WARRIORS

 Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about 

BERSERKERS AND OTHER SHAMANIC WARRIORS

The shamanism of the pre-Christian Norse and other Germanic peoples took several different forms. Among the most common of these forms, especially for men, was the attainment and use of an ecstatic battle-fury closely linked to a particular totem animal, usually a bear or a wolf, and often occurring within the context of certain formal, initiatory military groups.

During the Viking Age, these “warrior-shamans” typically fell into two groups: the berserkers (Old Norse berserkir, “bear-shirts”) and úlfheðnar (pronounced “oolv-HETH-nahr” with a hard “th” as in “the;” Old Norse for “wolf-hides”). These groups were a late development of the earlier Germanic warband,[1] and shared much in common with the warlike shamanism of other circumpolar peoples.

As far as we can tell today, the berserkers and úlfheðnar shared a common set of shamanic practices, with the only substantial difference being that the totem animal of the berserkers was, as the name implies, the bear, while that of the úlfheðnar was the wolf. These names are a reference to the practice of dressing in a ritual costume made from the hide of the totem animal, an outward reminder of the wearer’s having gone beyond the confines of his humanity and become a divine predator. It’s hard to imagine a grislier or more frightening thing to encounter on the late Iron Age battlefield.

One of the defining features of shamanic traditions across the world is an initiation process characterized by a symbolic (and occasionally literal) death and rebirth, whereby the shaman-to-be acquires his or her powers. Candidates for Germanic shamanic military societies underwent such a process before being admitted into the group: they spent a period in the wilderness, living like their totem animal and learning its ways, obtaining their sustenance through hunting, gathering, and raiding the nearest towns. 

To quote the esteemed archaeologist Dominique Briquel, “Rapto vivere, to live in the manner of wolves, is the beginning of this initiation. The bond with the savage world is indicated not only on the geographic plane – life beyond the limits of the civilized life of the towns… but also on what we would consider a moral plane: their existence is assured by the law of the jungle.” The candidate ceased to be an ordinary human being and became instead a wolf-man or a bear-man, more a part of the forest than of civilization.

Thenceforth, he had the ability to induce a state of possession by his kindred beast, acquiring its strength, fearlessness, and fury. We have only the haziest idea of the techniques used to reach this ecstatic trance state, but we know that fasting, exposure to extreme heat, and ceremonial “weapons dances” were among the shamanic toolkit of the ancient Germanic peoples. It’s extremely likely that warrior-shamans used these techniques, alongside numerous others that have been lost in the centuries of malign neglect that have passed since these were living traditions

And as always have a chilled day from the Viking