What were berserkers?

[Anton]

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'.

[Erpingham]

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.

[Anton]

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.

[Patrick Waterson]

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.

[Erpingham]

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.

[Andreas Johansson]

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.)

[Anton]

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.

[Erpingham]

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.

[Anton]

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.

[Erpingham]

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.

[Anton]

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.

[eques]

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.

[Anton]

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.

[Imperial Dave]

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

[aligern]

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