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Berserkers

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Added by: Culwych1

Read more about Berserkers at: Wikipedia

Official Site: Public Domain

In the Old Norse written corpus, berserkers were those who were said to have fought in a trance-like fury, a characteristic which later gave rise to the modern English word berserk (meaning "furiously violent or out of control"). Berserkers are attested to in numerous Old Norse sources.

The Old Norse form of the word was (plural ). It likely means "bear-shirt" (compare the Middle English word serk, meaning shirt), "someone who wears a coat made out of a bear's skin". Thirteenth-century historian Snorri Sturluson 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.

It is proposed by some authors that the northern warrior tradition originated from hunting magic. Three main animal cult appeared: the bear, the wolf, and the wild boar.

The bas relief carvings on Trajan's column in Rome 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. Scene 36 on the column shows some of these warriors standing together, with some wearing bearhoods and some wearing wolfhoods. Nowhere else in history are Germanic bear-warriors and wolf-warriors fighting together recorded until 872 AD with Thórbiörn Hornklofi's description of the battle of Hafrsfjord when they fought together for King Harald Fairhair of Norway.

Berserkers has not been a contender in any CBUB matches.