Berserker
Berserkers were Scandinavian warriors whose reputation for trance-like fury in battle was so extreme that their name passed directly into the English language as a word for blind, uncontrollable rage. They howled like wild animals, foamed at the mouth, and gnawed the rims of their shields. According to belief, neither edged weapons nor fire could harm them while the frenzy held. When it passed, they collapsed into weakness, sometimes for days.
The oldest surviving written mention of the berserker appears in a late 9th-century skaldic poem composed by Thórbiörn Hornklofi in honor of King Harald Fairhair of Norway. That poem calls them "tasters of blood" and describes warriors who wade into battle bearing bloody shields and red-stained spears, forming a closed group trusted by the king to hack through enemy shields.
Who exactly these fighters were, what drove them into their frenzy, and why the tradition eventually vanished are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.
The Old Norse word berserkr is a compound of two parts: ber and serkr. The second element, serkr, carries a straightforward meaning also found in Middle English. The first element, ber, is the one that has generated debate for centuries.
The 13th-century Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson, writing roughly two hundred years after berserkers were outlawed in Iceland in 1015, argued that ber meant "bare," giving berserkr the sense of a warrior who went into battle without armour. That interpretation has largely been set aside by modern scholars. The evidence more strongly supports ber as a form meaning "bear," so that berserkr means something close to "bear-shirt."
Snorri himself, writing in his Ynglinga saga, left behind the most quoted description of what berserkers actually did in battle: "His men rushed forwards without armour, were as mad as dogs or wolves, bit their shields, and were strong as bears or wild oxen, and killed people at a blow, but neither fire nor iron told upon them. This was called Berserkergang." The gap between Snorri's etymological guess and his vivid eyewitness-style account points to the difficulty that scholars still face: the people who lived alongside berserkers did not leave a manual explaining them.
Some authors trace the berserker tradition back far earlier than the Viking Age, to hunting magic practiced by northern warriors who identified with particular animals. Three cults appear to have developed: the bear, the wolf, and the wild boar.
The bas-relief carvings on Trajan's Column in Rome, completed in 113 AD, already show something relevant. The column depicts scenes from Emperor Trajan's conquest of Dacia in 101-106 AD, and among the auxiliaries and allied tribal warriors shown are barefoot, bare-chested fighters from both sides of the Rhine. Scene 36 on the column shows some of them wearing bearhoods and wolfhoods. This is the only potential record of Germanic bear-warriors and wolf-warriors fighting side by side until 872 AD, when Thórbiörn Hornklofi described them fighting together for King Harald Fairhair at the battle of Hafrsfjord.
Two gold horns discovered in Southern Jutland, Denmark, in 1639 and 1734 respectively, push the visual record back even further. The larger of the two, dated to the early 5th century, depicts two animal-headed men facing each other, armed with what appears to be a sickle and a wood-splitting axe. In the spring of 1870, four cast-bronze dies known as 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 those plates appears to show a berserker ritual. The span from Roman-era column carvings to Viking Age sagas suggests the warrior-animal tradition was not a late Norse invention but something woven into the fabric of northern European culture across many centuries.
Bear warriors and wolf warriors were distinct types, and the sources treat them differently. Bear warriors, the berserkers proper, were said to have drawn power from the bear cult, which was once widespread across the northern hemisphere. The Svarfdæla saga records a berserker postponing a single-combat challenge until three days after Yule because of religious observance. Dead berserkers were laid out in bearskins before their funeral rites.
The transformation language used in the sagas is striking. To "go berserk" was to "hamask," a verb meaning "change form," understood as entering a state of wild fury. Some scholars interpret warriors who could undergo this change as "hamrammr," a word meaning literally "shapestrong," implying an ability to shapeshift into a bear's form. In the Saga of Hrólf Kraki, the berserker Bödvar Bjarki shapeshifts into a bear to fight for king Hrólfr Kraki: "Men saw that a great bear went before King Hrolf's men, keeping always near the king. He slew more men with his fore paws than any five of the king's champions."
Wolf warriors, known as ulfheðnar ("wolf-skin-ers" or possibly "wolf-heathens"), occupied a different but overlapping place in the tradition. They appear in the Vatnsdæla saga, the Haraldskvæði, and the Grettis saga, always as elite followers of King Harald Fairhair. They wore wolf pelts over chainmail when they entered battle. The Torslunda helm-plate press depicts a one-eyed warrior in a bird-horned helm, interpreted as Odin, standing next to a wolf-headed warrior armed with a spear and sword. A passage attributed to Odin's warriors in the sagas reads: "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." Unlike berserkers, direct references to ulfheðnar are scarce. A third animal identity, the boar, is proposed by scholars but rests on more circumstantial evidence: the Norse word jǫfurr, originally meaning "wild boar," came to mean "prince" or "warrior," and some theorize that warriors ritually adopted boar identities through the wearing of boar-crested helmets.
The 7th-century grave found in 1887 during construction near the St. Gallus Church in Sigmaringen, Germany, offers physical evidence of how deep this tradition ran in Central Europe. One of the graves contained a highly ornate silver sword scabbard featuring a warrior with a wolf's head holding a sword and a spear, thought to represent an ulfheðinn.
Descriptions of berserkergang, the frenzy itself, follow a consistent pattern across the sources. It began with shivering, chattering of the teeth, and a chill in the body. Then the face swelled and changed colour. A hot-headedness followed, building into a rage in which the warrior howled like a wild animal, bit the edge of his shield, and cut down everything in reach without discriminating between friend and foe. When the state passed, a great dulling of the mind and feebleness could last for one or several days.
Notably, the sources agree on one exception to the berserkers' immunity: they were not immune to clubs or other blunt instruments. The saga account of the warrior Hardbeen illustrates how extreme the frenzy was described to become. He bit and devoured the edges of his shield, gulped down fiery coals, snatched live embers and let them pass into his entrails, and rushed through crackling fires. He then killed six of his own champions before being crushed with a hammer of wondrous size by Halfdan.
Scholar Jonathan Shay drew an explicit connection between berserker rage and posttraumatic stress disorder. In his book Achilles in Vietnam, he wrote: "If a soldier survives the berserk state, it imparts emotional deadness and vulnerability to explosive rage to his psychology and permanent hyperarousal to his physiology - hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder in combat veterans." Other scholars have proposed self-induced hysteria, epilepsy, or mental illness as explanations. The drug theory has attracted particular attention: seeds of black henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) were found in a Viking grave unearthed near Fyrkat, Denmark in 1977, and analysis showed that the symptoms caused by that plant resemble those described in berserker accounts. Hallucinogenic mushrooms, large quantities of alcohol, and a mixture known only as "butotens" have also been proposed as possible inducers of the state.
In the earlier sagas, berserkers appear as valued members of royal households, serving as bodyguards, elite soldiers, and champions of kings. King Harald Fairhair used them as shock troops, and other Scandinavian kings ranked them as equivalents of a royal bodyguard. Over time, the image shifted. Later sagas began describing berserkers as boasters rather than heroes, men who looted, plundered, and killed indiscriminately. By Christian interpreters, they were labeled "heathen devils."
Within the sagas, scholars have identified four recognizable types: the King's Berserkr, the Hall-Challenging Berserkr, the Hólmgangumaðr, and the Viking Berserkr. The legal record marks the end of the institution precisely. In 1015, Jarl Eiríkr Hákonarson of Norway outlawed berserkers. The medieval Icelandic law code known as Grágás sentenced berserker warriors to outlawry. By the 12th century, organised berserker war-bands had disappeared entirely.
Scholar Hilda Ellis-Davidson noted a possible echo of berserker practice in the Byzantine court. The emperor Constantine VII, who lived from 905 to 959 AD, described in his book De cerimoniis aulae byzantinae a "Gothic Dance" performed by members of his Varangian Guard, Norse warriors serving the Byzantine Empire, who took part wearing animal skins and masks. Ellis-Davidson believed this may have been connected with berserker rites. The Lewis Chessmen, found on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, and thought to be of Norse manufacture, preserve a more static image of the tradition: among the chess pieces are berserkers depicted biting their shields, a detail that has outlasted the outlawing of the institution by several centuries.
Common questions
What does the word berserker mean in Old Norse?
The Old Norse word berserkr is a compound of ber and serkr. Most scholars interpret ber as meaning "bear," making berserkr mean roughly "bear-shirt." The 13th-century historian Snorri Sturluson proposed "bare" instead, suggesting warriors who fought without armour, but that interpretation has largely been abandoned for lack of supporting evidence.
When were berserkers outlawed in Iceland and Norway?
Berserkers were outlawed in Iceland in 1015. That same year, Jarl Eiríkr Hákonarson of Norway also outlawed them. The medieval Icelandic law code Grágás sentenced berserker warriors to outlawry, and by the 12th century organised berserker war-bands had disappeared entirely.
What was the earliest written reference to berserkers?
The earliest surviving reference to the term berserker is in the Haraldskvæði, a skaldic poem composed by Thórbiörn Hornklofi in the late 9th century in honor of King Harald Fairhair of Norway. The poem refers to them as wolf-skinned warriors who bear bloody shields and hack through enemy shields.
What caused berserker rage and how did it begin?
The sources describe berserkergang beginning with shivering, chattering of the teeth, and a chill in the body, followed by swelling and colour change in the face, then escalating into howling, shield-biting, and indiscriminate violence. Proposed causes include hallucinogenic mushrooms, large quantities of alcohol, a substance called butotens, self-induced hysteria, epilepsy, and mental illness. Seeds of black henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), whose symptoms resemble those of the berserker state, were found in a Viking grave near Fyrkat, Denmark in 1977.
What is the difference between berserkers and ulfheðnar?
Berserkers were associated with the bear cult and were said to shapeshift into bear form, while ulfheðnar were wolf warriors who wore wolf pelts over their chainmail in battle. Ulfheðnar appear in the Vatnsdæla saga, Haraldskvæði, and Grettis saga and are consistently described as the elite following of King Harald Fairhair. Direct references to ulfheðnar in the sources are scarcer than those to berserkers.
How did J. R. R. Tolkien use the berserker tradition in his writing?
J. R. R. Tolkien drew on Norse mythology in his Middle Earth tales, including The Hobbit, where the character Beorn is a berserker who can transfigure into a massive bear, dangerous to both friend and foe.
All sources
35 references cited across the entry
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- 13bookShape Changing in Old Norse SagasHilda R.E. Davidson — Rowman and Littlefield — 1978
- 14bookShapeshifting and BerserkgangStephan Grundy — Northwestern University Press — 1998
- 15webJöfurr
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- 20webBerserkir: a re-examination of the phenomenon in literature and lifeDale, Roderick Thomas Duncan — 10 December 2014
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- 23journalOn Going Berserk: A Neurochemical InquiryFabing, Howard D. — 1956
- 24bookThe HallucinogensA. Hoffer — Academic Press — 1967
- 25journalOn Going Berserk: A Neurochemical InquiryFabing Howard — Nov 1956
- 26bookFoul Play: the Dark Arts of Cheating in SportMike Rowbottom — Bloomsbury USA — 2013
- 27journalSagas of the Solanaceae: Speculative ethnobotanical perspectives on the Norse berserkersKarsten Fatur — 15 November 2019
- 28bookThe Viking way : religion and war in late Iron Age ScandinaviaPrice, Neil S. — Dept. of Archaeology and Ancient History — 2002
- 29bookThe Viking AchievementPeter G. Foote — London: Sidgewick & Jackson — 1970
- 30journalBerserks in History and LegendAnatoly Liberman — 1 January 2005
- 31bookWar and Violence in Ancient GreeceJ. Shay — Duckworth and the Classical Press of Wales — 2000
- 32bookAchilles in VietnamJonathan Shay — Scribner — 1994
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- 34bookThere and Back Again: J R R Tolkien and the Origins of The HobbitMark Atherton — Bloomsbury Publishing — 2012