Who Were the Berserkers

The word itself is interpreted in two ways: either "bear shirt," meaning a warrior in an animal hide, or "bare shirt," meaning someone who went into battle without armor. Both versions are still debated by scholars.

The texts describe them in the same way: howling, trembling, and feeling no pain from their wounds, followed by complete exhaustion after the battle. They also mention the ulfhednar, or "wolf skins," who behaved the same way.

There is another side to their reputation. In the sagas, a berserker is often not a hero but a threat: he extorts people, causes trouble on someone else's farm, and dies at the hands of the main character. By the end of the era, they had been outlawed.

Caution is also needed because the sagas were written more than 200 years after the events they describe. This is literature working with an image of the past, not an eyewitness account.

Archaeology helps little. Animal hides do not survive, and images of warriors in wolf and bear cloaks allow different readings, from a real group to a symbol that made sense to viewers at the time.

What we can see clearly, though, is how the image outlived the people who carried it. The word "berserker" entered several languages as a term for uncontrollable rage, then resurfaced in games and films with no connection to the original texts.