pasting and don't check :(
Quote from: Erpingham on September 27, 2017, 07:38:39 AM
Quote from: Andreas Johansson on September 26, 2017, 09:16:41 PM
The blogger links to this (http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/28819/) article about berserkers, which I assume is the one Anthony is refering to.
Thank you Andreas and apologies to everyone for the mistake - what happens sometimes when you are doing a pile of copy pasting and don't check :(
Yes, thanks Andreas.
And not to worry, Anthony: what is worse is when you give a link and next day that site is taken down for some reason. Happened to me ...
Regarding the berserkers article, or at least abstract, I am interested in Andreas' reactions to the subject. (Everyone's for that matter, but particularly Andreas' or that of any Norwegian, Swede or Dane in our ranks.)
Quote from: Chris on September 26, 2017, 09:59:22 PM
Mr. Barker spoke of berserkers in DBA or DBM, I believe.
Indeed, and is quoted on p. 372 of the thesis, on the section on berserkers in miniature wargames. There are also sections on berserkers in boardgames, role play and computer games.
It all seems stuff and nonsense to me.
Everybody knows that in a long-forgotten interstellar war, two races fought themselves into oblivion and the only thing left from the conflict is the weapon that ended it. The beserkers are implacable, inimical killing machines that have been programmed to rebuild and redesign themselves, and destroy all things living.... :P
Quote from: NickHarbud on September 27, 2017, 04:15:24 PM
It all seems stuff and nonsense to me.
Everybody knows that in a long-forgotten interstellar war, two races fought themselves into oblivion and the only thing left from the conflict is the weapon that ended it. The beserkers are implacable, inimical killing machines that have been programmed to rebuild and redesign themselves, and destroy all things living.... :P
Hmmmm, not sure that would fit the evidence as presented in the thesis :D
Though not meeting Patrick's Scandinavian criteria for comment, I have now read (in more or less detail) the thesis. It is, I think, a useful summary of evidence and theories, even if you don't agree with the conclusions. I was particularly struck by the attempts to see an evolution in perception of berserkers from a possible cultic/heroic pagan origin to a stock character in the Christian era.
Quote from: Erpingham on September 26, 2017, 02:14:05 PM
While rumaging in Viking blogs I spotted this (http://norseandviking.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/some-further-discussion-of-article-on.html).
I haven't read it but the abstract seemed interesting eg.
"A critical review of Old Norse literature shows that berserkir do not go berserk, and suggests that berserksgangr was a calculated form of posturing and a ritual activity designed to bolster the courage of the berserkr."
Not sure those two things are all that different tbh! Both denote a warrior going into battle in an altered state of mind that diminishes his fear.
Quote from: eques on September 28, 2017, 04:50:06 PM
Quote from: Erpingham on September 26, 2017, 02:14:05 PM
While rumaging in Viking blogs I spotted this (http://norseandviking.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/some-further-discussion-of-article-on.html).
I haven't read it but the abstract seemed interesting eg.
"A critical review of Old Norse literature shows that berserkir do not go berserk, and suggests that berserksgangr was a calculated form of posturing and a ritual activity designed to bolster the courage of the berserkr."
Not sure those two things are all that different tbh! Both denote a warrior going into battle in an altered state of mind that diminishes his fear.
You'll find the author has doubts over whether berserkers went into battle in an "altered" state of mind. More like a sports person psyching themself up, getting into "the zone", getting the edge on the opposition. Or so it seemed to me.
Quote from: Erpingham on September 28, 2017, 05:24:33 PM
Quote from: eques on September 28, 2017, 04:50:06 PM
Quote from: Erpingham on September 26, 2017, 02:14:05 PM
While rumaging in Viking blogs I spotted this (http://norseandviking.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/some-further-discussion-of-article-on.html).
I haven't read it but the abstract seemed interesting eg.
"A critical review of Old Norse literature shows that berserkir do not go berserk, and suggests that berserksgangr was a calculated form of posturing and a ritual activity designed to bolster the courage of the berserkr."
Not sure those two things are all that different tbh! Both denote a warrior going into battle in an altered state of mind that diminishes his fear.
You'll find the author has doubts over whether berserkers went into battle in an "altered" state of mind. More like a sports person psyching themself up, getting into "the zone", getting the edge on the opposition. Or so it seemed to me.
I think all things should be considered and that one berserker might be very different from the next....
Quote from: Erpingham on September 28, 2017, 05:24:33 PM
Quote from: eques on September 28, 2017, 04:50:06 PM
Quote from: Erpingham on September 26, 2017, 02:14:05 PM
While rumaging in Viking blogs I spotted this (http://norseandviking.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/some-further-discussion-of-article-on.html).
I haven't read it but the abstract seemed interesting eg.
"A critical review of Old Norse literature shows that berserkir do not go berserk, and suggests that berserksgangr was a calculated form of posturing and a ritual activity designed to bolster the courage of the berserkr."
Not sure those two things are all that different tbh! Both denote a warrior going into battle in an altered state of mind that diminishes his fear.
You'll find the author has doubts over whether berserkers went into battle in an "altered" state of mind. More like a sports person psyching themself up, getting into "the zone", getting the edge on the opposition. Or so it seemed to me.
Again, don't really see the difference.
I suppose it's a definition thing, then. I would assume an altered state was an involuntary thing, like the effect of drugs or psychological disfunction. The authors view is that berserkerdom is a voluntary state.
I'd go for a self induced state myself and you probably had to be taught/initiated to do it.
Ibn Fadlan notes the presence of an old woman presiding over the Viking funeral rites and performing the human sacrifice required and that is in Iraq. Clearly she was important enough that they had taken her with them on an epic voyage. Freya is the goddess of sex and death and the warrior slain are taken to her and Odin by the Valkyrein (sp?) and shared between them. Magic in the Viking world was the preserve of women and men engaged in it at their peril.
I'd guess the Beserker thing involved such a woman and magic and probably an enabling ritual to reach the trigger point of 'going beserker'.
From the evidence given, I'd say we are looking at at least two types of berserker. The early pagan one, whose berserkerdom may be related to religious or cultic practice and may feature membership of a cult warrior group, and later berserkers, who used the forms of berserk behavour - fearlessness, challenging, bullying, display- without the deeper meaning.
All warriors aimed for fearlessness, challenging, bullying, display so doing so would not identify you as a Beserker.
Beserkers must have been some how different enough for it to worth mentioning. What that difference was I couldn't say but it must have readily identifiable in the Viking age.
And then there is the tradition that berserkers were unaffected by wounds short of an incapacitating injury. This seems to indicate more than just pre-battle posturing.
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on September 30, 2017, 06:50:13 PM
And then there is the tradition that berserkers were unaffected by wounds short of an incapacitating injury.
This seems to indicate more than just pre-battle posturing.
But does it? And if so what? Berserkers do not seem to go randomly berserk and there is evidence of preparatory posturing. This would exclude some psychological explanations. There is no evidence of extensive pre-battle drinking sessions or of taking Class A drugs (and a shortage of evidence that the drugs of choice would lead to the required behaviour).
And, again, I think it is a mistake to assume that "traditional" berserker behaviour recorded in later sagas and histories entirely reflect what may be pagan cultic behaviour centuries before. If someone wanted to be seen as a berserker in Christian Iceland, he may simply be borrowing elements of traditional berserker behaviour which have lost any earlier pagan significance or ritual context.
An interesting subject, though.
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on September 30, 2017, 06:50:13 PM
And then there is the tradition that berserkers were unaffected by wounds short of an incapacitating injury. This seems to indicate more than just pre-battle posturing.
I'm not sure it indicates more than high adrenaline.
(I don't suggest verifying this at home, but it's amazing how little a kick to the groin slows you down when you're on a serious adrenaline rush.)
I seem to recall being told that the adrenaline temporarily blocks the pain receptors.
I think we can discount drink and drugs as an explanation.
We have this thing that some how differentiates Berserkers from other warriors and we don't know what it is. Partly it's because the Berserker is rooted in the pagan past and our sources are Christian. The Icelandic law texts proscribe some practices perhaps there is some more information to be had there.
Quote from: Anton on October 01, 2017, 01:03:14 PM
The Icelandic law texts proscribe some practices perhaps there is some more information to be had there.
There is very little. Details are in section 5.3 of the thesis (314-319).
Essentially, it was illegal to go berserk. If you were prevented by your friends, then it would be overlooked on a first offence. Penalty was lesser outlawry. It is apparently in the section of the law code dealing with the suppression of pagan practices.
That's as I would expect.
So, "A critical review of Old Norse literature shows that berserkir do not go berserk, and suggests that berserksgangr was a calculated form of posturing and a ritual activity designed to bolster the courage of the berserkr."
If "berserksgangr was a calculated form of posturing and a ritual activity" Then we can say that observance of the ritual is key to obtaining the benefits of berserksgangr and that for contemporaries those benefits were real. Further the whole thing was a deeply pagan practice incompatible with Christianity and if you kept doing it you would be punished.
Yes, that's along the lines of the conclusion. There is a lot more in the thesis on what the pagan context may have been and some parallels from other northern cultures (like the concept of naked dueling in Frisian law). There are thoughts about a loss of status of berserkers over time (a pagan elite down to a group of dubious legal status) and, as I've mentioned, the evolution of the practice through time. In this context, it ought to be noted that, although the bit in Icelandic law is related to paganism, by the 12th century berserkers were clearly a social nuisance because they bullied people and challenged them to duels if they didn't get what they wanted. So there was a degree of controlling violence going on too.
That all makes perfect sense. It seems analogous to the situation in Ireland with the Fían also a pagan warrior cult. I've been working on an article for submission to Slingshot on the latter for ages and finally cracked the obscure bit of Old Irish that was holding me up.
Quote from: Anton on September 30, 2017, 02:15:04 PM
All warriors aimed for fearlessness, challenging, bullying, display so doing so would not identify you as a Beserker.
Beserkers must have been some how different enough for it to worth mentioning. What that difference was I couldn't say but it must have readily identifiable in the Viking age.
Well all cricketers aim to score a lot of runs, but some (I believe called "sloggers") have a particular knack of smashing multiple balls out to the boundary.
I've always understood "Beserker" to mean a warfare version of that.
We don't seem to be talking about warriors with a particular knack of smashing loads of opponents because we hear of many of those who are not Bersekr as well as those who are. So that is not what differentiates them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWnQPf3-f0w
still a classic but the discussion above reminded me of the scene where Tim Mckinnnery goes berserk at 1:06:30 :)
I like Stehen's relation of berserkers to the Fian, because I do see them as connecting back to ancient Germanic groups and lijely having a cultic organisation, at least originally.bThe Fian are a group permitted to be separate from society and licensed to be violent in a way that ordinary folk are not meant to be. I wonder if such licensed violence is outside the rules of feud. Presumably there is some utility to having such groups and to allowing and regulating their otherness. If they became too regularly violent it would disturb the social order. They are a bit like Spartan boys and might just all go back to an Indo European origin, along with naked fighting. One can imagine that a sequestration of young men into a ritual absence with a right of passage would fit in a tribal and very class divided society.
Later Scandinavian kings are mentioned as having berserkers with them, perhaps by the eleventh century the original rites and perhaps collegiate nature survived in a sufficiently formal way for the distinction to be not only clear, but to be more than just an individual making a choice or wearing a badge or exhibiting a particular behaviour?
Roy
I wrote an article in Slingshot about 30 years ago saying that the berserker is a literary figure and not an historical one. I like the cited doctorate's suggestion of posturing; I am also impressed that the author managed to find enough information for a PhD.
Has any society ever legislated against literary figures? I can see the attraction but I can't think of an example.
Quote from: Anton on November 09, 2017, 03:37:06 PM
Has any society ever legislated against literary figures? I can see the attraction but I can't think of an example.
Well, there are plenty of laws concerning witches and the like, but I guess those are folkloric rather than literary.
The imitation, conscious or unconscious, of literary figures is not exactly uncommon. Alexander the Great styled himself on Achilles, medieval knights were influenced by Arthurian heroes, cowboys in the Old West tried to live up to fictionalised versions of their lives published back East. So, laws to stop people behaving like berserkers they heard about reciting tales in the Hall on winter nights isn't that far fetched.
Quote from: Erpingham on November 09, 2017, 04:14:20 PM
The imitation, conscious or unconscious, of literary figures is not exactly uncommon. Alexander the Great styled himself on Achilles, medieval knights were influenced by Arthurian heroes, cowboys in the Old West tried to live up to fictionalised versions of their lives published back East. So, laws to stop people behaving like berserkers they heard about reciting tales in the Hall on winter nights isn't that far fetched.
But if people did make sufficient nuisances of themselves by imitating literary berserkers to motive laws against, the berserker is not a
purely literary figure, even if
originally literary.
(Now, law-givers might have made laws against the mere possibility of such imitation, but it's probably a fair generalization that laws are made to prevent activities that are at least thought to be actually occurring. Anti-witchcraft laws are made by, or for the benefit of, people who believe in witches.)
Quote from: Andreas Johansson on November 09, 2017, 04:59:21 PM
Quote from: Erpingham on November 09, 2017, 04:14:20 PM
The imitation, conscious or unconscious, of literary figures is not exactly uncommon. Alexander the Great styled himself on Achilles, medieval knights were influenced by Arthurian heroes, cowboys in the Old West tried to live up to fictionalised versions of their lives published back East. So, laws to stop people behaving like berserkers they heard about reciting tales in the Hall on winter nights isn't that far fetched.
But if people did make sufficient nuisances of themselves by imitating literary berserkers to motive laws against, the berserker is not a purely literary figure, even if originally literary.
I wouldn't argue they were purely literary. But I would say they had a literary component which became stronger as their original pagan significance became lost or obscured.
When we talk of a literary figure or component, are we assuming a literate society?
Literature does not need to be written down. I mean the Iliad was not put to papyrus until several centuries after the Trojan War.
Quote from: NickHarbud on November 10, 2017, 04:32:06 AM
Literature does not need to be written down. I mean the Iliad was not put to papyrus until several centuries after the Trojan War.
Without wanting to be picky (he says while being picky!), it being written down is an essential definition of literature. An oral tradition may become literature once it's been written down, but until then it would be considered performance poetry, minstrelsy, song, etc.
I'm afraid that "oral literature" is nevertheless a well-established term for more or less fixed compositions (epics, laws, etc.) that are being handed down orally.
Quote from: Andreas Johansson on November 10, 2017, 06:44:19 AM
I'm afraid that "oral literature" is nevertheless a well-established term for more or less fixed compositions (epics, laws, etc.) that are being handed down orally.
Thanks Andreas - I can live with that!
Quote from: NickHarbud on November 10, 2017, 04:32:06 AM
Literature does not need to be written down.
Although 'literary' has that implication; in any event, are we being asked to believe that pursuant to the Christianising of Vikings the whole berserker thing was invented by reactionary skalds and adopted by gullible youths? I think Andreas' point that if it was legislated against there was enough substance to it to make it a reality is a valid one.
Quote
I mean the Iliad was not put to papyrus until several centuries after the Trojan War.
There we are likely to differ, given that it would have been composed in the 8th century BC and 'fixed' on a written medium in the 7th, but that is another topic. :)
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on November 09, 2017, 09:16:00 PM
When we talk of a literary figure or component, are we assuming a literate society?
The Vikings were indeed literate, as can be seen by all the runestones they left scattered about. However, I would place their early "literature" in the "oral literature" category suggested by Andreas.
Perhaps the most useful thing the thesis does is separate out phases of evidence for berserkers. They get covered in plenty of books and we see conflations of pre-Viking art, Viking era poetry and medieval literature to explain them. Separate these out to form a rough timeline and an evolving religious/social category seems plausible, beginning with a cultic society, moving to a respected warrior class and fading to poseurs, thugs and bullies seen in literature.
The legislators were part of the new Christian order and the Berserkers part of the old so a previous pagan practice is outlawed. Whatever Berserkers were, and I think we have come to some understanding of that, they were real enough to be legislated against.
Berserker behavior might always have been atrocious or possibly written accounts might have shared the same motivation of the legislators to suppress the practice.
I'm with Spiedel that the berserker is a continuation of an Indo European tradition which manifests itself in such things a fighting naked , going and living in the woods as an age cohort of young men , practising a bit of rape and robbery, wearing wolf and bearskins, a bit of drug taking and licensed criminality, maybe some head hunting. This sort of activity might well have been practised in part by the comitatenses of kings and nobles. It makes a lot of sense in an environment which has a cattle based economy, or at least cattle based wealth, an heroic ethos a la Cuchulainn and has quite a bit of empty space. It makes less sense when agriculture spreads out, peopke are tied to the land, kings and nobles are expected to deliver peace and security and warfare becomes regularised.
The Quadi in the IVth century frustrated the Roman emperor because they could not sign a peace that would guarantee that their young men would not raid. On Trajan's column groups of German Symmachoi are shown with bare chests and clubs, others with wolf and bear skin headdresses, others with openwork helmets. There is a substructure to their military activity that we miss because our witnesses are Roman and look for structures they understand except when they choose to mimic the father of history and give an anecdote about the otherness of these peoples. Such an example might well be the Heruls whom Procopius describes as having very friendly relations with their horses, not wearing armour abd freeing their slaves if such slaves fought heroically, shieldless for them. ( They would also get a shield for next time). The difference between the tough Heruls and other Germans Zprocopius knew is that the Heruls were still pagans, not softened by adopting a form of Christianity, lije Goths, Vandals and Franks.
In a world in which the Gods moved amongst us on earth, extravagant oaths were sought and an heroic death was celebrated the berserkers were no oddity, so I rather believe in them.
Roy
Are we still on Australians here Roy?
Que??
Stephen makes a good point. By the 12 th century it may be that being a berserker is like being a boy or girl in a Chuch of England school, a matter of self identification! Eric is a berserker because he says he is, claims the pay rate, considers himself above the law and wears the gear. In a way Eric is a re enactor.😉
Roy
Drug taking, robbery, licenced criminality.
Etc.
It sums up my memories of mist male backpackers from the antipodes once they reach Europe.