The history of mankind is full of legends and myths. Each era inscribes a new page in this dusty volume. Many of them have sunk into oblivion, never surviving to this day. There are legends over which centuries have no power.
Tales of warriors with superhuman abilities - immune to physical pain and unaware of the fear of death - are among this number. The mention of super-soldiers can be found in almost every nation. But the berserkers stand apart in this row - the heroes of the Scandinavian sagas and epics, whose very name has become a household name.
For several centuries, the Vikings have been the worst nightmare in Europe. When the snake-headed boats of brutal aliens appeared on the horizon, the population of the surrounding lands, seized with chilling horror, sought salvation in the forests. The scale of the devastating campaigns of the Normans is amazing even today, after almost a thousand years. In the east, they paved the famous path “from the Varangians to the Greeks”, gave rise to the princely dynasty of Rurikovich and for more than two centuries took an active part in the life of Kievan Rus and Byzantium. In the west, the Vikings, since the VIII century, having settled Iceland and the south of Greenland, kept the Irish and Scottish shores in constant fear. And from the IX century. moved the borders of their raids not only far south - to the Mediterranean Sea, but also deep into European lands, devastating London (787), Bordeaux (840), Paris (885) and Orleans (895) …
Red-bearded foreigners seized entire estates, sometimes not inferior in size to the possessions of many monarchs: in northwestern France they founded the duchy of Normandy, and in Italy - the Sicilian kingdom, from where they made campaigns to Palestine long before the crusaders. Terrorizing the population of European cities, the warlike Scandinavians were even honored to be mentioned in the prayers: "God, deliver us from the Normans!" But there were warriors among the northern barbarians, before whom the Vikings themselves experienced mystical awe. They knew perfectly well that getting caught up in the hot hand of a berserker fellow was like death, and therefore they always tried to stay away from these brothers in arms.
Warriors in the field with Odin
It is believed that for the first time berserkers are mentioned in the drape (long poem) of Torbjörn Hornklovy's skald, an ancient Norse literary monument. It is about the victory of King Harald Fair-haired, the founder of the Kingdom of Norway, in the battle of Havrsfjord, which took place presumably in 872. “Berserkers, dressed in bearskins, growled, shook their swords, bit in rage at the edge of their shield and rushed at their enemies. They were possessed and did not feel pain, even if the spear struck them. When the battle was won, the soldiers fell exhausted and plunged into a deep sleep - this is how an eyewitness and participant in those events described the entry into battle of the legendary warriors.
Who were these fighters? Berserkers or berserkers were called Vikings, who from an early age devoted themselves to serving Odin - the supreme Scandinavian deity, the lord of the wonderful palace of Valhalla, where, after death, the souls of warriors who heroically fell on the battlefield and deserved the favor of heaven were supposedly sent to an eternal feast.
Promotional video:
Before the battle, berserkers introduced themselves into a special kind of combat trance, due to which they were distinguished by tremendous strength, endurance, quick reaction, insensitivity to pain and increased aggressiveness. By the way, the etymology of the word "berserk" is still controversial in scientific circles. Most likely, it is formed from the Old Norse "berserkr, which translates either as" bear skin "or" shirtless "(the root ber can mean both" bear "and" naked ", and serkr -" skin "," shirt "). Proponents of the first interpretation point to a direct connection between the berserkers, who wore clothes made of bearskin, with the cult of this totem animal. "Holo-shirts" also emphasize the fact that berserkers went into battle without chain mail, naked to the waist.
Fragmentary information about berserkers can also be gleaned from "The Younger Edda" - a collection of Old Norse mythical legends, written by Snorri Sturluson. The Yngling Saga says the following: “Odin's men rushed into battle without chain mail, and raged like mad dogs or wolves. In anticipation of the fight from the impatience and rage that bubbled in them, they gnawed their shields and hands with their teeth until they bled. They were as strong as bears or bulls. They struck the enemy with an animal roar, and neither fire, nor iron did them harm … ". The ancient Scandinavian poet claimed that "One knew how to make his enemies blind or deaf in battle, or they were seized by fear, or their swords became no sharper than sticks."
The connection of berserkers with the cult of the main god of the Scandinavian pantheon has other confirmation. Even the translation of Odin's numerous names indicates his insane and furious nature: Wotan ("possessed"), Ygg ("terrible"), Herian ("militant"), Khnikar ("sower of strife"), Belverk ("villain"). To match their heavenly patron were the nicknames of berserkers who gave the "lord of wrath" a vow of fearlessness. For example, Harold the Merciless, who got into battle earlier than others, or the Norman leader John defeated in 1171 near Dublin, who had the nickname Wode, that is, "Madman".
Berserkers were not accidentally a privileged part of the military class, a kind of "special forces" of the Vikings. And it was not spontaneous riot or sacrificial extravagance on the lists that made them so. They just always opened the battle, conducting a demonstration, and in most cases a victorious duel in full view of the entire army. In one of the chapters of “Germany,” the ancient Roman writer Tacitus wrote about berserkers: “As soon as they reached adulthood, they were allowed to grow their hair and beards, and only after killing the first enemy they could style them … Cowards and others walked with their hair loose. In addition, the bravest wore an iron ring, and only the death of the enemy freed them from wearing it. Their task was to anticipate every battle; they always formed the front line."
A detachment of berserkers made enemies tremble with one look. Storming cities as a fighting vanguard, they left behind only mountains of corpses of defeated enemies. Well-armed, armored infantry followed behind the berserkers, completing the rout. If you believe the literary monuments, then the Old Norse kings often used berserkers as personal protection, which once again confirms their military elitism. In one of the sagas, it is said that the Danish king Hrolf Krake had 12 berserkers in bodyguards at once.
“Berserk is a mechanism exploded by fierce passion, adrenaline, ideological attitude, breathing techniques, sound-vibration vibrations and a mechanical program of action. He does not fight for something, but only to win. The berserker doesn't have to prove that he will survive. He is obliged to recoup his life many times over. Berserker not only goes to die, he goes to get furious pleasure from this process. By the way, this is why he most often remains alive."
There is ecstasy in battle …
Every single piece of evidence portrays the berserkers as ferocious fighters who fought with wild, downright magical passion. So what is the secret of berserkers' rage, as well as their insensitivity to injury and pain: was it the result of drug intoxication, hereditary disease, or special psychophysical training?
Currently, there are several versions explaining this phenomenon. The first is obsession with the "animal spirit." Ethnographers confirm that something similar was noted among many peoples. At the moments when the “spirit” takes possession of a person, he does not feel either pain or fatigue. But only this state ends, as the possessed one falls asleep almost instantly, as if he is turned off. In general, shape-shifting as a military practice was widespread in Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Traces of "transformation into an animal", of course, not literally, but in a ritual and psychobehavioral sense, can be found in modern military vocabulary and heraldic symbols. The custom of assigning the names of predatory animals to special forces in order to emphasize their elitism also originates in the deep past. The ancient Germans imitated the beast, he played the role of a mentor during initiation, when a young man, joining the ranks of adult warriors, demonstrated his combat skills, agility, courage and bravery. The victory of man over the totem animal, who was considered the ancestor and patron of this tribe, meant the transfer of the most valuable animal qualities to the warrior.
It was believed that in the end the beast did not die, but was embodied in the hero who defeated him. Modern psychology has long ago identified the mechanisms by which a person "gets used" into the image of the creature whose role he is playing at the moment. Berserkers who growled and put on bear skins seemed to actually become bears. Of course, the animal masquerade was by no means the know-how of the Normans. The famous Munich ethnologist Professor Hans-Joachim Paprot is sure that the bear cult appeared much earlier and was more widespread. “Already in the drawings of the Stone Age, for example in the Trois-Frerets cave in southern France, we find images of dancers in bearskin skins.
And the Swedish and Norwegian Laplanders celebrated the annual bear holiday until the last century,”says the scientist. Austrian Germanist Professor Otto Höfler believes that there was a deep meaning in the animal dressing. “It was understood as a transformation not only by the audience, but also by the person changing clothes. If a dancer or warrior put on a bearskin, then the power of a wild animal, of course, in a figurative sense, passed into him. He acted and felt like a bear. Echoes of this cult can still be seen today, for example in the bearskin hats of the British Royal Guards guarding the Tower of London,”he says. And in Danish folklore, there is still a belief that anyone who puts on an iron collar can turn into a werewolf bear.
Modern science knows that the human nervous system can produce substances that are close to drugs in composition and action. They act directly on the "pleasure centers" of the brain. It can be assumed that the berserkers were, as it were, hostages of their own rage. They were forced to look for dangerous situations that would allow them to engage in combat, or even provoke them altogether. One of the Scandinavian sagas speaks of a man who had 12 sons. All of them were berserkers: "It became a custom for them, being among their own people and feeling a fit of rage, to go from the ship to the shore and throw large stones there, uproot trees, otherwise, in their rage, they would cripple or kill relatives and friends." The phrase "there is rapture in battle" took on a literal meaning. Later, the Vikings for the most part still managed to control such attacks. Sometimes they even entered a state that in the East is called "enlightened consciousness." Those who mastered this art became truly phenomenal warriors.
Fly agaric madness
Other attempts have been made to explain the inhuman rage of the berserkers. In 1784 S. Edman, referring to the customs of some East Siberian tribes, suggested that the berserkers were also intoxicating themselves with an infusion of fly agarics. The peoples of the Far North - the Tungus, Lamuts or Kamchadals - until recently, in the practice of rituals (fortune-telling), used powder from dried fly agarics, licking which from the palm, shamans fell into a trance. The behavior of berserkers in battle really resembles the state of intoxication with muscarin - fly agaric poison: intoxication, outbursts of rage, insensitivity to pain and cold, and then incredible fatigue and deep sleep, about which they wrote that "the Vikings fall to the ground from fatigue, not from wounds." …
It was this picture that was dispassionately recorded by the saga of the battle near the Norwegian city of Stavanger in 872, when after the victory the berserkers fell ashore and slept dead for more than a day. The action of muscarine, like any other hallucinogen, is based on a change in the speed of impulses of nerve endings, which causes a feeling of euphoria. And an excessive dose of it can be fatal. But something else is interesting here: the condition caused by poison in one individual soon spreads to everyone around him. Some historians believe that berserkers knew about this technique, and therefore fly agaric doping was used only by the leaders of the squads or the Chosen. However, there is still no reliable evidence of the "mushroom" theory. Some ethnographers still assume that berserkers belonged to certain sacred unions or families,in which knowledge about the mysterious properties of plants was passed down from generation to generation. But in the Old Norse sagas, there is no mention of psychotropic drugs at all. Therefore, a discussion on the topic of "berserkers and fly agarics" is a waste of time, no matter how attractive this version may seem.
Now about one more semi-mythical property of berserkers - invulnerability. Various sources unanimously claim that the warrior-beast could not actually be killed in battle. A kind of "wisdom of madness" protected the berserkers from throwing and impact weapons. Disinhibited consciousness included extreme responsiveness, sharpened peripheral vision, and probably provided some psychic skills. The berserker saw, or even predicted any blow, managing to repulse it or bounce off the line of attack. The belief in the invulnerability of berserkers survived the heroic age and was reflected in Scandinavian folklore. Berserkers XI and XII centuries skillfully used the image inherited from their ancestors. And they themselves, to the best of their strength and capabilities, modified their image. For example, in every possible way, stirring up rumors that they can dull any sword at a glance. Sagas,with their love for everything supernatural, they easily absorbed such colorful details.
Doctors have also done their best to unravel the mysteries of the frantic warriors. “The legendary power of the berserkers had nothing to do with spirits, drugs, or magical rituals, but was just an inherited disease,” says Professor Jesse L. Baiock. They are ordinary psychopaths who lose control of themselves at the slightest attempt to contradict them. Over time, the berserkers learned to act out a well-rehearsed performance, one of the elements of which was biting the shield. It is well known that the exhaustion that occurs after a fit of rage is characteristic of people with mental disabilities. Tantrums easily cross the line separating pretense from reality, and the learned technique becomes a symptom of a real illness. Moreover, the psychoses that engulfed medieval society were often epidemic in nature:Suffice it to recall the dance of St. Vitus or the movement of the flagellants.
As a vivid example Jesse L. Bayok cites an unbridled, cruel and greedy Viking, and also the famous Icelandic poet Egil, who lived in the 10th century. So, if you believe the "Saga of Egil", he possessed all the features of a berserker who took over his wild temper from his ancestors. Moreover, his head was so massive that it could not be split with an ax even after death. Analysis of the text of the Old Norse literary monument also allowed Bayok to conclude that Egil's family suffered from Paget's syndrome, a hereditary disease in which uncontrolled bone enlargement occurs.
Human bones renew themselves gradually and usually takes 8 years. However, the disease increases the rate of destruction and neoplasm of bones so much that they become much larger and uglier than before. The effects of Paget's syndrome on the head are especially noticeable, where the bones become thicker. According to statistics in England today, 3 to 5 percent of men over 40 are susceptible to this ailment. It is very difficult to confirm or refute the exotic hypothesis due to the historical remoteness.
Heroes or villains?
Since childhood, we have learned the immutable law of fairy tales and myths: all characters acting in them are divided into "good" and "bad". There are no halftones here, with rare exceptions - this is the specificity of the genre. What category can berserkers fall into?
As strange as it may sound, the frantic warriors were most likely antiheroes for their contemporaries. If in the early sagas berserkers were portrayed as elite warriors, bodyguards of the king, then in later ancestral legends they are marauders and rapists. In The Circle of the Earth, a collection of stories compiled by Snorri Sturluson in the 13th century, there are many similar accounts. Most of the episodes are stereotyped in content and composition. Shortly before Christmas, someone of enormous stature and endowed with extraordinary strength, often accompanied by eleven people, arrives at the farm as an intruder with the intention of taking away everything of value and forcing the women to cohabit. If the farmer is at home, he is either sick or weak and cannot fight back the villains. But more often he is located many miles from home, in a distant province of Norway.
The leader of the aliens is a berserker, ready to prove in a duel his right to dispose of someone else's economy. There are no people willing to fight a strong man who has become skilled in such fights (and all his previous opponents are dead). But just at this time, a courageous Icelander accidentally turns out to be on the farm, who either accepts the challenge or defeats the scoundrels with cunning. The result is always the same: the berserkers are killed, including those who hoped to flee. When the troubles are over, the owner returns and generously gives the savior, and he composes in memory of what happened to the visu - a scaldic poem of eight lines - thanks to which his feat becomes widely known.
It is quite natural that for such "actions" berserkers, to put it mildly, were disliked. Reliable historical evidence has been preserved that in 1012 Jarl Eirik Hakonarson declared berserkers outlawed on the territory of Norway, and they apparently began to seek their fortune in other lands, including Iceland. Most likely, the berserk marauders are gangs of homeless, out-of-work warriors. They were born to fight: they were superb with weapons, psychologically prepared, they knew how to intimidate the enemy with growls, aggressive behavior and protect themselves from chopping blows with a dense bearskin. But when the berserkers were no longer needed, they suffered the fate of any forgotten army - moral degradation.
The end of the era of Norman campaigns, Christianization and the formation of early feudal statehood in the Scandinavian lands led in the end to a complete rethinking of the image of the berserker. Already from the XI century. this word takes on an extremely negative connotation. Moreover, under the influence of the church, berserkers are credited with pronounced demonic nerves. In The Saga of Watisdole, it is said that in connection with the arrival of Bishop Fried River in Iceland, war was declared there to the “possessed”. Their description is given in a completely traditional spirit: berserkers create violence and arbitrariness, their anger knows no bounds, they bark and growl, biting into the edge of their shield, walk on hot coals with bare feet and do not even try to control their behavior. On the advice of a newly arrived clergyman, those possessed by evil spirits were scared off with fire, beaten to death with wooden stakes, for it was believedthat "the iron does not bite the berserkers," and the bodies were thrown into the ravine without burial.
Other texts noted that the baptized berserker would forever lose the ability to reincarnate. Persecuted and persecuted from all sides, who turned out to be dangerous outcasts and criminals in the new social conditions, accustomed to living only by raids and robbery, berserkers became a real disaster. They broke into settlements, killed local residents, ambushed travelers. And the law of ancient Scandinavia put the bloodthirsty madmen outlawed, making it a duty for every inhabitant to destroy berserkers. A law of 1123 issued in Iceland read: "A berserker who is seen in a rage will be punished by 3 years of exile." Since then, the warriors in bear skins have disappeared without a trace, and with them the gray-haired pagan antiquity has sunk into oblivion.
No one knows where and when the last berserker died: history jealously guards this secret. Today, only heroic legends and mossy runestones scattered along the slopes of the Scandinavian hills remind of the former glory of the furious Vikings …
Author: R. Shkurlatov
Source: “Interesting newspaper. The world of the unknown №18 2012
