Berserkers

The best-known description of berserkers comes from Snorri Sturluson, who opens Heimskringla with Ynglinga saga, which tells Odin's story as that of a human king. In chapter 6 he lists Odin's powers. In battle Odin could make his enemies blind, deaf or terrified, so that their weapons bit no better than sticks, while his own men went without mail and were as mad as dogs or wolves. They bit their shields, were as strong as bears or bulls, and neither fire nor iron harmed them. 'That is called berserksgangr,' Snorri says, the berserk's frenzy. He wrote around 1230, long after the Viking Age, and presents the frenzy as one of Odin's arts.
The word is probably older than Snorri. Haraldskvæði, also called Hrafnsmál, is a poem ascribed to Þorbjörn hornklofi, a poet of King Harald Fairhair, in which a valkyrie questions a raven; Fagrskinna credits its Hafrsfjord stanzas to another poet, Þjóðólfr of Hvinir. In its account of Harald's sea battle at Hafrsfjord the berserkir bellow, and the úlfheðnar, the 'wolf-coats', howl and make their iron ring. Later the valkyrie asks about the berserkers, and the raven answers that they are called úlfheðnar and carry bloody shields into battle. The poem survives only as stanzas quoted in later prose, chiefly the 13th-century histories Fagrskinna and Heimskringla; the raven's answer about the berserkers is quoted in Fagrskinna. Vatnsdæla saga (ch. 9) puts the same men at Hafrsfjord: the berserkers who were called úlfheðnar wore wolf-skin coats instead of mail and guarded the prow of the king's ship. Egils saga (ch. 9) gives Harald twelve berserkers in the forepart of his ship in that battle, and says that afterwards only the men iron did not bite, the berserkers, were unwounded before the mast.
In the Icelandic sagas the berserker is more often a problem than a hero. Egils saga says Egill's grandfather Úlfr grew surly every evening, that people thought him hamrammr, 'shape-strong', and that he was called Kveld-Úlfr, 'Evening-Wolf' (ch. 1). The saga adds that men in that state, or in berserksgangr, were stronger than anyone while it lasted and weaker than usual when it left them (ch. 27). Later Egill kills Ljótr the Pale, a berserker who howls and bites his shield as the frenzy comes over him before a duel (ch. 64). In Eyrbyggja saga the Swedish brothers Halli and Leiknir, who went berserk, pass from King Eiríkr of Sweden to Earl Hákon and on to Iceland (ch. 25); when Halli asks for Styrr's daughter, Styrr sets him to clear a path across a lava field, then traps both brothers in an overheated bath-house and kills them as they break out (ch. 28). In Vatnsdæla saga two berserkers named Haukr wade through fires blessed by a bishop and are beaten to death (ch. 46).
Icelandic law dealt with the frenzy too. The Christian laws section of Grágás, which the text says Bishops Ketill and Þorlákr set down on the advice of Archbishop Össurr and Sæmundr (between 1122 and 1133, when both were bishops), punishes going berserk with lesser outlawry, and the same penalty falls on the men present unless they restrain him. Grettis saga (ch. 19) says Earl Eiríkr Hákonarson abolished duels in Norway and outlawed robbers and berserkers who made trouble. In Hárbarðsljóð (st. 37) Thor boasts of fighting 'the brides of berserkers' on Hlésey. Older than any text are four bronze dies for helmet plates found in 1870 at Torslunda on Öland, dated to the 6th or 7th century. One shows a figure in a full wolf's skin drawing a sword beside a dancing man in a horned helmet. Calling him an early úlfheðinn is a modern interpretation; the plate has no inscription.