hello I'm al Dora specialist dr. Jackson
Crawford of all the words that modern
English is borrowed from Old Norse the
most obviously Old Norse and spirit is
berserk this word which in Old Norse is
singular better Seneca
plural better circular is a compound of
two elements and the second element is
pretty clearly set occur shirt but the
first element has caused some debate
this could be the word bare as in be ar
e naked implying that the better sector
is someone who fights shirtless or the
better could be from the same root as
English bear this could be the bear
shirt as in be e AR shirt like men who
fight with shirts made of bare skin or
with the strength of bears or something
of that that nature the normal word for
bear in Old Norse is bjur which is
actually formed from that root bear by a
process called breaking in Old Norse
where an e turns into a J a or j-hook o
because of the influence of Val that
used to be and the unstressed syllable
behind it now the question of whether it
might be bear shirt or bear shirt naked
shirt or or animal shirt
notice how interesting it is that that
this language is closely enough related
to English that what's a homonym in
English bear and bear are also
potentially homonyms and ignores the
this debate about whether it's it's
naked or an animal might lean a little
bit in my mind toward animal simply
because the the synonym of better sit
occur that's presented in some sagas is
wolf heaven they means wolf shirt for
instance in Vuitton's Lasogga the song
the people of our install we read they
repair servcie
and old heaven are for Ocala their their
hope too vark soccer theater bring your
what Laura do from starvin or calling
skipping those berserkers which were
called wolf head near wolf shirts they
had wolf cloaks over their armor and
they defended the bow the front end of
the Kings ship but a bare circular is
not
a positive figure in the Norse Sagas
this is not a hero the better secular is
almost always a villain that will be
fought by our hero more often than not
the hero of the saga will encounter a
better sucker who is identified as some
kind of vaguely foreigner well like
lightly foreign like he'll be a Swede in
Norway or a Norwegian in Iceland who
wanders around the country challenging
men for their wives or sisters or
daughters he all challenged them to a
duel the man will not want to to show
cowardice by not accepting the duel so
we will fight the better sector but the
better sector will win
most often the bare second wins because
he has particular immunities
he is impervious to fire and iron thanks
to Odin Snorri and his english Agha
tells us this about bear second huntsman
for Oberyn you loser or poor girl near
san juan de la verga v2 is called escena
boris turkey sambira near at a great
angle there drop Aman forged an elder in
a yarn or Theo for thought birkhäuser
better self conquer his men Odin's men
went without armor and they were as
craziest dogs or wolves they bit their
shields and they were strong as bears or
Bulls the killed men and neither iron
nor fire affected them this is called
going berserk and in many sagas where a
hero fights a berserker we do see that
he has to deal with the fact that the
Berserker is impervious to iron and or
steel for instance in Eagle saga one of
the most memorable the sagas of the ice
endures Eagle has to fight a berserk who
is impervious to steel angle finally
solves this by throwing a sword down
jumping on the guy and biting his throat
out
so Eagles pretty berserk himself from
our perspective
berserkers often travel in groups of 12
for instance in the saga of heroine
Heydrich on a scene that's also in the
saga of arrow odd on gun tear and his 11
brothers are berserkers who fights the
heroes Shalimar and odd in a great
battle
after which onion tear and his brothers
are killed but onion tear has already
arranged with his enemies that they will
bury him after the battle with his sword
they're not gonna steal a sword and his
daughter head of water later comes and
takes the sword from her zombie berserk
father it's a it's a memorable scene and
saga of heroine heydrich and that's
probably about the most positive that
any preserve ever is in willing his
sword to his daughter who actually is a
positive heroine there are also in the
sagas that deal with the conversion of
Scandinavia to Christianity berserks are
often inimical to Christianity so for
instance in the story of the conversion
of Iceland to Christianity there are
various stories about berserks who were
terrorizing the countryside or were
immune to fire but a Christian
missionary proves that the Christian God
is more powerful than the pagan God by
blessing a fire in the name of Christ
and that fire does actually harm the
berserks so there's some Christian
missionary zeal that also gets attached
to the negativity of the berserk as a
figure but men continued to be called
preserves actually into the Christian
period so even in the contemporary sagas
written in Iceland and the twelve
hundreds about the twelve hundred
occasionally someone will be called to
berserk many people ask about whether
the berserker rage might have been
motivated induced by some kind of
mushroom that is strictly possible but
it's not actually said in any Old Norse
source so I'm very hesitant to say that
that's actually the case people can be
violent and go crazy in the fog of war
whether or not they're taking drugs so I
don't see a reason to assume that
mushrooms were behind this without some
direct evidence that they were and I
should also mention that one fascinating
aspect of how negative the berserker is
viewed is that many scandinavian law
codes including Kuroko's the earliest
eye sight o'clock oh this preserve
outlaw being a preserve now I'm not sure
exactly how you diagnose somebody with
berserk Ness but it's interesting to
note that it is viewed negatively enough
to be something that is punishable
by law at least in these early Christian
law codes well for now from beautiful
Colorado I'm wishing you all the best