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Berserkers and other shamanistic warriors

#1
Magical Realist Offline
"On the battlefield, the berserker or úlfheðinn would often enter the fray naked but for his animal mask and pelts, howling, roaring, and running amok with godly or demonic courage. As the Ynglinga Saga puts it,

"Odin’s men [berserkers and úlfheðnar] went armor-less into battle and were as crazed as dogs or wolves and as strong as bears or bulls. They bit their shields and slew men, while they themselves were harmed by neither fire nor iron. This is called “going berserk.”

In the biting or casting away of their shields, we see a reminder that their ultimate identity is no longer their social persona, but rather their “unity with the animal world” that they have achieved through “self-dehumanization.”[8] A warrior’s shield and weapons were the very emblems of his social persona and status; they were given to a young man who had come of age by his father or closest male relative to mark his newfound arrival into the sphere of the rights and responsibilities of his society’s adult men.[9] In biting or discarding the shield, the mythical beast triumphed over the petty man, and “Odin’s men” tore through the battle, psychologically impervious to pain by virtue of their predatory trance.[10]

Like other northern Eurasian shamans, Germanic warrior-shamans are occasionally depicted with “spirit-wives,” in this case from among the valkyries, the female attendant spirits of Odin...."====http://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-crea...-warriors/


[Image: Viking-Berserkers-wolf.jpg]
[Image: Viking-Berserkers-wolf.jpg]

#2
stryder Offline
In this day an age "Berserkers" are classed as suffering from psychosis and likely looked down upon in regards to society. At least in the Viking age they had a form of reverence, something that society found a use for someone that might otherwise have been left to the wilds or slain by their own family at a young age.

It's even been suggested that genetically the "Warrior Gene" is the genetic path that links people with certain anti-social conduct and such past warrior castes.


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