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.

Etymology

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.

Early beginnings

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.

Germanic mercenaries in the Roman army

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.