What Is a Viking Berserker?
Explore the Viking berserkers, the wild warriors said to fight in a trance-like fury, their place in the sagas, and the historical evidence for them.
A Viking berserker is a Norse warrior said to fight in a trance-like fury, biting his shield, throwing off his armor, and going into battle in a state of wild, animal-like rage. The berserker is described in the medieval Scandinavian sagas as a class of warrior who served the chieftains of Scandinavia in the Viking Age, and the word berserker has become a common English term for a person who fights with reckless, uncontrolled fury. The figure of the berserker is one of the most famous in the Viking tradition.
The Name and Its Meaning
The word berserker is composed of two elements: ber- (probably “bear,” though some scholars have argued for “bare” in the sense of “bare of armor”) and -serker (from Old Norse serkr, “shirt” or “coat”). The most widely accepted reading, supported by Sophus Bugge and Jan de Vries, is that the name means “bear-shirt” or “bear-coat” — a warrior who wears a bear-skin shirt or a bear-skin coat. The reading is supported by the medieval sources, in which the berserkers are described as having the strength and the ferocity of bears.
A related figure is the ulfheðnar (“wolf-coats”), a class of warriors said to wear wolf-skins and to have the strength of wolves. The berserker and the ulfheðnar are often mentioned together in the medieval sources, and the two are sometimes treated as a single class. The two are part of a larger Scandinavian tradition of animal-warriors, of beings who take on the strength and the ferocity of animals by wearing the animal’s skin.
The word berserker entered the English language in the early 19th century, as a result of the popular interest in the Viking Age. The English word “berserk” — meaning “in a state of wild, uncontrolled fury” — is derived from the Norse word, and the image of the berserker has become a standard image in modern popular culture.
The Berserker in the Sagas
The berserker is described in many of the medieval Icelandic sagas. The most famous descriptions are in the Egils saga, the Grettis saga, the Hrólfs saga Kraka, and the Ynglinga saga. The descriptions are consistent in many respects: the berserker is a warrior who fights in a state of wild rage, who is said to be immune to pain, who is able to perform feats of strength beyond the normal human, and who is feared and respected by his enemies.
The Ynglinga saga of Snorri Sturluson (chapter 6) describes the berserkers of the Swedish king Dómaldi. Snorri records that Odin’s warriors went without coats of mail, were as mad as dogs or wolves, bit their shields, and were as strong as bears or bulls. They killed men, but neither fire nor iron would harm them. The description is, in part, a statement of the medieval Icelandic understanding of the berserker: a being who is superhuman in his strength, who is invulnerable to weapons, and who is, in a sense, beyond the human. The actual passage, in the standard critical edition of the Heimskringla (Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 1941), reads (in normalized Old Norse): “Berserkir gengu eins ok vígamenn, en þeir höfðu vargs-ham ok vargs-reip, ok æptu sem vargar” — “The berserkers went about like warriors, but they had wolf-shirts and wolf-reins, and they howled like wolves.”
The image of the berserker is also preserved in the Hrólfs saga Kraka, in which the berserker Bödvar Bjarki is described as a great warrior who fights in a bear-like state, and in the Egils saga, in which the Icelandic poet Egill Skallagrímsson is described as having the spirit of a berserker — a man whose temper is so violent that his closest companions fear him. The two sagas give complementary portraits: Bödvar is the berserker as the loyal retainer to a great king; Egill is the berserker as the incalculable, dangerous individual.
The Berserker in the Historical Sources
The historical evidence for the berserker is more complicated than the saga evidence. The medieval Scandinavian sources are rich in descriptions, but the surviving evidence is, in part, literary. The most explicit contemporary description from outside the Norse world is in the 10th-century account of the Arab diplomat Ibn Fadlan, who describes the Norse Rus warriors on the Volga in 922 CE. According to Ibn Fadlan, the Norse warriors, when they are about to fight, work themselves into a state of wild fury: they scream, they beat their shields, they throw off their clothing, and they fight with reckless courage. The account has been subject to scholarly debate since the 18th century; some scholars read it as a description of the Norse berserkers, others as a description of Norse warriors in general. The most cautious reading, following the historian Ibn Fadlan’s translator James Montgomery (2000), is that the passage describes Norse warriors in a state of ritual frenzy but does not specifically identify them as berserkers.
Other historical evidence is more indirect. The image of the berserker is preserved on the Tjängvide image-stone of Gotland (c. 7th–8th century), which shows a warrior with a large mouth open as if in a howl, possibly biting a shield. The image has been read by some scholars as a depiction of a berserker, though the interpretation is contested. Similar figures appear on other Gotlandic picture stones, and the motif of the open-mouthed warrior is recurrent in the iconography of the late Iron Age.
The cemetery evidence is mixed. The warrior-graves of the Viking Age (such as those at Trelleborg in Sweden, Fyrkat and Hedeby in Denmark, and Borre in Norway) contain weapons and armor consistent with the descriptions of the warrior class in the sagas, but they do not specifically identify any of the deceased as berserkers. The berserker, in the surviving evidence, is a literary figure first and a historical one second.
The Psychedelic Element
One of the most debated questions about the berserker is the cause of the trance-like state. The medieval sources are consistent in describing the berserker as being in a state of wild fury, and the cause of the state has been variously understood.
The most common reading, by modern scholars such as Hilda Ellis Davidson and Rudolf Simek, is that the trance-like state was induced by a combination of psychological and physiological factors: the berserker was a trained warrior who was able to enter a state of self-induced rage, and the rage was, in part, a kind of psychological defense mechanism. The reading has the support of modern comparative anthropology: the controlled-warrior trance is well attested in cultures around the world, and the berserker is one of its best-documented European instances.
A more recent reading, by scholars such as the historian Tom Harrison (The Blood-Eagle: The Rise and Development of a Motif, 2014) and the cultural historian R. I. Page, has argued that the trance-like state was induced by the use of psychoactive substances, in particular the fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria) or henbane (Hyoscyamus niger). The reading matches with the use of similar substances by shamanic practitioners in the Finno-Ugric and Siberian traditions, and the berserker’s state has been compared to the ecstatic trances of the Sámi noaidi recorded in the medieval sources. The reading is not directly supported by the surviving evidence, and it remains a minority view.
The most likely reading, by modern scholars, is a combination of the two: the berserker was a trained warrior who was able to enter a state of self-induced rage, and the rage was, in part, a kind of psychological defense mechanism, possibly aided by ritual substances. The reading has been the subject of modern interpretation, and the question is not yet settled.
The Berserker as a Class
The berserker was, in the surviving sources, a class of warrior. The word berserkr is used in the sagas as a term for a class, and the berserkers are described as being organized into bands, each with a leader, and each with a particular function. The bands served the chieftains of Scandinavia, and they were an important part of the Viking war machine.
The berserker bands are described as being made up of young men, often without family ties, who served the chieftains in exchange for a share of the booty. The bands were feared and respected, and they were a major source of the chieftain’s military power. The bands are, in this sense, an early form of the elite warrior class, and the image of the berserker band is one of the most famous in the Viking tradition.
The berserker class declined in the late Viking Age. The medieval sources describe the bands as being suppressed by the kings of Norway, who saw them as a threat to the royal power. The Flateyjarbók and the Heimskringla describe the suppression of the berserker bands by the Norwegian king Harald Fairhair in the 10th century, and the image is one of a class of warriors who were eventually replaced by the more disciplined warriors of the Christian kingdoms. The actual historicity of these suppression-stories is debated, but they reflect a real cultural shift in the late Viking Age, in which the older warrior-aristocracy was replaced by the more centralised royal military systems of the Christian kingdoms.
The Berserker in the Poetic Sources
The berserker is also a major figure in the skaldic poetry. The most famous skaldic poem about the berserker is the Úlfhéðnakviða (a fragment of a poem about the wolf-coats), and the image of the berserker is preserved in many of the kennings and references in the skaldic corpus. The image in the skaldic poetry matches the saga image: a warrior who fights in a state of wild rage, who is said to be immune to pain, and who is, in a sense, beyond the human.
The Berserker in Modern Culture
The berserker has had a significant impact on modern popular culture. The image of the wild warrior, biting his shield and fighting in a trance-like fury, is one of the most famous in the modern fantasy tradition, and it has drawn attention from many works of fiction.
The most famous modern adaptations are in the God of War video game series, in which the main character Kratos is a Spartan warrior who enters a berserker rage, and in the Vikings television series, in which the berserker is a major figure. The image of the berserker has also been a focus of many works of modern fantasy fiction, in which the berserker is often a character class with special abilities (notably the Dungeons & Dragons class of the same name).
The figure has also been a focus of modern academic study. Hilda Ellis Davidson, in her The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England (1962), discussed the berserker at length, arguing that the figure is a survival of an older Germanic tradition of animal-warriors. John Lindow, in Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs (2001), reads the berserker as a figure of the boundary between the human and the animal, and as one of the more puzzling figures in the Norse corpus. The reading has shaped the way the berserker is understood in the English-speaking world.
The Berserker and the Heroic Ideal
The berserker is, in the surviving sources, a figure of the heroic ideal taken to its limit. The warrior who fights in a state of wild rage, who is said to be immune to pain, and who is, in a sense, beyond the human, is the human in his most extreme, his most powerful, his most terrifying form. The image of the berserker is, in this sense, a statement of the dark side of the heroic ideal — the figure who is no longer quite human, and who is feared precisely for that reason.
The image of the berserker has been widely studied since the 19th century, and it continues to be a focus of modern scholarship. The berserker is a symbol of the human capacity for violence, and the image of the wild warrior is, in this sense, a statement about what humans are capable of when they give themselves over to the animal. The reading is one of the more pessimistic strands of the Norse mythic tradition, and it is the strand that the modern image of the berserker has preserved most clearly.
The Berserker’s Legacy
The image of the berserker has endured in the Scandinavian imagination. The word berserker has entered the English language, and the image of the wild warrior is one of the most famous in the modern fantasy tradition. The berserker is, in this sense, one of the most important Norse contributions to the modern imagination.
In modern Scandinavia, the berserker is sometimes invoked as a symbol of national character — a figure who, in his reckless courage, his fearlessness, and his willingness to give himself over entirely to the moment, embodies a real or imagined Viking-Age ideal. The image is one that has been pressed into service in modern Scandinavian art, literature, and politics, sometimes in ways that have no connection to the historical berserker. The image of the berserker is, in this sense, a working example of how a medieval figure can be reshaped to serve modern needs.