Berserk S

Berserks: A History of Indo-European "Mad Warriors"
Author(s): Michael P. Speidel

Source: Journal of World History, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Fall, 2002), pp. 253-290
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
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Berserks: A History of
"Mad Warriors'71
Indo-European
MICHAEL
University
P- SPEIDEL
of Hawai1
i at Manoa
mad warriors
and death?
scorning wounds
warrior
the
berserk
of
reckless
attack.
the
spirit
Though
embody
Berserks?blustering,
tradition spans some three thousand years, its history has yet to be writ
ten. The following gives an outline ofthat history in five parts. The first
part deals with the earliest known berserks at the end of the bronze age.
traces berserks through the bronze, iron, and middle
ages.
and the fourth probes for
third part describes
the berserk mind,
patterns when berserks appear as attack troops alongside
disciplined
forces. The
last, more tentative
part looks at structures and functions
of mad warrior styles worldwide
berserks
by comparing
Indo-European
with other similar warriors,
such as Aztec
quachics and India's amoks.
The new sources brought
forward here widen
the geographical
The
second
The
to include Mesopotamia.
range of the berserk tradition
They add sev
to the time span during which
berserks are now docu
eral centuries
of early warriors and their
mented
and shed light upon the mentality
into battle. Berserk warriordom
frenzies as they forged fearlessly
thus
cross-cultural
that lends color
emerges as a long-lived,
phenomenon
to the early millennia
of recorded history.
in the Ynglinga saga, written
Snorri Sturlusson
shortly after a.D.
as
mad fighters without
i220, defines berserks
body armor:2 "Woden's
men went without
hauberks
and raged like dogs or wolves. They bit
their shields and were strong like bears or bulls. They killed men, but
and coherence
1 Iwish
to thank my colleagues Margot Henriksen

and Idus Newby
for their kind help
this article.
2 Snorri
"Zum Namen Wolf
Sturlusson,
Heimskringla,
Ynglinga saga 6. Gunter M?ller,
hetan und seinen Verwandten,"
Studien i, 1967, 207f.
Fr?hmittelalterliche
with
Journal ofWorld History, Vol. 13, No. 2

?2002
of Hawai'i Press
by University
253
254
JOURNAL
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
2002
neither
fire nor iron hurt them. This
is called berserksgangy." Berserk
warriors thus scorned armor, willfully
foregoing body armor. They also
a
trance
in
two qualities define ber
of
raged uncontrollably
fury. These
sources
one
or the other, even in
mention
serks, although many
only
cases where warriors were both naked and mad.
troops either fighting madly or showing off recklessly, but not
Any
"berserk-like."
The Arab Ageyl were ber
both, may be called merely
in 1917, before the attack on Wejh
serk-like when
with Lawrence
of
Arabia,
they stripped off their cloaks, head cloths, and shirts, saying
that thus they would get clean wounds
if hit, and their precious clothes
would not be damaged. The reasons they gave were not all, for men are
also proud of showing their bodies and
over their skin?Lawrence
himself was
as
were
nakedness"
the Romans with
are both naked and mad at
however,
elated with the wind streaming

as much
taken with their "half
their Celtic
foes. True berserks,
the same time. This article will
show that they stand in an age-old, well-defined

tradition and, though
not given their due by modern
an outstanding
form
fea
scholarship,
ture of Indo-European
culture.3
Berserks
and
the
End
of
the
Bronze
Age
civilization
third-millen
Babylonian-Assyrian
by and large followed
nium Sumerian
In warfare this meant plodding,
tradition.
orderly rows
seen on the "Standard
of soldiers,
the "phalanx"
of Ur." There,
and heavily
armed soldiers trudge one behind
helmeted,
cuirassed,
as one expects
soldiers to do in disciplined
and
another,
city-states
B.c.
revo
In
the
seventeenth
the
battle-chariot
century
city-empires.
lution swept over all of West Asia,
and the part-Aryan Mitanni
took
In the
Assur,4 but we do not know how these events changed Assyria.
late thirteenth
under Tukulti-Ninurta,
century, however,
something
altogether
foreign took place in Assyria.
b.c.)
Early in his reign, Tukulti-Ninurta
(1243-1207
fought the
Hittites
and in 1228 warred against the Babylonians.
routed
Having
3
T. E. Lawrence,
Seven Pillars of Wisdom,
New
foes:
York,
1935, 163. Celtic
Ageyl:
in Search of the lndo-Europeans,
J. P. Mallory,
London,
Polybios 2, 29, 7. Indo-Europeans:
treats them as an error. In J. P. Mallory
and D. Q. Adams,
1989, no,
Encyclopedia
of Indo
London,
1997, berserks do not rate an entry, though they are recognized
European Culture,
on p. 63 21".
4 Hartmut
des Alten Vorderasien,
Geschichte
H.
Schm?kel,
Leiden,
1957, 187; William
McNeill,
The Pursuit
of Power, Chicago,
1982,
g?.
Speidel:
Berserks
255
an epic
he commissioned
and captured
the Kassite king of Babylon,
to justify his uncalled-for
about his campaign
The
result
aggression.5
is
survive
that
from
ing work
unique; unlike the many royal inscriptions
ancient
and praises the fighting

the epic lavishly describes
Assyria,
It claims not only that
of the king's warriors.6
style and battle madness
fear and blindness
and
Tukulti-Ninurta's
gods struck his foes with
but that his warriors turned into furious shape
blunted
their weapons,
and that they scorned
like Anzu,
the Assyrian
changers
eagle-dragon,
armor:7
are
They
They
They
They
The
They
While
furious,
raging,
taking
forms
strange
as Anzu.
charge forward furiously to the fray without armor,

had stripped off their breastplates, discarded their clothing,
tied up their hair and polished ( ?) their . . .weapons,
fierce heroic men danced with sharpened weapons.
blasted at one another like struggling lions, with eyes aflash (?),
the fray, particles drawn in a whirlwind,
swirled around in combat.
outside Greek and Roman

poem is highly revealing. Standing
it
the
that descriptions
tradition,
escapes
argument
hackneyed
literary
even the most
serious and knowledgeable
of foreigners?by
classical
not to be trusted because
time-worn
authors?are
clich?s
repeat
they
This
thus learn from the epic that in fits of battle-madness

Mid
(topoi).8 We
warriors
dle Assyrian
"took strange shapes," shed their armor, doffed
in hand,
their garments,
tied up their hair, war-danced
with weapons
a
into
and
whirlwind
roared,
raging
glowered fiercely,
charged wildly
battle. Nowhere
else are Assyrian warriors made out to be as wild or to
behave as strangely.
tactics are customs natural
Flashing eyes, frenzy, and swirling-storm
to berserk-like
warriors
everywhere,
including
those of Mesopotamia.9
5Walter
Politik
Mayer,
6
205. W G. Lambert,
und Kriegskunst
der Assurer, M?nster,
1995, 2i3ff; 220.
"Three Unpublished
of the Tukulti-Ninurta
Fragments
Epic,"
Archiv f?r Orientforschung
18, 1957-58,
38-51.
7 Tukulti-Ninurta
as
translated
R. Foster, Before
the
3 iff
Epic 5, A,
by Benjamin
An Anthology
Muses.
Literature,
I, Bethesda,
of Akkadian
1996, 227; also Peter
Maryland,
Bruce Machinist,
l. A Study inMiddle Assyrian Literature,
The Epic of Tukulti-Ninurta
Ph.D.
text. Geo Widengren,
Der Feudalismus
diss., Yale University,
1978, 121 with the Akkadian
iof. For throwing
off armor see the same epic 4,A,39
Iran, Cologne,
1969,
in; Foster 225).
(Machinist
8
als Barbar," Jahrbuch f?r internationale Germanis
E.g., Klaus von See, "Der Germane
tik 13, 1981, 42-72,
44f.
9
"elucebat quidam ex oculis furor." Even Romans
did this:
16,12,46:
Eyes: Ammianus
Tacitus, Histories
3,3: "flagrans oculis"; see below, note 25, and C. M. Bowra, Heroic Poetry,
Mircea
1952, 99. Animals:
London,
Eliade, Shamanism, New York, 1964, 385; an Assyrian
im Alten
JOURNAL
256
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
2002
are also customs

common
among
berserks,
Indo-European
tradition.
could have arisen from Indo-European
By 1500 B.c.,
speakers held sway from Northern
Indo-European
India toWestern
and west of Assyria.
Before their
east,
north,
Europe:
a
a
a heroic
ancestors
their
had
shared
religion,
dispersal,
language,
some
is
warrior
what
less
well
and,
known,
poetry,
striking
styles. Their
over
for
with
wolf
hoods
their
head and
wolf-warriors,
example,
fought
Yet
these
and hence
like wolves, while

their horse-slashers
dove beneath
attacking
to stab the steeds.10 Berserk was one of their characteristic
one may
indeed ask whether
Tukulti-Ninurta's
fighting
styles, hence
mad warriors were not Indo-European
berserks.
howled
horsemen
that the bigger the gap in time and space

demands
Sound method
the more elaborate
the shared custom
between
customs,
comparable
armor in sight of
must be to prove a common
one's
origin. Shedding
most
is an elaborate,
and
the enemy
gesture. Having
specific,
unlikely
no armor is one thing; throwing
it off in sight of the enemy
is quite
not just armor, but garments as well! While
another?and
this is alto
to Near Eastern tradition,11
it is, as we will see, found
unknown
war
ancient
and
Celtic
often
medieval
and Germanic
among
fairly
riors. If one adds to this the raging battle-madness
and shape-shifting
gether
warrior
animal head
about 645 b.c.):
demon with human
(Niniveh,
body and fantastic
Mass.,
1999, 30. Storm: V. Hurovitz-J. Westen
Julian Reade, Assyrian
Sculpture, Cambridge,
Studies 42, 1990, 1-49, esp. p. 5; Otto
Poem," Journal of Cuneiform
holz, "LK3: A Heroic
der Germanen
I, Frankfurt,
1934, 323-341;
H?fler, Kultische Geheimb?nde
Stig Wikander,
und die literarische ?ber
Beck, "Die Stanzen von Torslunda
1941; Heinrich
Vayu, Uppsala,
Studien 2, 1968, 237-250,
Der Feudalismus
247^ Widengren,
lieferung," Fr?hmittelalterliche
imAlten
Iran, 19.
10These
in my forthcoming
So
"Wild Warriors."
styles are set forth in greater detail
but good work on details
far, no study has focused on the history of these styles as a whole,
der Germanen
has been done by H?fler, Kultische Geheimb?nde
I;Otto H?fler, Der Runen
stein von R?k und die germanische
Individualweihe,
1952; Widengren,
Feudalismus;
T?bingen,
und Kelten bis zum Ausgang
der R?merzeit
Helmut
(Sb. Ost. Akad. Wiss.
Birkhan, Germanen
Die Struktur des voretruskischen
Heidel
R?merstaates,
Alf?ldi,
1970; Andrew
272), Vienna,
inW Meid
und Krieger bei den Indogermanen"
"Hund, Wolf,
berg, 1974; Kim R. McCone,
Innsbruck,
(ed.), Studien zum indogermanischen Wortschatz,
1987, 101-154; Dean A. Miller,
Heroic
Studies 26,
of Indo-European
"On the Mythology
Hair," Journal of Indo-European
and their customs
such as R?di
surveys of Indo-Europeans
1998, 41-60.
Typically, modern
in Johannes Hoops,
der ger
Reallexikon
Altertumskunde,"
ger Schmitt's
"Indogermanische
warrior
fail to mention
2nd ed., Berlin,
manischen Altertumskunde,
2000, 384-402,
i973ff,
as late as 1600 b.c.: Robert Drews, The
occurred
perhaps
styles. Indo-European
dispersal
"The Problem
of the
Princeton,
1988, but see also Asko
Parp?la,
Coming
of the Greeks,
in George
South Asia, Berlin,
and the Soma,"
Erdosy, The Indo-Aryans
of Ancient
Aryans
1995,
353-401.
11
Machinist,
Epic,
in;
commenting
(p. 325)
on
this not
being Mesopotamian.
Speidel:
Berserks
common
257
to Tukulti-Ninurta's
it
warriors and Indo-European
berserks,
same
the
share
that
their
origin.
likely
fighting
styles
warriors were thus either strongly influenced by
Tukulti-Ninurta's
or were themselves
Neither
Indo-Europeans.
possibil
Indo-Europeans
seems
into
often took large numbers of prisoners
ity is far-fetched. Assyrians
could have come by his mad warriors early
their army. Tukulti-Ninurta
in his reign, when he captured, as he says, "28,800 Hittites
from beyond
the Euphrates."12
(ardani),
Besides, he calls his berserks "bondsmen"
of the word
which
could mean his sworn war band, but the meaning
of
ardani shades also into "servants" and could thus mean
prisoners
war.13
the berserk style from their north

adopted
the
also fielded
Iranians, who
long
neighbors,
Indo-European
a
warriors.14
wild
Even
hence
haired,
naked,
non-Indo-European
mountain
is no
could have
transmitted
the custom?there
people
a
to
to
is
warrior
think
that
of
bound
ground
style
only one
speakers
Perhaps
the Assyrians
ern
cultural and
incoming
family. Without
foreigners, however,
as
as
is
warriors
the
of
radical
berserk
appearance
change
military
a
societies
with
stable
like
unlikely. Complex,
disciplined
population
that of Assyria
do not turn wild again on their own: there are no
or other Indo-European
examples of this in world history.15 A Hittite
language
or prisoners of war?is
the most
presence?mercenaries
likely expla
nation for Tukulti-Ninurta's
mad warriors, all the more so since Assyr
12 See
210. This would explain how they had
der Assyrer,
Mayer, Politik und Kriegskunst
come across the Euphrates: Hittite
the conquered:
Flo
soldiers, attacking Assur. Enrolling
rence Malbran-Labat,
L'arm?e et l'organisation militaire de l'Assyrie, Paris, 1982, 89fr.
13
in the six
Feudalismus,
Geschichte,
suggests that when
Widengren,
14ft. Schm?kel,
b.c.
teenth century
Mitanni
have brought
the part-Aryan
Assur,
they might
conquered
the Assyrians
then would have assimilated.
No certain
along such warrior customs, which
is not listed
Andarasena=Indrasena
among the middle Assyrians:
Aryan names are known
as Aryan
im alten Vorderasien, Wiesbaden,
Die Indo-Arier
1966, nor
by Manfred Mayrhofer,
im Vorderen Orient, Heidelberg,
Die Arier
Kammenhuber,
by Annelies
1968, but then the
were also much
even
in Egypt and Ugarit
in their names: Robert
Shardana
assimilated,
ca. 1200 B.C.,
inWarfare
and the Catastrophe
Drews, The End of the Bronze Age. Changes
were charioteers,
while Tukulti-Ninurta's
Princeton,
1993, i53ff. The Mitanni,
however,
men were on foot.
14
Feudalismus,
Widengren,
Epic, 325. Franz Rolf Schr?der,
17?',Machinist,
"Ursprung
und Ende der germanischen
Germanisch-romanische
1939,
Heldendichtung,"
Monatsschrift
10 and 33, think
Geschichte,
205 and Widengren,
Feudalismus,
325-367,
337f; Schm?kel,
of Aryan Mitanni
influence.
15Cultural
a stable population
is argued for India by George
(language)
change within
Erdosy, The
Berlin, New
Indo-Aryans
York, 1995,
of Ancient
23f?without
South Asia.
convincing
Language,
parallels,
Material
Culture,
and Ethnicity,
though.
JOURNAL
258
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
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2002
ians of the thirteenth

else in politics
and
century b.c. adopted much
warfare from their Hittite
neighbors.16
B.c.?sets
The date of Tukulti-Ninurta's
it in a very
battle?1228
context:
the
end
of
the
until
then
specific
flourishing
Egyptian, West
and Greek bronze age, when waves of fighters from the north
Asian,
in Syria.
and the kingdoms
destroyed Mycenae,
Troy, Hittite Hattusas,
newcomers
were
battle
Egypt itself barely fended off the invaders. The
the battle
deciding
infantry. For 400 years chariots had dominated
fields. Now, at the end of the thirteenth
century, all of a sudden infan
try
overcame
them.
recent
well-researched
study has shown how this happened.17
some infantry "runners" who kept up with the
Chariotry
always needed
it came to hand-to-hand
chariots to support them when
fighting and to
finish off the crews of disabled enemy chariots. Such runners were dar
ing elite troops, "those who bear the hand-to-hand
fighting, beautiful
even
in appearance."
in
served
the
rulers'
They
guards. By and large,
such as
they were foreigners hired for their stamina and recklessness,
II (1279-1212
III
shardana of Ramses
b.c.) and Ramses
time it became
that these "run
1155 b.c.).18 Over
apparent
defeat chariotry?all
could by themselves
ners," if they were many,
was
to
to
had
do
with
wound
their
javelins one horse of a char
they
iot. That would
the runners to attack the
stop the chariot,
allowing
crew in a fight for which
were
better
trained
than
and equipped
they
the Sardinian
(1186-
mail-clad
charioteer
archers. Hitherto
the first-known
campaign based
on these new tactics was that in 1208 B.c. by Meryre of Libya who, to
"from all the northern
lands." To fend
conquer Egypt, hired warriors
off such invasions,
established
rulers likewise hired foreign
infantry
"Warrior Vase" shows, these were
men, and as the famous Mycenaean
infantry.
equipped with body armor for close combat against opposing
warriors this means
For Tukulti-Ninurta's
that they were among the
warriors of the time. This may be why
finest, or at least most modern,
in such detail.
the king was so proud of them and had them described
now
1228
becomes
the
Tukulti-Ninurta's
of
earliest
known
campaign
armor
its
for
for
and
the
new,
instance,
battle-deciding
infantry,
body
16
Politik, 22iff;
Mayer,
235t
17
Drews, End of the Bronze Age, passim, esp. 135-163.
18 "Beautiful..
. ":
as Indo-Europeans
Merneptah's
phrase: Drews, End, 142. Shardana
The Aryans, A Study of Indo-European Origins,
V. Gordon
Lon
(with illustrations):
Childe,
don, 1926, 72-76.
Speidel:
Berserks
259
its tactics, 20 years before Meryre's

thus
campaign. Assyria
Egyptian
of the time, and was not
hired foreign foot soldiers like other kingdoms
the Assyrians
scholars had it thought to be.19 It befitted
the exception
to be the first to have berserk troops in their service?always
keen to
modernize
their army, they soon were to pioneer cavalry.20
to
is more, we now see what
spirit bore these infantrymen
some
new
was
of
Even
if
the
berserk
mind.
the
iron,
metal,
victory:
it seems to have had little to do with the berserks' victory:
available,
that one must believe
the epic describes
the men's
spirit so intensely
What
it was the decisive factor. Certainly

and training mat
spirit, discipline,
ter as much
in warfare as technology.
As chariot runners these elite
troops wore no body armor, as infantry in close combat they did. They
thus may well have known both kinds of fighting, with and without
that they could win
body armor, which would give them the confidence
even
Kassite
without
the
against
proudly and
Babylonians
breastplates,
recklessly fighting naked.
As for tactics, Tukulti-Ninurta's
Of
that of a swirling whirlwind.
no better order than

at
the time one might
similar troops
on
skirmisher fights
his own; with no comrade
say that "the barbarian
to right or left, he depends on his own round shield. Mobility
rather
in Tukulti
is mentioned
than solidarity was essential."21 No cavalry
Ninurta's
battle, and indeed it would not be invented for another hun
dred years.22 This gave berserks around 1200 B.c. the edge in speed and
that they would
later have to share with cavalry.23 Massed,
boldness
was
to make
its appear
also only just beginning
infantry
heavy-armed
men
were his main
seems
ance. This
to be why Tukulti-Ninurta's
wild
in later centuries berserks tended to be only a few cham
force, while
pions, hired by a ruler.
men
needed
countries of the time

rise of foreign infantry in all West Asian
the conclusion
drawn from the fighting
style of Tukulti
that they were foreigners,
Ninurta's
almost certainly
berserks, namely
Several other features of Tukulti-Ninurta's
warriors,
Indo-Europeans.
and Germanic
then, may also belong to northern warrior styles. Celtic
The
confirms
19
Drews, End, 147.
Exception:
20William
H. McNeill,
The Pursuit of Power, Chicago,
1982, 14, 18; Drews, End, i?4ff.
21
Drews, End, 152, 158, 161; Reckless:
ibid., 157.
22Warriors
a Mycenian
in the bronze age, witness
rode horses already
from
drawing
on Crete
Mouliana
The Oxford
Illustrated Prehistory
(Barry Cunliffe,
of Europe, Oxford,
1994,
284), but cavalry troops came later: Drews,

23 I owe this observation
to Stephen Morillo.
End,
164fr.
2?O
OF WORLD
JOURNAL
HISTORY,
FALL
2002
too, fought like lions or other grim animals.24 They,

fighters,
their foes by flashing their eyes,25 by snarling or roaring,
too, frightened
and by tying up their long hair; before going into battle at Strasbourg
in a.D. 354, King Chonodomar
of the Alamanni
wound a round, gold
warriors bound
band into his hair. Thracian
their hair
embroidered
was
a
into a topknot.26
hair
of Indo
well-ordered
hallmark
Long,
ecstatic
account of the
European warriors, best known perhaps from Herodotus'
at
Spartans
Thermopylae.27
Further reason to believe
that the berserk style of Tukulti-Ninurta's
comes from their shape-shifting.
warriors
is Indo-European
in
When
and Germanic
their faces
berserks contorted
the grip of fury, Celtic
in frightening
is
C?
Chulainn
and bodies
Irish
ways. Among
heroes,
came
to
when
he
famous for this.28 Likewise
claim
tenth-century
Egil:
the wergeld for his slain brother, he showed the king how mad he was
by drooping one eyebrow down towards his cheek, raising the other up
to the roots of his hair
and moving
his eyebrows
up and
alternately
in
battle.30
Mad
down.29 Celtic
heroes, moreover,
grew huge
shape
or done by Tukulti-Ninurta's
and Germanic
Celtic
shifting, whether
is a telling trait of Indo-European
berserks.
men,
also
Half-naked
among the Hittite
fighters appear
king's guard, but
us
b.c.
in
that
the
second
millennium
epic tells
only Tukulti-Ninurta's
armor
as
off
such "naked" fighters
fought recklessly mad,
throwing
well
as garments,
shape-changing,
inducing
flaunting
trance-like
flowing
battle madness
hair,
flashing
eyes,
and
by dancing
and attacking
24
Gr?n
20; Wilhelm
Struktur, 36f. G?ntert,
Geschichten,
saga Kraka; Alf?ldi,
Hr?lfs
12th ed., Darmstadt,
1997, 274; Georges
bech, Kultur und Religion der Germanen,
Dum?zil,
lions: Iliad 7, 256; Karl Hauck,
"Zur
The Destiny
1970, 139-147;
Chicago,
of theWarrior,
et al.)
der Goldbrakteaten
IV," Festschrift Siegfried Gutenbrunner
(ed. O. Bandle
Ikonologie
1972, 47-70.
Heidelberg,
25 See
Tacitus, Germa
1,39: "acies oculorum";
above, note 9. Caesar, Bellum Gallicum
nia 4: "truces et caerulei oculi"; Ammianus
"elucebat quidam ex oculis furor"; also
16,12,36
1,6: "hvessir augo sem hildingar";
31,13,10;
saga 42;
Volsunga
Hundingsbana
Helgaqvi3a
Die Germania
des Tacitus, Heidelberg,
Rudolf Much,
101; Gr?nbech,
266;
Kultur,
1967,
Bowra, Poetry, 99.
26
Pre
from Letnitsa,
Iliad 4, 533; silver bridal decoration
(Cunliffe,
Homer,
Bulgaria
roaring: Ammianus
16,12,46.
history, 385). Snarling,
27 Herodotus
Lacedaimonians
10, 3; Plutarch,
7, 208; Xenophon,
Lycurgus 22, 1; Taci
12. Michael
Carmina
Germania
C?ltica 8; Ammianus
tus,
16, 12, 24; Sidonius,
38; Appian,
R Speidel,
"Commodus
and the King of the Quadi," Germania
193-197;
78, 2000,
1998, 41-60.
Mythology,
28 T?in B?
Helmut
Birkhan, Kelten, Vienna,
1997, 968ff (riastrad).
Cuailnge;
29 Christine
Fell, Egils Saga, London,
1975, 84 (chapter 55).
30
1997, 975.
Birkhan, Kelten,
Miller,
261
Berserks
Speidel:
like a whirlwind.31
Armor-scorning
of berserkdom,
and
are
two
the
often found
that one
confirms much
characteristics
elsewhere
thus
sources
epic
explicit
warrior
in later centuries.
are the essential

and mad-fighting
they appear together, while
in isolation. The Tukulti-Ninurta
must otherwise
glean from less
It is a major source for the berserk
here
style.32
of
Berserks
the
Bronze,
Iron,
and
Middle
Ages
in relief on a huge monolith
at the King's Gate

in
a
is
half
(Boghaz K?y, Turkey)
clearly
bronze-age warrior.33 Armed with ax and sword,
"kilt" around his loins. He flaunts a tall, elabo
no body
rate comb helmet with ear and neck guards. Since wearing
armor but a helmet was an Indo-European
berserk custom,34 the guard
ian very likely was a berserk. Standing
in the King's gateway, however,
he no doubt ranked very highly; hence archaeologists
have wondered
a cuirass after all, perhaps a leather jerkin.
whether
he is not wearing
Yet as his nipples
he is also
show, he is clearly barechested.
Moreover,
some
and
other
confirm
that
of
Hittites'
the
bare-footed,
sculptures
wore
a
warriors
warriors
kilt.35
Hittite
elite
highest ranking
only
clearly
took pride in fighting
"naked," even those who served in the king's
The
guardian carved
the Hittite
capital of
naked Indo-European
he wears only a short
guard.
Such
nakedness
Hattusas
meant
reckless
blustering
in the face of the
31 Not
to mention
they would fight along
calling on one's gods in battle and believing
side one, striking one's foes with
fear and blindness
and blunting
their weapons.
Snorri
II,
Sturlusson,
Heimskringla,
Ynglinga saga 6; Jan de Vries, Altgermanische
Religionsgeschichte
2, 12, 8; 10, 121, 6; 6, 25, 6; Hein
56 (2nd ed., Berlin, vol. I, 1956, vol. II, 1957). RigVeda
rich Zimmer, Altindisches
Leben. Die Cultur der vedischen Arier, Berlin,
1879, 294; Iliad, pas
Heinrich
Bilddenkm?ler
1, 3 (Hercules);
sim; Tacitus, Germania
Beck, Einige vendelzeit?che
und die literarische ?berlieferung,
KL 1964,
Phil.-Hist.
Munich,
1964 (Sb. Bayer. Ak. Wiss.,
Heft 6), 32; in the middle
Beck, "Feldgeschrei,"
8, 1994, 305-306.
ages: Heinrich
Hoops
10. It is even possible
"God with us": Vegetius
that the
2, 18, 3; 7, B16,
3, 5, 4; Maurice
it says that (only) the breastplates
of helmets when
and garments
implies the wearing
taken off.
32
cannot have been spread by fighting on horse
berserkdom
Being this old, moreover,
back, which
(Drews, End, 164fr); contra:
began only by the end of the second millennium
Wikander,
Vayu, gift, who suggests that ecstatic cult forms (and warrior styles) spread with
to the Thracians
to the Germans.
and hence
cavalry warfare from the Aryans
33 G.
inAsia Minor,
The Hittites and their Contemporaries
London,
J.
Macqueen,
1986,
epic
were
frontispiece.
34
Below, Figs. 1, 3.
35 O. R.
The Hittites,
Gurney,
Harmondsworth,
1952,
107, 2oof.
2?2
JOURNAL
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enemy which points to the berserk fighting style. We cannot be certain

war
about their battle madness,
but the parallel of Tukulti-Ninurta's
not
it likely that the Hittite
riors makes
naked
but
only
guard fought
like true berserks.36
also recklessly, perhaps
and kilt-clad
naked guards, armed
Similar helmeted
but otherwise
with swords and spears, are shown on a bronze-age
fresco in the Myce
naean palace at Pylos in southwestern
In reliefs at Abydos
in
Greece.37
"runners" of the Ramessid
Shardana
Indo-European
pha
an elaborate dress when
in battle,
they serve as guardsmen;
berserk-like
however,
they too wear only kilt and helmet.38 Another
a
warrior comes from the bronze age of northern
tenth-cen
Europe:
at
in
found
Denmark,
tury statuette,
portrays a naked
Grevenswaenge
a
a
neck
and
belt.39
Like the Hit
warrior, wearing
helmet,
ring,
only
Egypt the
raons have
tite guardian,
these Mycenaean,
and Danish
Sardinian,
bronze-age
in their battle garb indeed look like berserks, but we do not
warriors
know for certain whether
Here,
they fought in a trance of madness.40
some
comes
from the Tukulti-Ninurta
too, however,
epic, as it
help
speaks of reckless
warriors blustered
frenzy and thereby suggests that naked bronze-age

like berserks.
and fought recklessly
break
of naked warrior
without
The
tradition
images continues
statuettes portray
archaic Greek
through the iron age. Eighth-century,
warriors naked but for helmet,
and belt, sometimes with a
neckband,
a
seen in the
to
shield flung
their back,
telling berserk gesture.41 When
art
context
in
of bronze- and iron-age
Europe and West Asia,
larger
it likely that in archaic times some Greek war
these statuettes make
riors also fought naked,
that is, as berserks.
B.c. found at Hirschlanden
statue
in
A
from the sixth century
a
warrior
shows
similar, fully naked Celtic
wearing
only
W?rttemberg
hat or helmet, neckband,
belt, and sword (Fig. i).42 With Celts we are
36
amoks, below.
Compare
Trajan's berserk guards, below, Fig. 2; also the Malabar
37
Drews, End, i4of; i74f.
38
Drews, End, 144f; i74f.
39 Katie
et al., Gods and Heroes
of the European Bronze Age, London,
Demakopoulou
1999, 94.
40 The
warrior
shared also other Indo-European
Hittites,
styles: for a Hittite
certainly,
see Alf?ldi,
in the Veda)
seal with animal warriors
1974,
Struktur,
(the latter also known
plate
2/1; McCone,
41 Statuettes:
"Hund."
Boardman,
Greek
Art,
London,
1985,
31: the Karditsa
statuette,
ca. 700
B.C.
42 Photo:
Arch?ologisches
9; neg. no. M 41/12273.
Frey, "Keltische Grossplastik,"
64,
Landesmuseum,
Stuttgart,
Baden-W?rttemberg,
The Ancient Celts, Oxford,
1997,
Barry Cunliffe,
16, 2000, 395-407.
Hoops
inv. no. V
62f; O. H.
Figure
sixth
i . Berserk warrior from Hirschlanden,

century
B.c.
264
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on firmer ground when

looking for the spirit of their naked warriors.
Celts were famous for fighting naked.
In the battle at Telam?n
in Italy,
in 225 b.c.,
their Gaesati
they wore only trousers and capes, while
to bluster, threw off even these.43 Like the
in the forefront,
spearmen
wore golden tores to dare
Hirschlanden
warrior, the Celts at Telam?n
to come and get these neckbands.44
the enemy
The Hirschlanden
statue with
its tore thus portrays a warrior not in idealized nudity, but
in the actual battle gear of naked warriors.
it is quite clear that the
From the bronze-age
images discussed,
warrior stands in a long Indo-European
Hirschlanden
tradition going
back to the second millennium
of the
B.c., and that the nakedness
warrior wearing only a sword belt and neckband
did not only "become
a characteristic
of the Celts
in battle
in the fifth century and after."45
custom was both widespread
and long lived. In 189 B.c. the Celts
of Asia Minor
thus
when
their bare, white
skin,
fought
they exposed
so the blood of their wounds would
show to greater effect and to their
greater glory.46 The Romans who faced them knew how to deal with
reckless foes and blind rage: they showered
them with arrows, javelins,
and slingshot and did not let it come to hand-to-hand
fighting.
The
in western Europe.
The iron age is the high point of naked fighting
area where Celts of the inte
In southern Spain,
in the Sierra Morena
rior met with Iberians from the south who had adopted archaic Greek
art, bronze statuettes show naked warriors of the 5th~3rd centuries B.c.
with a sword, a small round shield (caetra), a "power belt," and some
times a helmet?all
Spain in the early
style along,
and
The Celts who came to

typical berserk weapons.
iron age seem to have brought
the berserk fighting
it flourished
there down to the Roman
period.47
43
of Halicarnassus
2, 28, 7f; 29, 7; cf. Dionysius
14,13; Livy 22, 46, 5; 38, 21,
Polybius
art in Rome's
9; 38, 26, 7; Diodore
5, 30, 3; see also the naked Celtic warrior of Pergamene
the bronze statuette
of a slinger in Berlin's Pergamon Museum
Museum,
(Hel
Capitoline
mut Birkhan,
other works of art; F. Fis
Kelten,
Bilder, Vienna,
1999, no. 723), and many
der Lat?nezeit,"
and
2, 1976, 414; H. R. Ellis Davidson,
"Bewaffnung
Hoops
Myths
Symbols in Pagan Europe, Syracuse,
1988, 89; Birkhan, Kelten,
867; 96of.
44 Golden
worn
in battle by Germanic
warriors had the same role: Pro
wristbands
i6of.
3, 24, 24; Battle ofMaldon,
copius, Gothic Wars
45 Contra
Cunliffe,
Celts, 62?f. The "power belt" was true battle gear, witness Diodore
"with no more
than a girdle."
5,29,2:
46
se pugnare putant." He also makes much
of their rage. Cf.
Livy 38, 21, 9: "gloriosius
11, 646: "pulchramque
per vulnera mortem."
Fischer, Bewaffnung,
petunt
Vergil, Aeneid
sees here a contradiction
between
414 needlessly
glory seeking and religious belief.
47 Gerard
Bronces
Nicolini,
ib?ricos, Barcelona,
1977, e.g., nos.
15, 41, 44, 68. The
in Madrid
Museum
has a fair collection
of such statuettes,
which
I studied
Archaeological
come from shrines,
in June 2001. Since most of the statuettes
their sometimes
overlong
are not meant
to be grotesque
Adam
penises
ingens priapus in Uppsala,
(compare Woden's
cher,
Berserks
Speidel:
265
in their battle
show men
over
came
to portray
art images of naked warriors
time
gear, in Greek
ideal bodies rather than their true battle dress. Classical
the warriors'
serve as
art from the sixth century B.c. onward
thus cannot
Greek
in classical and in Hellenistic
about berserks. Nevertheless,
evidence
still fielded berserk-like
times backward areas of Greece
troops: tribes
While
Celtic
images
of naked
warriors
such as the Aetolians

fought lightly armed and barefoot.48
warriors also fought recklessly
Thracian
"naked": a silver coin of
a
b.c.
kilt-clad
Thracian
shows
bare-chested,
335-315
infantryman
a
tries to
from
The Thracian
Paionian
horseman
Macedonia.
fighting
the spirit in which
such
the enemy's steed. Livy describes
dive beneath
an attack unfolded.
In 171 B.c., he says, "Thracians,
loudly yelling,
wild animals, ran ahead of all others
and furious like long penned-up
and their lances. They cut the horses' legs or
up to the Italic horsemen
source
stabbed them in the belly."49 The coin as an archaeological
men
while Livy as a literary source attests

the Thracians'
nakedness,
warrant
for Thracians
the two defining char
their fury: together
they
acteristics
and madness.
of berserk warriors, nakedness
too. Looking
in early Rome,
Fighting naked was once well known
the Etruscan Herminius
back at old Italy's prowess, Vergil describes
thus:50
attests
Great-souled,
great-bodied,
greatly
armed
warrior,
flowing blond hair on his helmless head,

bare-shouldered, unafraid of wounds
huge that he was, fighting uncovered.
of Bremen
4, 26f ). Celtic
in Cunliffe,
Celts
brooch
and helmet.
48 Greek
art: Nikolaus
in Spain
is confirmed
naked fighting
also by the Celt-Iberian
that shows a naked warrior with "power belt," shield, sword,
93,
in der griechischen Kunst, Berlin,

Ideale Nacktheit
Himmelmann,
the Greeks:
influenced
Celts, however,
Jason inApollonios'
Argonautica,
is a reflection
which
of Greek
battles against
3,i28off,
fights "naked," for greater heroism,
b.c.
in the third century
naked Celts
(Himmelmann,
ibid., 2?ff). Aetolians:
Thucydides
Saturnalia 5, 18, 13fr".
3, 97fr";Macrobius,
49
retentae
haud secus quam diu claustris
Thraces,
Livy 42, 59, 2f: "Primi omnium
cum ingenti clamore
ut
in dextrum
incurrerunt
It?licos ?quit?s
cornu,
ferae, ita concitati
+
usu belli et ingenio
tre [?]
is hastas petere pedites
[?] equo
impauida gens turbaretur;
crura [?]
ilia suffodere." Coin:
of
succidere
silver Tetradrachma
is, nunc
rumque nunc
1990, 29ff. Naked
Patraos
of Paionia,
Nordgriechenlands
der paionischen
images.
50 Aeneid
of the American
Numismatic
1040; Antike M?nzen
Society
H. Gaebler,
"Zur M?nzkunde
IX. Die Pr?gung
Makedoniens,
with
several variant
1927, 237-242,
Zeitschrift f?r Numismatik
Collection
III 2, 2oif;
K?nige,"
11, 641-644,
et dieux des Germains,
Paris,
among them.
cf.
11, 666f; Propertius

4, 1, 27-28. Georges
Dum?zil, Mythes
86 reckons also Indian Gandharvas
and Greek Centaurs
1939,
266
JOURNAL
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ancient
Italic tribes51
Odd as this description
may seem for Rome,
warriors who fought naked,
had in their ranks berserks or berserk-like
and often in single combat.52 Their
shouting, barefoot, flowing-haired,
trance of ecstatic
a berserk-like
recklessness
and a
get-up bespeaks
efforts.53
thirst for fame that goaded them to awesome
Germanic
berserks
appear first on Trajan's Column.
art
often
half-naked
northern
portrays
Europeans,
triumphal
to frighten, but whose
whose wild recklessness was meant
loyal service
was to show the emperor as ruler of the world who gathers, from the
Barefoot
Roman
ends of the earth, hosts of fighters against all who stand in his way.54
In scene 36 of Trajan's Column,
bare-footed
bare-chested,
young men
the
the
behind
the
Column,
up
emperor. Higher
youths of
throng
scene 36 appear again in scene 42 (fig. 2).55 In the scene shown in Fig
ure 2, the emperor gives a speech to thank the men who won the bat
are shown, though
No weapons
the soldiers hold
tle at Adamklissi.
wear strip armor and carry standards,
the
but the berserks are barechested
and helmets,
the berserks
loom
and barefooted.
well,
Having
fought outstandingly
are
seen
unlike
others
who
the
those
emperor:
large among
praised by
shields.
The
legionnaires
wear cuirasses
auxiliaries
turn to the viewer. The one to the left,

the back, they halfway
the
and
clean-shaven
strikingly holds
ruggedly handsome,
youthful,
of the scene. The one to the right is a towering figure, almost
middle
from
51
and
also shared the wolf-warrior
Celts, Dacians,
Iranians, Greeks,
style with
on Polybius, vol. 1,
A Historical Commentary
6,22,3 with F.W. Walbank,
Polybius
tegmen
1957, 703; Vergil, Aeneid
1,275; 7, 688f: "fulvosque
Oxford,
lupi de pelle galeros
as is clear from the
sources of information
habent
capiti," cf. 11,68of: Vergil had valuable
10,16; Alf?ldi,
4,10,20;
Struktur, 81. Celts: Strabo
Propertius
Pliny NH
parallel of Polybius;
"Kelt
0\)UMK?V KOCt Ta%\) rcp?? jx?xnv. Birkhan, Germanen,
4,4,3:
39of; K. H. Schmidt,
in Heinrich
in heutiger Sicht,
Beck
(ed.), Germanenprobleme
Isoglossen"
isch-germanische
Dacians:
Mircea
Paris,
1970,
Eliade, De Zalmoxis ? Gengis-Khan,
Berlin,
1999, 231-247.
They
Germans,
13-30.
52 Rome
cf. Silius
and Italy: Vergil, Aeneid
(bears:
Italicus, Punica 8, 356ff
7, 64iff,
see e.g., a
hair: Aeneid
11, 64off. Barefoot: Vergil. Aeneid
7, 689^ Naked:
8,523).
Flowing
statuette
Hall
and Rainer-Maria
from Umbria:
bronze
Weiss,
Ingrid Gersa
sixth-century
stattzeit, Mainz,
1999, plate 14. Open
combat,
single combat: Livy 1, 24ff; 42, 47; Polybius
Der Idealstaat, Berlin,
1993, 252fr. Use of clich?s here: Hans
!3> 3*?36, 9; Demandt,
J?rg
Schweizer,
1967, i6f.
Vergil und Italien, Aarau,
53
Demandt,
Idealstaat, 25off.
54 Ruler of the world: Karl Friedrich
und Sp?tantike, Z?rich,
Germanentum
Strohecker,
The Emperor and the Roman Army, Oxford,
1984, 46f; i46ff. Any
1965, 19; J. B. Campbell,
Italicus 3, 354?.
where on earth: "remotis extractum
lustris," Silius
55 Photo Deutsches
Inst. Neg. 41, 1336. O Cichorius,
Institut, Rome,
Arch?ologisches
is
Die Reliefs der Trajanss?ule
II, Berlin,
1896, 209, rightly states that the dress of the youths
in scenes 36 and 40.
the same as that of the bare-shirts
Speidel: Berserks
267
a head taller than the men next to him. This

is not happenstance,
for
his tall build marks him as a northerner
and as a berserk.56
We do not know to which Roman or allied unit these men belong.
in the Roman
Tacitus
cohorts
says that German
army fought in their
or
native
hence
Germanic
berserks
berserk-like
troops
style, naked,57
men
in Figure 2 may
could rank as regular Roman
and
the
auxilia,
to these cohorts or even to Trajan's guard, comparable
have belonged
to Ramses
IPs Shardana
berserks.
and, it seems, Tukulti-Ninurta's
Like
Figure
the Gaesati
2.
Two
spearmen
in the battle
at Telam?n
berserks
among
(middle and right foreground). Trajan's Column,
Rome,
barefoot,
shield-bearing
who
Roman
fought
troops
scene 42.
56 Nordic
berserks huge: Hermann
?ber altisl?ndische
G?ntert,
Berserker-Geschichten,
1912, 12. Berserk giants: Edda, H?bars31j?d
37-39; G?ntert,
ibid., 23.
Heidelberg,
57
2, 22, 2; R. Wolters,
Tacitus, Histories,
16, 2000,
Kampfweise,"
"Kampfund
Hoops
this needlessly.
esp. 208 and 212 doubts
208-214,
268
JOURNAL
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naked
"for love of fame and out of daring,"58 and to whom
greater
nakedness
betokened
greater daring, so the young men of Trajan's war
band will have rushed into battle not only barechested
but also bare
other warriors of their own tribe in nakedness
and
footed, outdoing
utter
off
their
Their
fearlessness.
like
that
of
barefootedness,
showing
steeled them against pain and strengthened
young Spartan warriors,
it.59 Itmarks them as berserks, even though the
their will to overcome
relief does not show them battle-mad.
To show fearlessness,
says Paul
was also the reason why Heruls wore only loincloths
in
the Deacon,
in a.d. 560: "whether for speed or out of
the war against the Lombards
scorn for wounds."
Both reasons could apply,60 for speed greatly mat
tered to the unarmored who had to run up to the enemy before being
as for Gaesati
showered with spears and arrows.61 For Heruls
and Tra
same:
more
is
the
the
the
naked
the
warrior,
jan's berserks,
principle
the more
reckless and brave.62

was part of a broader warrior ideal, spelled out by Vergil when
Herminius
Others
he called bare-shouldered
called
"great-souled."
to win by manhood
for wishing
rather
northern warriors "great-souled"
in a fair fight, found already
in
than guile. That
ideal of winning
This
B.c. and was still held

also goes back to the second millennium
a.D.
and by the East Saxons
by Emperor Julian in the fourth century
in a.d. 99i.63
in the battle of Maldon
war god (recalled
in the
the name
of the Germanic
Woden,
meant
English
"Wednesday"),
"fury." To be berserk was to be like
Homer,
58
Kai t? B?paoc.
?ux ?e xf|v (|)iX,o?o?iav
2,28,7f:
Polybius
59
Lacedaemonians
2, 3; Plutarch,
16, 6; Barefootedness
Lycurgus
Spartans: Xenophon,
in 1816: Donald
R. Morris,
The Washing
likewise was to toughen
Shaka's Zulu warriors
of
No More Heroes. Madness
& Psy
the Spears, New York, 1965, 47, 52. Richard A. Gabriel,
chiatry inWar, New York, 1987, 102.
60 Paulus
Germaniae
Historia
1, 20 (Monumenta
Hist?rica,
Diaconus,
Langobardorum
bella g?rent, sive ut inla
58, 33fr): "Qui sive ut expeditius
Scriptores rerum Longobardorum
turn ab hoste vulnus contemnerent,
nudi pugnabant,
solummodo
corporis vere
operientes
BP 2, 25: Tpi?cbviOV a?pov
cunda." Cf. Procopius
(speed), no shield, cf. Ludwig Schmidt,
Carmina
Die Ostgermanen,
117; Sidonius Apollinaris,
Munich,
1969, 563; lordanes, Getica
Germania,
7, 236 (speed); Much,
i39f.
61 Cf.
1,52,3; Dio 38,49,if.
Caesar, Bellum Gallicum,
62 It even worked
in battle
took off his helmet
Germanicus
for Romans:
(Tacitus
Annals
2, 21, 2) and while he did not do it to dare the enemy, at least he did it to be seen
as brave by his own men.
63
Bellum ludaicum
2, 377; lordanes,
641. Great-souled:
Josephus,
Vergil, Aeneid n,
Bellum Africum
homines
Getica
24. No
73: "Contra Gallos,
apertos min
trickery: Caesar,
non per dolum dimicare
Strabo 4, 4, 2;
consuerunt";
insidiosos,
imeque
qui per virtutem,
22: "Gens non astuta nee callida." Homer,
Iliad 7,247^
Germania
Tacitus,
Julian, Ammi
anus 23, 5, 21; Battle of Maldon
86-90.
Speidel:
Berserks
269
whose
Woden,64
followers,
among them Franks in the fourth century
"a
that
life
that
lacked deeds was the greatest grief, while
A.D., thought
wartime
the Franks became
offered the highest happiness."65 When
in a.d. 496, their traditional
Christians
fighting
styles did not perish
all at once. In 553
ers, men without
their army in Italy still included bare-chested

fight
still
and helmets.
hauberks
Many
perhaps were
men:
their human
Woden's
sacrifices,
says,
reporting
Procopius
these barbarians have become Christians,
they keep most of
"Though
their old faith." Similarly,
the historian Agathias
makes Frankish war
as any northerners
riors out to be as mad and lacking in self-control
ever were.66 To Frankish warriors,
to Christianity
then, conversion
of one battle helper for another.67 Some
the exchange
mainly meant
went so far as to give Christ the qualities ofWoden?witness
the sixth
as an elite
century terracotta plaque found at Gresin depicting Christ
a necklace
and strutting naked.68
warrior, hair bound up, wearing
as the Lord's bravest fighter was
Much
later, in Nordic
sagas, Christ
"God's berserk."69
Celtic warriors
the custom of fighting naked also lived on
Among
into the middle
it is known
from antiquity
from reports
ages where
about Irish fighters and from Irish legends.70 In Eastern Europe,
too,
warriors
Sklavenoi
without
shirts.71
Since
(Slav)
sixth-century
fought
64
of Bremen
Adam
id est furor, De Vries, Religions
4,26: Wodan
Eleventh-century
colunt." "Mercurii dies"
II, 94. Tacitus, Germania
9: "Deorum maxime Mercurium
geschichte,
meant Woden;
became Wednesday,
hence Tacitus' Mercurius
Much,
Germania,
17iff;
Romano-Ger
H?fler, Runenstein,
26ff; Dieter Timpe,
i99ff; De Vries, Religionsgeschichte,
manica. Gesammelte
Studien zur Germaniades
Tacitus, Stuttgart,
1995, ii4ff. Berserkdom's
to Woden
is discussed
relation
Ninck, Wodan
197-206; Martin
by H?fler, Geheimb?nde,
und germanischer
H?fler, Runenstein,
Jena, 1935, 34-67;
33off; De Vries,
Schicksalsglaube,
The Lost Gods ofEngJand, New York, 1974, 92fr".
II, 94ff; Brian Branston,
Religionsgeschichte
65
Libanius, Oratio
59, 128; cf. Tacitus, Germania
14: "ingrata genti quies." J.M. Wai
in England and on the Continent,
lace-Hadrill,
Oxford,
1971, 151:
Kingship
Early Germanic
War was "a way of life as much as a means of survival or expansion." Mircea
Eliade, The Myth
1954, 29: "War or the duel can in no case be explained
of the Eternal Return, New York,
through
66
rationalistic
motives."
2,5,3; 2>6,7- Merovingians:

Bodmer, Der
Jean-Pierre
Procopius, Wars 6,25. Agathias
und seine Welt,
Die bar
Z?rich,
1957, 132; Georg Scheibelreiter,
Krieger der Merowingerzeit
barische Gesellschaft,
Darmstadt,
1999.
67
of Tours 2, 30. De Vries, Religionsgeschichte
II, 437.
Gregory
68 Now
in St-Germain-en-Laye;
Edouard
vol. 4,
Salin, La civilization m?rovingienne,
in Howard
The World's
Paris, 1959, pi. XI, facing p. 400; 573; good photograph
Spodek,
Sable River,
I, Upper
1988, 313.
History
69
Barlaam saga 54, 20; 197, 8 after G?ntert,
Geschichten,
23.
70 Gerald
of Wales,
The History and Topography
of Ireland, Harmondsworth,
1982, 101;
Birkhan,
71
1991,
Kelten,
Procopius,
1910.
96of. Legends: G?ntert,

Wars
7,14,26. Antes
Geschichten,
and Sklavenoi:
30fr".
Oxford
Dictionary
of Byzantium
3,
270
JOURNAL
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
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shirts, they very likely threw them off to fight

they must have owned
in the traditional
like berserks
too,
style. Iranians,
Indo-European
customs
into
the
of
battle
madness
the
middle
ages.72
upheld
to strut
In Europe during
the middle
ages the need for berserks
naked grew less. As more and more warriors wore mail, all one had to
do to signal outstanding
bravery was to throw off one's knee-length
and, more daringly, fling one's shield on the back.73 Even the
time-honored
dance could now be done fully dressed,
spear-and-sword
as seen on the seventh-century
helmet
from Sutton Hoo.74
in medieval
Berserks
fiction followed old customs and beliefs. Beo
wulf took a berserk stance when he shed his mail before the fight with
on its own terms, he threw off his hel
the monster
To meet
Grendel.
hauberk
version
and sword.75 In the handed-down
Christianized
met, hauberk,
not
trusts
in
in
of the epic, however,
Beowulf
God's
favor,
strength
as did Woden's
men
in earlier
flowing from an altered state of mind,
times.
in his early
Saxo Grammaticus
years after Beowulf,
"Gesta Danorum"
says that Asmund
flung his shield
thirteenth-century
on his back to fight more fiercely and daringly and hence win greater
in 935 and in 961 also trod
the Good
fame.76 Norway's
King H?kon
as an armor-scorning
the battlefield
fighter:77
Six-hundred
72 Iranian Rustam:
und Herkules,"
Franz Rolf Schr?der,
"Indra, Thor
Zeitschrift f?r
deutsche Philologie 76, 1957, 23fr.
73 Even
a.d.
some
warriors
in the first and second centuries
Germanic
high-ranking
wore hauberks: Tacitus, Germania
24; Horst-Wolfgang
B?hme,
Zeugnisse
"Arch?ologische
zur Geschichte
der Markomannenkriege,"
Zentralmuse
Jahrbuch des R?misch-Germanischen
ums Mainz
Studien zur germanischen
22, 1975, 153-217,
214; Wolfgang
Adler,
Bewaffnung,
(Fr. Klaeber, Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg,
Bonn,
1993, 105. Early middle
ages: Beowulf
Karl Hauck,
"Ger
(saro, g?3hamo).
1950, 311, S. V. Byrne); Hildebrandslied
im Spiegel mittelalterlicher
des Nordens,"
Romanitas-Christian
Bildzeugnisse
ed. G. Wirth,
Berlin,
itas, Festschrift
Straub,
1982, 175-216,
i95f; vanishing
Johannes
nakedness:
Karl Hauck,
"Dioskuren,"
5, 1984, 482-494,
485. Shirt: Saxo, p. 208, 25
Hoops
tantum
fretus inermem
telis thoracem
subucula
Runenstein,
(after H?fler,
93): "subarmali
212 sees this trend operating
in the first century a.D.,
already
Kampf,
opposuit." Wolters,
but offers no evidence.
74
"Ger
The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, London,
1978, 186. Hauck,
Rupert Bruce-Mitford,
mania-Texte,"
197.
75
see also 25o6ff; 25i8f.
"Beowulf,"
67iff;
76 Saxo
fama nostrae
luceat?nudo
"Ferocitatis
i,26f:
pectore?absque
periculi
in necem
"Berser
respectu reflexo in tergum clipeo complures
egit"; also 2, 64. Otto H?fler,
Lexington,
mania-Texte
2, 1976, 298-304,
ker," Hoops
302f.
77 Snorri
H?konar
Sturlusson,
saga Goda
M. Hollander,
Snorri Sturlusson, Heimskringla,
Berserker,
in part the translation

6; 30, following
by Lee
Austin,
4; H?fler,
1964, 120; H?konarm?l
300.
Speidel:
Berserks
271
He threw off his armor

thrust down his mail-coat
the great-hearted lord,
ere the battle began.
He laughed with his liege-men.
Such berserk-gestures
laughter showed his scorn of wounds.
often
other
of
and
leaders
men, abound inNordic
by individuals,
kings
H?kon's
warrior
tales.78
Medieval
berserks were often battle lords. In the tenth-century
bat
in Northumbria,
tle on the Vin Heath
the Icelandic Viking
Thorolf,
wore a helmet
but no hauberk,
and when
the battle went badly, he
so berserk that he swung his shield round to his back, and
"became
took his spear in both hands. He ran forward, striking or thrusting on
. . .
both sides. Men
but he killed many.
sprang away in all directions,
on
out
Then Thorolf
drew his sword, striking
both sides, and his men
also joined the attack."79 Flinging
one's shield to one's back as a ber
is found on reliefs of the berserk-like
serk gesture
Shardana
guard of
II and on archaic Greek warrior statuettes.80
Icelandic sagas often tell of berserks as wild, howling fighters, some
as lowly drifters.81
times as high-born
of kings, sometimes
champions
was a woman
One
of the last-known
in North
berserks, however,
in
America.
One
the
eleventh
the
Greenlanders
who
century,
day
saw a huge host of
under Karlsefni
had come to settle in Vinland
(Indians) bearing down on them. As the Skraelings
Skraelings
flung
rocks at them from slings, the Greenlanders
retreated between
boul
ders to make
their stand. The woman
Freydis had first stayed indoors,
to follow the men. When
but then went outside
the Skraelings made
for her, she snatched
the sword of a dead Greenlander,
"pulled out her
breasts from under her clothes and slapped the naked sword on them,
at which
the Skraelings
took fright, ran off to their boats and rowed
Insofar
away. Karlsefni's men came up to her, praising her courage."82
as Freydis fought bare-breasted
and frightened her foes with unwonted
Ramses
courage,
she
was
a berserk.
78
in the battle on the Vin-Heath,
in the
E.g., Egil and Thoror
Egils saga 53; Starkad
Gautreks
saga (Genzmer,
1997, 335); Agner
Edda,
fight against Herthjof,
(Saxo 2, 64);
at Br?valla
Harold Wartooth
(H?fler, Runenstein,
93).
79
Fell, Egils Saga, Toronto,
Egils saga 53 as translated
1975, 80.
by Christine
80
Drews, End,
i44f.
81
Hans Kuhn,
und Berserker,"
saga Kraka; G?ntert,
Geschichten;
Hr?lfs
"K?mpen
Fr?hmittelalterliche
Studien 2, 1968, 218-227,
222fr".
82 Eiriks
berserks: H?rbar$slj?$,
saga Rauda, 6, translated by Gwyn
37.
Jones; women
JOURNAL
272
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
2002
forbade berserks,83 but their spirit lived on. Among

Christianity
it survived longest. Pawns of the twelfth-century
chess set
island Celts
are
as
warriors
from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides
portrayed
in 1138 King
who bite their shields in battle madness.84 Also, when
of Scotland met an Anglo-Norman
David
army in the Battle of the
warriors claimed
and Highlander
their right
his Galwegian
With
lances
and
ahead of his armored household
knights.
full of fury and daring, only to
swords they ran into battle unarmored,
be shot down by English bowmen.85 The few who reached the English
line achieved
against the armored, dismounted
knights who
nothing
rest
the
of
the Scottish
led the defense. When
fled,
they
they dragged
at Telam?n
1350
army into a rout, just as did the naked Celtic Gaesati
Standard,
to attack
years
earlier.86
effectiveness
of berserk tactics
this example of the waning
Despite
warriors
in
the
thirteenth
still
"modern"
Irish
forces,
century
against
went
into battle barechested
and barefooted,
armed only with axes.87
In doing so they shared with ancient berserks the lack of armor that
made them faster and more recklessly daring. Nor did the literary con
sagas the word "ber
cept of the berserk warrior die: in late medieval
a brave, fearless warrior.88
serk" still meant
shows the abidingness
of
of Indo-European
berserks
The history
their warrior style over more than two and a half thousand years, from
and Roman
Greek
1300 B.c. to a.d.
city cultures,
1300.89 Unlike
and
little over the centuries,90
northern Europe's tribal culture changed
with it the berserk warrior style lasted as long as the culture of the tribes
north
of the Roman
empire
stayed
that
intact,
is, to the coming
of
83 Icelandic Christian
law against berserks: Lily Weiser,
Altgermanische
J?nglingsweihen
und M?nnerb?nde,
B?hl,
1927, 44ff.
84
Below, p. 278.
85 Richard
Chronicles
II, and Richard I, vol. 3,
Howlett,
of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry
occurrerent
amatis
virtute
inermes
istos, animi
pro scuto
1886,
190: "primo
ingressu
utentes";
sagittis undique
circumseptum,
spinis, ita Galwensem
196: "Videres ut hericium
nunc hostem
et caeca quadam amentia proruentem
vibrare gladium,
nichilominus
caedere,
aerem cassis ictibus verberare."
barbaros habens
Ibid., p. 35: "Scotia??ncolas
amarae mortis
anxium
exitum
pro nihilo
confidentes,
pedibus
levique armaturae
to this battle.
ducentes."
kindly drew my attention
Stephen Morillo
86
"Battles in England
and Normandy,
Chronicles
Howlett,
Jim Bradbury,
162,192,197;
in Matthew
1992, 182-193,
Strickland,
Angjo-Norman
Warfare, Woolbridge,
1066-1154,
2, 29 (above, p. 264).
esp. 191. Gaesati:
Polybios
87 Maurice
1997, 84.
Keen, Medieval Warfare,
Oxford,
88 Laxd
la saga 33; G?ntert,
la saga 60 and 62; Vatnsd
23.
Geschichten,
89
claims 6000 years of change when
and 272, needlessly
2500
Search, nof
Mallory,
nunc
inanem
?citis
years will do.

90 Stuart
Piggot,
Ancient
Europe,
Chicago,
1965,
22.
Speidel: Berserks
273
The berserks'
social underpinning
lay in their role as
Christianity.
was belief in
their
of
and
followers
religious underpinning
kings,
guards
a war god, and their main cultural feature was an extravagant
code of
to
in
societies
which
the
tied
honor and behavior?all
they
strongly
flourished.
The
Berserk
Mind
so
Indians had their distinct warrior
As North American
societies,
own
their
had distinct warrior groups with
Ancient
Indo-Europeans
customs and "willfulness." The Sanskrit word swadh? ("inherent power,
as Greek and
is the same word etymologically
habitual
state, custom")
an
Ber
organization").91
English ethos and the Latin sodaks ("men of
serks would have formed such groups.
To do deeds of berserk daring, one had to be raging mad. Homeric
warriors fought best in a powerful rage, and Gaulish warriors could not
into the grip of battle madness.92
and singing
Shouting
help falling
were ways
warriors
to rouse such rage. Early Greek
and Roman
a
mark of manhood.93
With
like flocks of raucous birds?a
screeched
the young Marut warriors of the Rig Veda
song of thunder and wind,
and Germanic
Indra's prowess.94 Husky Thracian,
awakened
Celtic,
war songs, like crashing waves, heartened
warriors.95
even more. Not only Tukulti-Ninurta's
berserks
Dance
emboldened
91
Its Practice and Concepts, Columbia,

Primitive War,
S.C.,
Harry Holbert Turney-High,
2iiff.
I, Munich,
1959,
Etymologisches W?rterbuch
Julius Pokorny,
Indogermanisches
62?f. Mallory-Adams,
631.
Destiny,
Encyclopedia,
883. Dum?zil,
92 Iliad
est gens"; Strabo
ira cuius impotens
6, ioof; 9, 237fr; Livy 5, 37, 4: "flagrantes
4, 4, 2.
93 Iliad
warriors
3, 2-6; Aeneid
7, 705; Julian says the same of Germanic
(Misopogon
to Von See,
to Tacitus,
Germania
and hence
3 (though not, of course,
337c). To Vergil,
admirable manhood;
Friedrich Klingner,
"Germane,"
42-72,
53) such singing betokened
Eduard Norden,
Die germanische
Aeneis,
Z?rich,
1967, 5i5ff;
Ge?rgica,
Virgil, Buc?lica,
is silence always Roman
and
in Tacitus Germania,
1974, 1 i5ff. Nor
Darmstadt,
Urgeschichte
contra v. See ibid., 62f, see Caesar, Bellum Civile 3, 92.
shouting
always "barbarian,"
94
1, 85, 2 and 10; they are heaven's
singers (5, 57); Zimmer, Leben
1879, 294.
RigVeda
wind: Maurer,
Thunder,
Pinnacles,
1986, 131; 133.
95 Thracians:
"Truci cantu, clam
Tacitus, Annals
4,47. Celts: Livy 5, 37, 8 (387 b.c.):
cuneta compleverant
sono." Germans:
Tacitus, Germania
3, 1:
variis, horrendo
oribusque
accendunt
relatu quern barditum vocant,
"carmina quorum
2, 22; Annals
?nimos"; Histories
"vires validas erige
1, 65, 1: "laeto cantu aut truci sonore"; 4, 47; Ammianus
31, 7, n:
bant"; Norden,
ii5ff; Much, Germania,
j6?, 308; J. B. Rives, Tacitus Germa
Urgeschichte,
1971,
nia, Translated
with
Introduction
and Commentary,
Oxford,
1999,
i23f. Waves:
Ammianus
16,12,43.
274
OF WORLD
JOURNAL
HISTORY,
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on the battlefield; Vedic

Indians did the same.96 Indra and his
band of Marut warriors danced
adorned with golden plates.97 Greek
and Iranian warriors
likewise danced,
and to Hector
battle
itself was
on the battlefield,
dance.98 Ancient
Thracians
danced
and so did
danced
naked Celtic warriors, wearing only golden neckbands

and armrings.99
In Caesar's
time Romans
in hand, albeit no
still danced with weapons
longer as soldiers but as teams of Salian priests. Dances,
though done
by all early warriors,
their fury.100
mattered
particularly
to berserks
as they fanned
on the battlefield.101
Germanic
too, danced
warriors,
describes
the dance of their young, naked warriors thus:102
Tacitus
They have only one kind of show and it is the same at every gather
into a dance
ing. Naked youths whose sport this is fling themselves
between threatening swords and spears. Training has produced skill,
and skill, grace, but they do it not for gain or pay. However daring
their
Both
dancers
abandon,
their
only
reward
is the
spectators'
pleasure.
war dances and images of early medieval

war
Indo-European
bear out Tacitus'
tale of naked youths dancing with weapons
96 Atharva
on whom mortals
Veda 12, 1, 41: "The earth (=battlefield)
sing and dance
on whom
various noises,
the drum 'speaks,' may that earth rout
they fight, on whom
this I thank Walter
my rivals, rid me of my foes"; for help with
Maurer, my teacher. A Hit
tite bear-skin
dancer: Mallory-Adams,
56.
Encyclopedia,
97
Der arische M?nnerbund,
Lund,
Feudalismus,
Stig Wikander,
1938, 676?; Widengren,
Archaic Roman Religion, Chicago,
Dum?zil,
1970, 211; Birkhan, Germa
1969, 20; Georges
see also McCone,
i2of.
nen, 549ff. On the Maruts
"Hund,"
98 Andrew
in the Service
of Constantine
"Cornuti, A Teutonic
Alf?ldi,
Contingent
at the Milvian
in the Battle
the Great
and its Decisive
Role
Oaks
Bridge," Dumbarton
with
13, 1959, 169-183,

177; Beck, Stanzen,
2of, 56ff.
Feudalismus,
245ff; Widengren,
Iliad 7, 241. Drums
frenzied
Iranian warriors: Franz Altheim,
der Alten
Niedergang
2 vols., Frankfurt,
Welt.
Eine Untersuchung
der Ursachen,
1952, 46f. War dances of Ameri
can Indians: McCone,
126.
"Hund,"
99 Thracians:
et tripudiis persulta
Tacitus, Annals
4, 47: "more gentis cum carminibus
as
bant." Celts:
hence
2, 97, 7; K?VT|GI? is movements,
dance, not just gestures
Polybius
translated
C?ltica 8;
Mass.,
by W R. Paton, Polybius, vol. I, Cambridge,
1967, 315. Appian,
et tripudia"; Tacitus, Agricola
ineuntium
ululatus
33.
Livy 38, 17, 4: "Gallorum
proelium
100
inter lusum ac festa t?m
illi viri solebant
Seneca, Dialogues,
9, 17, 4: "Ut antiqui
in modum
"Sur les danses arm?es des
pora virilem
tripudiare." Salii: Livy 1, 20, 4; R. Bloch,
Annales
Archaic
Roman Religion,
211; McCone,
Saliens,"
13, 1958, 706-715;
Dum?zil,
Papers
Hector:
2, 62.
133. Fury: Tacitus, Germania,
3, 1;Valerius Maximus
the tribal name was done still
19; Much,
Plutarch, Marius
Germania,
84; shouting
in the middle
in germanischen
und Kultmythen
"Lebensnormen
ages: Karl Hauck,
und Herrschergenealogien,"
StammesSaeculum 6, 1955, 186-223,
2iof.
102
Germania
Tacitus,
24; Histories
19, 4; H?fler, Geheim
5, 17, 3; Plutarch, Marius
157; Hauck, Germania-Texte,
b?nde,
189ff.
"Hund,"
101
Speidel:
Berserks
275
in hand. Naked,
the youths were berserks. Assyrian
berserks, Celtic
even Aztec wild warriors all danced naked.103
Gaesati,
Indeed, being
as the best getup for strenuous dancing
barefooted
and barechested
as god of
may, in itself, have been a reason for fighting naked. Woden,
the berserks, led the dance. A Danish bracteate gold amulet shows him
a neckband,
and a hitherto
overlooked
dancing, wearing but a helmet,
the warriors
belt?like
Figure
Museum
from Grevenswaenge,
the shape-shifting,
3. Woden,
of Denmark).
103Gaesati:
Polybius
2, 29, 6; Aztecs:
Hirschlanden,
all-round warrior
and else
(National
below.
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like a hero, he twirls shield, ax, spear, and club,

Overarmed,
to show that he shakes them as he dances
(Fig. 3).105
the warriors together, entranced
song and dance bonded
Rhythmic
like war
their fighting madness.106 War
dances,
them, and aroused
and
battles
also
re-enacted
songs, however,
thereby changed
mythical
where.104
all bent
into mythic heroes.107 As Mircea

Eliade has put it, "The fren
the state of the sacred
zied berserkir ferocious warriors realized precisely
of
the
world."108
menos,
fury (wut,
furor)
primordial
on the Danish
medallion
wolf tail, recognizable
Woden's
by its
a
and
him
also
wolf-warrior
makes
tip,
shape-shifter.109
bent-up
in common with
into animal shapes, as it were, had much
Changing
warriors
this may be how bear- and

by battle madness;
being overcome
seen
as
came
to
in a
wild
and woundproof,
be
too,
warriors,
berserk.110
warriors
all ancient naked or half-naked
Whether
thought
as
is an open
did their medieval
selves woundproof,
counterparts,
wolf
word,
them
ques
state of fighting frenzy with
tion. The psychological
and physiological
its rise of adrenaline
levels could foster such a belief, for adrenaline
to
and narrows blood vessels in
"dilates the airways
improve breathing
so
an
increased flow of blood reaches the
that
the skin and intestine
. . .
them to cope with the demands of the exercise.
muscles,
allowing
to
into tissues
reduce bleeding."111
surgery, it is injected
During
rush," frenzied fighters may well have
Buoyed by this "adrenaline
than others. Vergil
themselves
stronger and less vulnerable
thought
104 See Woden

on the famous Finglesham
"The
belt buckle:
S. Chadwick-Hawkes,
40, 1965, 17-32.
Man," Antiquity
Finglesham
105 Photo: Dansk
inv. no 14/14. Museum
Nationalmuseet,
photograph
Copenhagen,
der V?lkerwanderungszeit
Die Goldbrakteaten
Karl Hauck,
I?III, Munich,
by Jesper Weng.
to
is the
no.
see
also III, 2, p. 129 and I, 1, p. i35f. "Vibrare,"
shake,
7;
1985, I, 3, 1985,
Latin word for throwing a spear: Tacitus, Germania
6,1; Seneca,
36, 7: "Si inGer
Epistulae,
in
C? Chulainn
vibraret." Overarmed:
mania
puer tenerum hastile
(natus esset) protinus
Old
Irish Tales;
106William
Birkhan, Kelten,
967.
H. McNeill,
Keeping Together
Mass.,
1995, 8; 17; io2ff.
in Time:
Dance
and Drill
inHuman
History,
Cambridge,
107
Eliade, Return, 28f.
31, 7, n. Dance:
3, 1;Ammianus
Songs: Tacitus, Germania
108
Eliade,
ibid., 29.
109 It has been taken for a horse
to a wolf tail;
end rather points
tail, but its upturned
contra: Karl Hauck,
for example,
the curled tail of the wolf on Frank's Casket;
witness,
. . ," Pietas,
eines Allgottes.
Festschrift K?tting
Bildzeugnisse
"V?lkerwanderungszeitliche
M?nster,
(ed. E. Dassmann),
1980, 566-583,
569.
110
bear warrior: Hr?lfs
saga Kraka
(Gwyn Jones, Eirik the Red and Other
Wound-proof
Gr?n
Icelandic Sagas, Oxford,
II, 94ff; Wilhelm
1961, 313O. De Vries, Religionsgeschichte
12th ed., Darmstadt,
1997, 274.
bech, Kultur und Religion der Germanen,
111Charles
B. Clayman
(ed.), The American Medical Association
Encyclopedia
of Medi
cine, New York, 1998, 414.
Speidel:
Berserks
277
fire nor steel hurt him.112 Of

that neither
says of the Latin Messapus
some Italic wolf-warriors
it was said that they
such as the Hirpi Sorani,
too were not hurt by fire.113 These are but scattered and vague hints for
are on firmer ground in the Nordic middle
ages. In the
antiquity. We
themselves
latter period, berserks, as followers ofWoden,
safe
thought
clubs.114 Half
by iron and fire, vulnerable
only to wooden
the
around
the
Malabar
discussed
amoks,
below, "stopped
way
world,
at fire nor sword."
neither
to
warriors of antiquity
all half-naked
Whether
roused themselves
from wounds
is unknown.
It is likely, though, for Strabo says that
fighting madness
were battle-mad,
all Celts
and Germans
and if regular warriors were
to
warriors
in
battle
elite
the first line would have raged
madness,
prone
even more. Battlefield
was certainly
a telling trait of many
madness
warriors,115 for they craved the fame and "unwilting
Indo-European
glory" praised in the Iliad and in the Rig Veda alike.116
To linguists, words and concepts
shared by Indo-Europeans
suggest
in
that fighting madly was a very old custom
that originated
perhaps
B.c. The word for "mad attack," eis-, shared by
the fourth millennium
it likely that the berserk
and Germanic
warriors, makes
style comes from the time before the dispersal of the Indo
117Dum?zil
put it thus:118
Europeans.
Iranian,
Vedic,
fighting
Aesma [to Zoroastrians] is one of the worst evils, and later, in the eyes
of the Mazdaeans,
the most frightful demon, who bodies forth the
destructive fury of society. Yet it only personifies as something bad a
quality that gives the Rig Veda, from the same root, an adjective of
praise for the Maruts, the followers of Indra, and for their father, the
dreadful Rudra: i?m?n "impetuous" and no doubt "furious." These
112Aeneid
fas igni cuiquam nec sternere ferro."
7,692: "quem ?eque
113
2, 93, 207-208.
Alf?ldi,
Struktur, tj{;
125; 187.
Pliny, Natural History
114
Edda, H?vam?l,
saga 46; G?ntert,
Geschichten,
i2?f; H?fler, Runen
156; Vatnsdoela
animal skins would guard them (like the
that wearing magical
stein, 93. Some also believed
in a.d.
reindeer coats of Thorir Hundr
and his eleven
193 and 228.
saga Helga
1030). ?l?fs
Furs, of course, offer also some natural protection
4, 11,3.
against blades: Pausanias
115
Strabo 4, 4, 2. De Vries, Religionsgeschichte
II, 94ff; Widengren,
Feudalismus,
45?;
208-212.
Dum?zil,
Religion,
116 Fame:
in indoger
und Dichtersprache
1, 85, 8; R?diger
Schmitt,
Rig Veda
Dichtung
manischer Zeit, Wiesbaden,
399.
Altertumskunde,
1967, 6iff; Schmitt,
117
Wikander,
M?nnerbund,
I, 117; Pokorny, W?rterbuch,
$?f, Altheim,
Niedergang
S. Novak,
and K.
211; H. Neumann,
19; Dum?zil,
Feudalismus,
299ff; Widengren,
Religion,
Schmuck und Waffen mit Inschriften aus dem ersten Jahrtausend, G?ttingen,
D?wel,
1995, no.
nomen
The unknown
from this root might
be the Indo-European
46: ais[i]?a?z.
agentis
word
for berserk, unless

118
Dum?zil, Mythes,
it isM?vxcop
(note 119).
215 (= Id?es romaines,
1969).
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OF WORLD
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words come from the root of Greek oiOTpo?, Latin ira, and, it seems,
from the Old Norse verb eiskra that describes the rage of the wild
berserk warriors; hence we meet here a technical term of the Indo
European
"warrior
bands."
B.c. was
in the second millennium
The mind of berserk warriors
two thousand
much
warriors
the same, it seems, as that of medieval
the word "mind," related to "mania," comes from
years later. In English,
the same root as the Sanskrit manas and Greek menos, both meaning
warriors menos meant
"a tempo
"spirit" as well as "fury." For Homeric
or
or
to
of
all
mental
do
one,
rary urge
many,
organs
something
bodily
came from
specific, an urge one can see but not influence." Menos
heroic
above; heroes owed their great deeds to it, and Indo-European
arose
one
it
its
From
forms
of
poetry sings
praise.119
sundry
abandoning
self to new identities
such as those of wolf-warriors
and berserks.120
a bear-shirt warrior.
In Old Norse
the word berserk at first meant
But when
bera (bear) became
bj?rn, the word berserk was no longer
as bear-warrior
and instead came to mean
understood
"bare-shirt."
shirt and armor were reckless mad
fought without
on
its
of mad fighter.121
modern meaning
the word berserk took
men,
is
in
still seen, however,
the berserk cus
The old bear-warrior meaning
tom of "biting" one's shield. The custom is known from Snorri Sturlus
Since
those who
son's Ynglinga saga, quoted

above, but also from the famous twelfth
in the Outer Hebrides.
century chess set found on the Isle of Lewis
set
in
warrior
Some of the
that
"bite" their shields. Biting
pawns
their teeth
rapidly on a shield makes a sound like that of bears clacking
attack.122
that
sounded
like
before
just
Shield-biting
threatening
they
trance.
the warrior's shape-shifting
bears further deepened
tradition from
Berserks thus embody an abiding spirit in unbroken
to
times
those of the Icelandic
and Homeric
Vedic
sagas. The history
warriors offers rich religious,
and military
detail
cultural,
from about 1300 B.c. to a.d.
1300 and links the bronze, iron, and mid
as belong
dle ages, three thousand years of history seldom understood
of berserk
ing together.
119
R?diger
120Heinrich
Schmitt,
Beck,
12.
104. Pokorny, W?rterbuch,

Dichtung,
726f, cf. M?vTC?p.
und die literarische ?berlieferung,
Bilddenkm?ler
vendelzeitliche
Einige
Munich,
1964,
121
138.
forthcoming,
Speidel, Wild Warriors,
122 Sturlusson:
their
above, p. 253. Bears clacking
vol. 3, New York, 1990, 400.
Mammals,
teeth: H. Grzimek,
Encyclopedia
of
Speidel:
Berserks
and
Greece
279
Rome
in Need
of
Berserks:
Pattern
and regular, as inMesopotamia,

Egypt,
imperial Rome,
they had to hire reckless attack
had to watch over them.123 True, Tukulti
troops from outside?and
no
mentions
Ninurta's
warriors other than the king's
epic
Assyrian
must
the
have
had
him regular Assyrian
with
sol
berserks, yet
king
diers as well, for wherever we meet berserks, we also find regular troops
Once
armies became
classical
Greece
disciplined
and
to keep them in check, especially when berserks serve as guards. Thus,

as seen on the Abu Symbel relief, Ramses
IImatched
his foreign Shar
dana guard with a native Egyptian guard.124 Trajan had with him bare
foot berserks as well as regulars (fig. 2), and so did King Harald Fairhair
in a.d. 872.125
of Norway
as civilized
of themselves
Greeks
and Romans
and of
thought
as
others
"barbarians." The
of "barbarism" was
telling characteristic
in bragging or whining,
whether
and over
wantonness,
over-eating
drinking, fighting rashly, or fleeing cravenly.126 To Plato and Aristotle,
warriors,127
gorging on food and drink, an ideal of Indo-European
meant
lack of self-control
and reasonableness,
while
the courage of
"barbarians" was little more than mindless
bragging. Besides,
they had
little to live for and so they rushed to their death, a view also taken of
in
American
Indians by Western
Mindlessness,
anthropologists.128
their view, was also the root of "barbarian" warrior
tactics, while
the art of disciplined
and Romans
perfected
fighting.129
It was not always thus. Greeks
abandoned
their inherited
Indo
we
see
on
but
In
the
Iliad
the
first
this
ways
step
European
slowly.
path:
Greeks
123
Gothic Wars 4, 33, 2 (Longobards).
E.g., Procopius,
124
Drews, End, 154.
125 Snorri
Haralds
Sturlusson,
9. Egils saga 9. Compare
saga H?rfagra
Heimskringla,
two guards, the Schola
Constantine's
and the Schola Gentilium,
Scutariorum
Notitia Dig
Das sp?tr?mische Bewegungsheer
und die Notitia Dig
nitatum, Oriens n; Dietrich
Hoffmann,
nitatum, D?sseldorf,
1969, 279fr.
126
Plato, Nomoi
(Celts); Plutarch, Marius
19,3 (Germans).
637,d,8
127
Schr?der,
Indra; also the warrior Vrkodarah,
1,15; Plu
"Wolf-belly,"
Bhagavadgita
Histories
Historia
tarch, Camillus
Tacitus,
(Gauls);
4,29,1
2,21,if;
5,44,6
(Germans);
Maximinus
Rhiannon
4,1 (a Thracian).
Ash, Ordering Anarchy. Armies and Lead
Augusta,
ers in Tacitus' Histories, Ann Arbor,
1999, 42f.
128
Ethics 1229b, 22f; Nicomachian
Ethics 1115b, 24ff;
Courage: Aristotle,
Euthydemian
Politics 1327b, 25. Little to live for: Ammianus
ad per
21, 13, 13, "Feritate speque postrema
niciosam
audentiam
Losers: Strabo 4, 4, 5. Indians: Turney-High,
War,
prompti."
14iff.
129
De ira 1, 11, 3-4; Dio 38, 45, 4-5;
2, 35, 2-3; Strabo 4, 4, 2; Seneca,
Polybius
Herodian
IIA 100); Ammianus
6, 3, 7; Dexippos,
26, 5 (Felix Jacobi, FGH
15,
fragment
Maximinus
4, 11; Historia Augusta,
3,1.
28o
JOURNAL
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OF WORLD
HISTORY,
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battle
the Trojans
groups kept quiet,
listening for orders, while
most
and
shouted.130
the
archaic
Greeks
laid
yelled
During
period
to live peacefully
aside their weapons
in cities and donned
dress
simple
instead of the gold-gleaming
warriors.131 The
garb of Indo-European
well-ordered
until
array of the classical period stood unshaken
hoplite
the Athenians
faced the backward Aetolians
who, fighting barefoot,
sent the hoplites
Athenians
later needed
attack
reeling.132 When
or Thracian
troops, they hired Aetolian
tribesmen, whose speed, fierce
as
armor
of
lack
warriors.133
and
mark
them
berserklike
ness,
warrior styles. Italic
still
shared
too,
Early Romans,
Indo-European
to
Celts
kindred
and Germans,
those styles to the Ital
tribes,
brought
iooo
ian peninsula
around
B.c.134 Over
lost those ways
time, Romans
recast their army into an Etruscan-type
of fighting,
and, as
phalanx,
the world,
their warriors became uniformed
soldiers.
they conquered
The
horse, and boar standards of the legions
sundry wolf, minotaur,
became
gave way to the eagle. Dress and weapons
simplified and uni
form; soldiers had their hair cut. When
attacked,
they stood still and
kept quiet until given the signal to fight.135 Their field commanders'
worst faults were speed and daring.136 "Rome," as Dum?zil
put it, "lost
even the memory
of those bands of warriors who sought to be more
much
on whom
was supposed
to
initiation
magico-military
was
and
whose
likeness
powers,
very
supernatural
presented,
its Berserkers
with
its
and by Ireland with
later, by Scandinavia
than human,
confer
Fianna."13?
In their early centuries Greek

the mad
berserk
Indo-European
Wulf
Bonn,
and Romans
style but also
had shared not only in

in the mythical
wolf
130
427-431.
Iliads
131
1, 6; Ammianus
23, 6, 75 (on Iranians as against Greeks).
Thucydides
132
Saturnalia 5, 18, i3?f.
3, 97ff; Macrobius,
Thucydides
133
and Rome at War,
Greece
7, 30; Peter Connolly,
London,
Thucydides
1981, 49;
vor Christus,
in der Kunst Athens
im 6. und 5. Jahrhundert
Zum Barbarenbild
Raeck,
1981.
134Celts
to each other and much

and Germans
kindred
alike: Strabo 4, 4, 2; Dio 38,
to each
Germanen.
Italic and Germanic
tribes were also closely
related
46, 2; Birkhan,
near the end
other?the
shows that the two were still neighbors
history of their languages
b.c.: H. Fromm, "Germanisch-finnische
of the second millennium
und ger
Lehnsforschung
in Beck, Germanenprobleme
manische
1999, 213-230,
2i6f; Schmidt,
Sprachgeschichte"
Isoglossen, 234^
135
Stand still: Caesar, Bellum Civile 3, 92; Maurice,
Miller, Mythology.
Strategicon 3, 5,
Sun Tsu, The Art ofWarfare,
3; i2,B 14; compare Sun Tsu, fragment 6, in Roger T. Ames,
New York, 1993, 247.
136
duci quam festinationem
Suetonius,
25, 4: "Nihil autem minus
Augustus
perfecto
convenire
arbitrabatur"
(i.e., haste and recklessness).
temeritatemque
137
210.
Dum?zil,
Religion,
Speidel:
281
Berserks
is famous for having been founded by a

style.138 Indeed, Rome
to much of Europe
wolf warrior with a wolf ancestor, a myth common
and Asia,
Southeast
and
the
Americas.139
Asia,
Later, in
including
warrior
and Rome
replaced these warrior styles
periods, Greece
on
based
which
allowed
them stunning con
others,
discipline,
in
in
because
soldiers
the same bond
quests,
step gave
part
marching
14?Yet it
oneness
to
of
warriors.
and
that
wild
energy
ing
dancing gave
to claim that western
would be wrong
Europe shut itself off from the
old styles, for Celts and Germans
upheld them.141
Greeks
and Romans
and Germanic
warriors' mad
gaped at Celtic
ness (vesania,
their fits of reckless rage, and their
iracundia, furor),
mindless
rush into battle.142 They
themselves
trusted to reason, will,
was
at
and order.143 That,
In practice,
the theory.
least,
though,
their classical
with
too had
to fight with madness:

steadiness
alone was not
felt that the keenest fighting spirit,
enough.144 Even classical historians
found in the troops of Alexander
and Caesar, came from fighting "like
Romans
138Greek
barefoot
above,
p. 265; Latin barefoot
fighters: Aetolians,
fighters: Vergil,
Iliad 9, 237-239;
459; 16,156-164;
McCone,
7,689f. Greek wolf warriors: Homer,
122.
"Hund,"
139
in der Mythologie
"Der Hund
der zirkum
7, 688f. Wilhelm
Vergil, Aeneid
Koppers,
und Linguistik
1, 1930, 359-399;
V?lker," Wiener
pazifischen
Beitr?ge zur Kulturgeschichte
et les Curiaces,
Paris. 1942, i26ff; Eliade, Shamanism,
Dum?zil, Horace
George
355?f; 466f.
140
McNeill,
Keeping.
141Claude
Tristes Tropiques
L?vi-Strauss,
(translated
by John and Doreen Weightman),
New York, 1977, 28iff.
142Celts:
Strabo, Geography
4, 195 (=4,4,2);
Livy 5, 37, 4 (387 b.c.); McCone,
Vitruvius
"Hund,"
113; Birkhan, Kelten,
968. Germans:
6,1,3-10;
Josephus, Bellum ludaci
cum 2, 377; Tacitus, Histories
4, 29: "inconsulta
ira"; Appian
4, 1,3; Dio 77, 20, 2; Paneg.
Lat. 12, 23, 4: "tarn pr?digos
sui." Ammianus
"rabies et immodicus
furor"; 16, 12,
16,12,30:
36; 25, 5, 33; 26, 7, 11; 31, 6, 3: "petulantia";
31, 5, 12: "vesania."
lordanes, Getica
24:
Var. 1, 24, 1: "gaudium comprobad,"
"beluina saevitia." Cassiodorus,
cf. Beowulf
1539 gebol
"Zur Bewaffnung
und Kampfesart
der Germanen,"
Acta Archeo
gen. Per Gustav Hamberg,
"Furor Teutonicus,"
10, 1998, 254-258,
logLca 7, 1936, 21-49,
39f; Dieter Timpe,
Hoops
see also De Vries, Religionsgeschichte,
254f. For ecstatic warriors
94ft. Cf. Tacitus, Annals
4,47 on Cohors
"prompta ad pericula."
Sugambra
143
19, 1, 15 (122); Appian
4, 1,3; Dio 38,
Josephus, Bellum ludaicum 4,45; Antiquitates
in Aristotle
over
found already
Politics
45, 4f. This
clich?,
1327, B 25, gets even more
Aeneid
worked during the third-century

in Dexippus:
Bruno Bleckmann,
Die Reich
wars, especially
skrise des III. Jahrhunderts
in der sp?tantiken und byzantinischen Geschichtsschreibung,
Munich,
vero militem
ordinat
1992, 2o8f. Panegyrici Latini 12, 24, 2: "Romanum
quem qualemque
et sacramenti
disciplina
religio confirm?t."
144
Silius
12,499: "irarumque omnis effundit habenas";
Italicus, P?nica
Vergil, Aeneid
Pharsalia 7, 551; 10, 72; Tacitus, Histories
5, 158: "rabies"; ibid., 172: "furentem"; Lucanus,
i, 63: "furore et rabie"; Josephus approves of frenzied attacks?if
done by Romans
(Bellum
ludaicum 3, 485: 7tpo0\)|li(X
in barbaros
Ammianus
fre
16, 12, 37: "iretque
?otifiovio?).
mens."
Claudian
for Honorius,
rabies!" Aeneid
7, 73, claims
8,
"quae tibi turn Martis
700-703;
Dum?zil,
Religion,
209;
390.
282
JOURNAL
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HISTORY,
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assessment
is
Dum?ziPs
taken as a whole,
Nevertheless,
warrior
ancient
lost the
styles.
right: Rome
In middle
and northern Europe, on the other hand, ancient warrior
and free
styles and fighting spirit lived on among Sarmatians, Germans,
beasts."145
as Strabo observed with keen insight.146 With

the Cimbri
in 60 B.c., the old
in 120 B.c., and again with Ariovistus
Celts
against the somewhat Romanized
styles began to make headway
Ariovistus
in Gaul.147 When
and his
and his warriors
faced Caesar
a speech
puts into Caesar's mouth
troops, Cassius Dio, for the occasion,
island Celts,
and Teutons
and Roman
clich?s about northern
of the Greek
that repeats many
it is also true:
is not only stereotype,
warriors; but Dio's description
these men were indeed tall, naked, reckless, loud, unruly, and rash.148
warriors held their own against Rome at the peak of her
Northern
freedom was dead
which
power,
prompted Tacitus' quip that German
After moving
the Roman
than Persian despotism.149
lier for Rome
frontier to the Rhine, Caesar began to recruit northern warriors. Later
tribal
bare-chested
emperors enrolled more and more of them. Many
armies in the first century A.D., among them
warriors served in Roman
in a.d. 83
auxiliaries whose victory at Mons Graupius
the Germanic
rule in Scotland.150
Roman
thus stood in an established
berserks
tradition, and as fleet
Trajan's
armies.151
footed attack troops such warriors were of great use to Roman
established
145
?o?KOTa.
Bellum Civile 2,151: ?? |??%occ OrjpK?Seaiv
Appian,
146 Sarmatians
Strabo 4,4,2; Seneca, Dialogi
Lucan 7, 432ff; Germans:
("Scythians"):
laeta bello gens." Ammianus
16, 12, 46: "Ala
4, 16, 1: "Germani
4, 15, 1;Tacitus, Histories
im Spiegel
"Die Germanen
der r?mischen
?neuntes." Hans Haas,
manni
bella alacriter
vor und zur Zeit des Tacitus," Gymnasium
in; George
73-114,
1943/44,
54/55,
Dichtung
Saeculum
"Der sarmatische
der germanischen
V?lkerwanderung,"
Hintergrund
Vernadsky,
S. Evans, The
Insular Celts: Birkhan, Germanen
2, 1951, 340-392;
1970, 391; 439; Stephen
in Dark-Age
Lords of Battle, Image and Reality of the Comitatus
1997.
Britain, Woodbridge,
147
1, 48; 7, 65; 8, 13; 4, 12-15.
Caesar, Bellum Gallicum
148Dio
1,40.
38, 45, 4-5, going far beyond Caesar, Bellum Civile
149
liber
acrior est Germanorum
Tacitus, Germania
37, 3, "Quippe pro regno Arsacis
lacessierit."
"florentissimum
tas." Annals
2, 88 [Arminius]:
James C. Russell, The
imperium
culture at
1994, 118 calls Germanic
Oxford,
Germaniza?on
Christianity,
of Early Medieval
the time "the most authentic
Alans,
Slavs, and Baits
though Sarmatians,
Indo-European,"
more about them.
might
equal them if we knew
150
R Spei
1;Aurelius
Victor, Caesares,
3, i4f; Michael
7,13,
Caesar, Bellum Gallicum
1994, i2ff. By the early
del, Riding for Caesar. The Roman Emperors' Horse Guard, London,
even felt a need to stand up to the northerners
and forbade
fourth century Rome
culturally
of long hair or furs in the city: Codex Theodosianus
the wearing
14, 10, 4: "Maiores crines,
inhiberi"
etiam
in servis intra urbem sacratissimam
indumenta
(a.d.
praecipimus
pellium
416).
Scotland:
151
Tacitus,
Tacitus, Agr?cola 36.

Histories
2, 22 (with 2,17);
see also Histories
2, 28; 2, 32; 2, 35; 3, 21; Annals
4> 73
Speidel:
Berserks
283
berserks are seen among the emperor's escort

him, bare-chested
the role of unprotected,
berserk-like war
for the first time. Thereafter,
a.d.
riors in the Roman
In
296 the would-be
guard grew steadily.
Under
emperorAllectus
joined his Frankish guards for battle dressed as they
in shirt or coat only, and without

armor.152 During
the conquest
a.d.
victorious
in
of Italy
311, Constantine's
horseguards wore, in true
no
while Maxentius'
berserk
armor, only helmets,
fashion,
losing
were
a
hauberks.153 Wearing
guardsmen were burdened with knee-length
no
as
we
a
armor was,
have seen,
berserk custom from the
helmet but
bronze age to the time of the Icelandic
sagas.154 Constantine's
foreign
Tukulti-Ninurta's
berserks
also in that both
guardsmen
paralleled
troops fought with the ruler in their midst.
before him, wore no cuirass when he
Emperor Julian, like Allectus
in
into the enemy during the ill-fated retreat from Ktesiphon
charged
a.d.
not
think
of
that
"did
his
cuirass"
Ammianus
says
Julian
363.
to mean
that Julian
(oblitus hricae), which has often been understood
or
a
in
in
cuirass
fit
The word
his
haste
of
absentmindedness.
forgot
can also mean
that Julian purposely
oblitus, however,
put the cuirass
out of his mind. Certainly,
into the fray to
Julian plunged
recklessly
rouse his followers
to fighting madness
It
(iras sequentium excitons).155
was a berserk feat by an emperor who, from first to last, relied on wild
northern
Toward
Germans,
cuirasses,
warriors.156
elite troops were

the end of the empire, when most Roman
men
to
his
shed first their
Gratian
allowed
(375-383)
then their helmets.157 By this time the berserk fighting spirit
152
Panegyrici La?ni 8, 16, 5.
153Constantine's
arch in Rome,
battle at the Milvian
161, plate 20; likewise Galerius'
winning
guard as shown
am sogenannten
des Galerius
Frieszyklen
Triumphbogen
1994,
Bridge: Speidel,
Riding,
on his arch: Hugo Meyer,
"Die
in Thessaloniki,"
Jahrbuch des
deutchen Arch?ologischen
Instituts 95, 1980, 394. Constantine's
Libanius
troops, Germanic:
Or. 30, 6; Zosimus
P. Speidel,
for the Late Roman
2, 15,1 ;Michael
"Raising New Units
Oaks Papers 50, 1996, 163-170,
170.
Palatina," Dumbarton
Army: Auxilia
154
but no armor; figs. 1, 3; Egils saga 53.
Helmets,
155Ammianus
immemmor"
like the "cavendi
25, 3, 3 (to be understood
25, 3, 6). See
s.v. "obliviscor."
Discussion:
Bleckmann,
Reichskrise,
Oxford Latin Dictionary
384. Ammi
anus 25, 3, 6: "iras sequentium
semet in pugnam." Ammianus'
excitans
effunderet
audenter
of Gerhard Wirth,
the suicide hypothesis
Kriterien
report excludes
"Julian's Perserkrieg.
einer Katastrophe,"
in Richard Klein
Darmstadt,
(ed.), Julian Apostata,
esp.
1978, 455-509,
490.
156
25, 4, 10: "augebat fiduciam
Julian, Letter to the Athenians
285 b.c.; Ammianus
militis
inter primos."
dimicans
157
dein cassides
1,20: "itaque ab imperatore
primo catafractas,
Vegetius
postulant
Erich Sander,
"Die Germanisierung
des r?mischen
Zeit
Historische
Heeres,"
deponere";
in Front?" Gedenkschrift
P. Speidel,
Eric
"Who Fought
schrift 160, 1939, 1-34, 3of; Michael
and W. Eck, Cologne,
1999.
Birley, ed. B. Dobson
JOURNAL
284
OF WORLD
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of mad
its tactics.
attack had pervaded
the Roman
army and changed
in a.d. 354 Constantius
II won a battle against the Alamanni
three of his officers, Arintheus,
and Bappo, rushed
Seniauchus,
the enemy in disorderly, wild lunges: "non iusto proelio sed discursion
to outdo other war
ibus."158 Northern
freedom, daring, and yearning
Thus,
when
riors, had
order and drill; heroic

replaced Roman
single combat had
movement
units.
of
The
berserk
spirit held the
disciplined
replaced
field.159
In the battle
at Adrianople
in a.d. 378 this undisciplined
spirit of
sealed the fate of Emperor Valens
and the Western
empire.
its army was no longer Roman
lost the battle because
but con
sisted mainly
of tribal warriors
imbued with the spirit of reckless attack
At
rather than Roman
these warriors charged,
Adrianople,
discipline.
at
the emperor's
orders
and
the
time, thereby upsetting
wrong
against
a
Germanic
battle plan. When
fell
back?also
custom, befitting
they
attack
Rome
brought on the great rout, a

troops?they
cause
but
nevertheless
the proximate
overlooked,
for the fall of the Roman
Berserks
have
may
empire.160
helped Assyria
a great deal, for after Tukulti-Ninurta
rose meteorlike
in the
Assyria
wars of the time. Berserks
for a long
likewise proved useful to Rome
time, as they did under Trajan. However,
though berserks fought fear
one
to
control
their
needed
stormy unruliness. Tukulti-Ninurta
lessly,
more
lightly armed
fact historians
have
tribal
and Trajan had their berserks well in hand, and Julian

warriors
had the power to hold back teeth-gnashing
moment.
Valens
did not, and so he failed.161
in a.d. 363 still

until the right
158Ammianus
15, 4, 11. Compare
Julian's tactics criticized
Emperor
by Gregor Naz
ianzenus Or. 5, 13 as ?x?iecoic
?K?pouxxi?.
159
120 (on Merovingians):
"Nicht die Disziplin
und die reibungslos
Bodmer, Krieger,
waren
hier
der kriegerische
funktionierende
sondern
Organisation
ausschlaggebend,
Schwung."
160Ammianus
to give ground, Germanic

tactics was never
tactics
31, 12, 16. Roman
to the attack: Caesar, Bellum Civile
included fleeing and then returning
1,44; Tacitus, Ger
mania 6, 4; Anna?s
cf. 2, 14; Fronto,
2, 3, 23.
1, 56; 2, 11: "fugam simulantes,"
Strategemata
Maurice,
11,3 offers a strange contradiction
(a manuscript
error?), followed
by
Strategicon
in J. Hoops,
M. Springer,
der germanischen
Reallexikon
Altertumskunde
17,
"Kriegswesen"
2001, 341. More
1956, 78;
Cambridge
lightly armed troops: R. S. Smail, Crusading Warfare,
in Roman Europe AD
cf. Maurice,
Elton, Warfare
3, 10, 15. Overlooked:
Hugh
Strategicon
review thereof, American Historical
Review,
Oxford,
1997,
350-425,
1996, 266; see Speidel
II39
161
16, 12, 12: Stridore dentium
Julian: Ammianus
12, 16: immature proruperant.
infrendentes.
Valens:
Ammianus
31,
Speidel:
Mad
Berserks
285
Worldwide
Warriors
outlined
the history of Indo-European
berserks, we
Having
in world history. Fighting
look for mad warriors
elsewhere
is in the nature of mankind
individual
and in groups,
and
for example,
been harnessed
for military
purposes; witness,
Lucena Salmoral:162
quachic warriors as described by Manuel
may
now
madness,
has often
the Aztec
The [Aztec] army was centered around those veterans or professional

soldiers called the quachic, who had vowed never to retreat in battle
in combat. They
and always took up the most dangerous positions
were considered mad and likely to live short lives, though they enjoyed
certain privileges, such as being allowed to dance with the courtesans
at night in the cuicalli or house of song. Sahagun wrote: "They were
is the name for deranged albeit valiant
called quaquachictin, which
men
in war...
reckless.'"
taking
As
also
...
otomi
otlaotzonxintin
which
means
'otomis
shorn
and
They were great slaughterers but held to be incapable of
command.
stalwarts
the quachic neatly

by their unusual hairstyle,
as
as
warriors
well
the shorn Malabar
longhaired
Indo-European
to
we
turn
whom
will
below.
The
madness
amoks,
very likely
quachics*
in a trance-like
refers to their fighting
state, which would explain why
of command. Their dances at night in the
they did not reach positions
"House of Song" may have been not so much
sexual privilege as a form
a
in
of "keeping together
exercise
that brings about an
time,"
military
marked
match
and energy as well as a trance that could

feeling of oneness
as a
danced before battle,
easily lead to fighting madness.163 Aztecs
reports:
eyewitness
Spanish
intense
That night more than a thousand knights got together in the temple,
with great loud sounds of drums, shrill trumpets, cornets and notched
. . .
They
bones.
rows
and
keeping
danced
time
nude
to
the
...
tune
in a circle,
holding
of the musicians
their
and
hands,
in
singers.164
162Manuel
Lucena
York, 1990, 202. Nature
Salmoral, America
1492, Portrait of a Continent
500 Years Ago, New
of mankind:
John C. Spores, Running Amok: A Historical
Inquiry,
Athens/Ohio,
Tsunemoto,
(translated
1988, 7. Yamamoto
(1710),
Hagakure
by William
Scott, New York, 1979, 30): "A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges
towards an irrational death."
recklessly
163
8; 103fr.
McNeill,
Keeping,
164Antonio
Herrara,
104. See also Bernai D?az del Cas
quoted by McNeill,
Keeping,
verdadera de la conquista de laNueva
las fiestas y
tillo, Historia
125: "En acabando
Espa?a,
. . .
bailes y sacrificios
luego le hab?an de venir a dar guerra."
286
JOURNAL
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"naked" may have strengthened

their frenzy, but they did not
Dancing
scorn the quilted cotton armor that most Aztec
elite warriors wore.165
Nor do we know whether
and bragged, or provoked
they blustered
in their dancing
enemies
their
by other shows of daring. Nevertheless,
as
as
in
well
their decisive
role in battle
frenzy and fighting madness,
and resulting high status, the quachics closely resemble
Indo-European
berserks.
The
between
similarities
and berserks could be due to
quachics
was contact
shared historical
between
Eurasia
and
origins?there
across the Bering Sea, and Aztec wolf warriors
America
look much
wolf warriors.
If not stemming
like Indo-European
from contact,
such
to the structure and
traits common
similarities must be due to human
a warrior
is to
of all warrior societies.166 The more willing
functioning
attack recklessly,
the more useful he may be in battle; hence warrior
societies often fostered and rewarded such behavior, granting high rank
to the reckless. To be reckless, a warrior had to be mad
in some way,
or
to
strike
fear into
whether
And
oath,
belief,
dance,
magic.
by drug,
the heart of the enemy, he had to flaunt his recklessness
by insignia,
and dress, or lack thereof. Such structures and func
helmet, hairstyle,
as well: with
tions no doubt underpinned
berserkdom
Indo-European
out them it would not have abided so long and spread so far.
from the no-retreat
about such warriors
Luckily we know much
societies of the North American
Plains Indians. Among
the Arapaho,
in the Dog Dance
for example,
the leader and his four associates
into battle with scarves trailing
pledged never to retreat. "They went
at the beginning
which
of the action they staked to the ground so that
they could not flee. Even worse was the plight of the Oglala Dakota
men went
into battle with such a vow
Brave Hearts, whose no-flight
iron. With
but armed only with rattles or deer dew-claws
tipped with
inadequate weapons
they rushed the enemy and tried to stab
to these
themselves
them before they could draw the bow."167 Tying
were
as
as
brave
berserks.
also
they
recklessly
They
fought
handicaps,
these
nearly
naked
and
thus differ
from berserks
only
in that perhaps
they
bragged less during the fight.
165Ron
Oklahoma,
1988, 88 and p. 38, fig. 2.
Hassig, Aztec Warfare,
166Contact:
28iff.
Eliade,
Shamanism,
333?f; L?vi-Strauss,
Tropiques,
Speidel, Wild
shows military
Warriors,
McNeill,
forthcoming.
Keeping,
dancing
frenzy to be a worldwide
phenomenon.
167
Turney-High,
War,
1971,
21 if.
Speidel:
Berserks
287
character of these warrior societies and their role in

The worldwide
it
the reckless fighting
battle makes
whether
hard to determine
style
or
arose
In 1662,
in India is of Indo-European
origin
independently.
described
serving in the Dutch East India Company,
Johan Nieuhof,
coast as an elite troop among
the amoks he observed on the Malabar
warrior
the Nayro
caste:168
Tho' the Nayros in general are very good soldiers, yet there is a cer
tain kind among them called Amokos, who are esteemed above all the
rest, being a company of stout, bold, and desperate bravadoes. They
oblige themselves by most direful imprecations against themselves and
their families, calling heaven to witness, that they will revenge certain
injuries done to their friends or patrons, which they certainly pursue
with so much intrepidity, that they stop neither at fire nor sword to
take vengeance of the death of their master, but like mad men run
upon the point of their enemies swords, which makes them be gener
ally dreaded by all and makes them to be in great esteem with their
who
kings,
are
accounted
more
potent,
the
greater
the
number
they
. . . Persons of the chiefest rank, if

entertain of those Amokos.
they
will be admitted in the number of the Nayros, must have the king's
peculiar leave for it, and are afterwards distinguish'd by a gold ring
they
wear
on
the
right
arm.
If one
judges by their Sanskrit name, related to Greek aner, "man,"

the nairs ("heroes") were warriors of Indo-Euro
Nero,169
customs with
Indo-Euro
pean tradition.170
Indeed, they share many
such as calling down "dire imprecations"
upon
pean elite warriors,
if they are not faithful to the death,171
themselves
and their families
and Roman
168
Johan Nieuhof,
Voyages and Travels to the East Indies 1653-1670
(1704 translation),
i6f.
Reid, Oxford,
1988, 263; Spores, Amok,
169
A Sanskrit-English
765; M. Monier-Williams,
Dictionary,
Pokorny, W?rterbuch,
Les dieux souverains des Indo-Europ?ens,
Oxford,
Paris,
Dum?zil,
1889, 529, 567; Georges
von Mandelslo,
"nair" still meant
"hero" is reported by Johan Albrecht
1986, 214. That
ed. A.
1658, 142.
Morgenl?ndische
Reysebeschreibung,
Schleswig,
170
Dum?zil,
Feudalismus,
36; 42fr. They are described
Religion, 207; 2ioff; Widengren,
as an exclusive warrior caste by Cam?es
sos s?o
"Os Naires
around 1550, Lusiadas 7, 36-39:
dados ao perigo das armas; sos defendem
da contrar?a banda o seu Rei."
171A custom
known
from Indo-European
oaths
among Hittites,
Batavi,
military
Indian warriors. Hittites: Norbert Oet
troops, and, notably, Vedic
Emperor Julian's Frankish
Eide der Hethiter, Wiesbaden,
4, 15: "pater
1976; Tacitus, Histories
tinger, Die milit?rischen
nis execrationibus
universos
21, 5, 9f: "pro eo." Julian's
adigit," explained
by Ammianus
Franks: Ammianus
Ursula Dronke,
The Poetic Edda II,
21, 5, 10. Hoops
6, 1986, 537-542;
II, G?ttingen,
Oxford,
1999, 324; Vedic: Heinrich
1959, 655fr.
L?ders, Varuna
288
JOURNAL
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their
by their number,
wearing
golden armbands,172 and determining,
berserk
leader's prestige.173 The amoks also shared with Indo-European
like troops revenge for their leader as a cause for their reckless attacks:
at the murder of Caligula
in a.d. 41, the German
bodyguard went ber
to
serk
avenge the murder of their prince.174 In defeat, Germanic
troops
to avenge their fallen; indeed, to avenge
often stayed on the battlefield
leader or fellow warrior
a fallen
Saxon
was one of the main
duties
of Anglo
warbands.175
specifically berserk is the amoks' mad run at the blades of the

of fire or sword.176 Another
berserk trait is flaunting
enemy, heedless
eve
of
their
haircut
attack
their madness
the
(on
they shaved head,
by
in
drawn
their weapons
and always holding
face, and eyebrows),177
"loaded guns," says Alvaro Velho who in 1498 came
their hands?like
More
to Calecut.178
nairs (and
Like Vedic warriors,
da Gama
berserks the custom of
shared with Nordic
amoks) furthermore
to other men's women
ruler nor
and goods: neither
themselves
helping
men
so
since
such
for
them
from
needed
community
they
doing
kept
as found in Plato's Republic that would grant sexual privi
war, much
emperors who granted
leges to the best fighters, or like late-Roman
with
Vasco
hence
such rights to their Germanic

guards.179
to prove that the fighting
is not enough
All of this, however,
styles
berserks share a common
of the Malabar
amoks and the Indo-European
amok warriors were every bit as brave and madly reckless
origin. While
in
as berserks,
they seem not to have thrown off armor or garments
172
et Dieux des Indo-Europ?ens,
Paris, 1992, i78f: at the time
Dum?zil, Mythes
Georges
the
elite warriors wore golden arm rings, as did Indra and his warband,
of the Mahabharata,
The golden arm rings worn by nair leaders are reported by other travelers
dancing Maruts.
as well: Mandelslo,
of elite Indo-European
141. Arm
rings as a custom
Reysebeschreibung
Feu
Strabo 4, 4, 2; H?fler, Runenstein,
Germania,
388; Widengren,
19if; Much,
Steuer,
Quellen
dalismus,
arch?ologischer
"Interpretationsm?glichkeiten
57f, 62; Heiko
zum Gefolgschaftsproblem,"
der
in G. Neumann
and H. Seemann,
Beitr?ge zum Verst?ndnis
warriors:
des Tacitus
II, G?ttingen,
1992, 203-257.
Bellum Gallicum
2, 17, 12; Caesar,
6, 15, 1-2 (Celts); Tacitus, Germania,
Polybius
13, 2 (Germans).
174 Flavius
19, 1, 15 (122); Suetonius,
58; Speidel, Riding,
Caligula
Josephus, Antiquities
23^ 67.
175
at
Battle of Maldon
11,3; Beowulf 590-597;
Maurice,
Finnsburg;
Fight
Strategicon
S. Evans, Lords of Battle, Woodbridge,
1997, 7of.
207ff; Stephen
176
p. 277.
Above,
177
London,
1903, 18-23.
Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson,
178Alvaro
Lis
ed. Neves
Roteiro da prima voyagem de Vasco da Gama,
Velho,
Aguas,
trazem aquelas armas nuas ?as manos."
porque
bon, 1988, 78: "S?o homenes
carregados,
179Vedic warriors:
Dum?zil,
i4if.
Destiny,
7of. Nairs: Mandelslo,
Reysebeschreibung,
Berserks: G?ntert,
emperors: Lactan
Geschichten,
9ft. Plato, Republic 468 b-c. Late-Roman
2, 42,1.
tius, De mortibus persecutorum
38, 5-7; Zosimus
Germania
173
Speidel:
Berserks
289
as a matter of
sight of the enemy, for they strutted about barechested
the amoks
for whether
course.180 This robs us of an essential criterion
stand in the berserk tradition.Wild bands of Indo-European Vedic

are known,181
them and the Malabar
warriors
relation between
but to claim a direct historical
reck
amoks, one would have to find post-Vedic
between
500 B.c. and a.d.
1500. This seems pos
less Indian warbands

in ancient and medieval
India has been
sible, for the history of warfare
it is better known,
the
little studied, and is still largely unknown. Until
and Malay amoks remains obscure and a promis
origin of the Malabar
ing subject for research.
The title "amok" is of little help in tracing the origin of these Mal
as in
Itmay come from the Sanskrit amogha (unfailing),
abar warriors.
the warrior name Amogha-Vikrama
and
have
valor)
may
(unfailing
meant
amok troops
avenger."182 But since among Malays
"unfailing
were
amoks may have drawn
the Malabar
their title from
famous,
word amok or hamok for "fierce
them, that is, from the Austronesian
attacker."183 If so, the word, and perhaps parts of the custom itself, were
contact or
to the Malabar
coast during early Malabar-Malay
brought
from
Malacca.
the
Portuguese
by
Since warrior customs endured for thousands of years, one may even
historical
that would
ponder a Paleo-Eurasian-American
relationship
as well as Malay
no-retreat
societies
amok
include North American
came to
of Southeast
forebears
Asia, whose Austronesian
of
Taiwan
and
the
Indonesia
from China
Of all
by way
Philippines.
or not these traditions
arose
this we cannot be certain, but whether
to
of
lend
themselves
well
each
other, they
comparative
independently
of mad warriors and their soci
studies that widen our understanding
warriors
eties worldwide.
Conclusion
sources allow us to trace Indo-European
Literary and archaeological
B.c. to the second millennium
berserks from the second millennium
to
to
from
Icelandic
bronze
a.D.,
age epics
sagas, and from West Asia
180Alvaro
coast men of standing went

Velho,
Roteiro,
76, says that on the Malabar
"E andam nus da cinta para cima ... os mais honrados";
likewise Mandelslo,
141.
Reysebeschreibung,
181
notes 94, 96.
Above,
182
Monier-Williams,
Yule-Burnell,
83. Other
suggestions:
Dictionary,
etymological
i8ff.
Hobson-Jobson,
183 B.
at the Department
in preparation
of
Blust, Austronesian
Dictionary,
Comparative
at Manoa.
of Hawai'i
Linguistics,
University
barechested:
JOURNAL
2?O
America.
North
dancing
We
and naked
can follow
fighting,
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
2002
their peculiar customs such as frenzied

into their ideals of reckless
and probe
bravery.
from the
Indo-European
history
new
and
details
gains
perspectives.
a presence?of
points to an origin?or
iron age to the middle

ages thus
rich evidence
for berserks
this warrior style in Proto-Indo
The
times. However,
like Aztec
reckless warriors
European
quachics and
Malabar
amoics occur in many other cultures as well, which holds great
for a worldwide
and historical
promise
comparative
study, here only
sketched and yet to be undertaken.
In
changed over the centuries.
at
the
end
of
the
bronze
age,
fighting
but later they fared badly against disci
plined troops, above all those with archers in their ranks, such as the
Romans184 or the Norman
English. Berserk fighting survived longest in
or
in medieval
small-troop
single combat roles such as those described
The
berserks'
the haphazard
mad attackers
role
in battle
greatly
hand-to-hand
achieved much,
sources. Against
Scandinavian
no
InWorld War
chance.
stand
modern
berserk
attacks
weaponry,
II, for example,
gallant Japanese ban
zai charges gained nothing.185

the thought of a berserk attack still arouses in us feel
Nevertheless,
the history of this warrior
ings of empathy. That helps us understand
true that,
that gave rise to it. It is not altogether
style and the mindset
as men,
ancient warriors elude us186?in
berserks we
understanding
can bridge the gap. As Northrop
joy is in those rare
Frye said: "Genuine
moments
when you feel that although we know in part, we are also part
of what we know."187
18<
6, 7, 8 (a.d. 235).
Livy 38, 21, 8ff; Herodian
185 It remains
to be seen whether
fearlessness
(the "chemical
soldier")
drug-induced
tactics do not:
and whirlwind
may have a future, but socially acquired fearlessness,
bragging,
Heroes.
Gabriel,
186Thus
260.
Piggott, Europe,
187The Educated
1964, 33.
Imagination,
Bloomington,

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Berserks: A History of Indo-European "Mad Warriors"

Author(s): Michael P. Speidel

to thank my colleagues Margot Henriksen

Journal ofWorld History, Vol. 13, No. 2

elated with the wind streaming

show that they stand in an age-old, well-defined

and praises the fighting

charge forward furiously to the fray without armor,

outside Greek and Roman

thus learn from the epic that in fits of battle-madness

are also customs

like wolves, while

that the bigger the gap in time and space

the berserk style from their north

ians of the thirteenth

its tactics, 20 years before Meryre's

it was the decisive factor. Certainly

no better order than

countries of the time

284), but cavalry troops came later: Drews,

too, fought like lions or other grim animals.24 They,

are the essential

in relief on a huge monolith

at the King's Gate

in the face of the

enemy which points to the berserk fighting style. We cannot be certain

frenzy and thereby suggests that naked bronze-age

31: the Karditsa

i . Berserk warrior from Hirschlanden,

on firmer ground when

The Celts who came to

such as the Aetolians

while Livy as a literary source attests

flowing blond hair on his helmless head,

in der griechischen Kunst, Berlin,

11, 666f; Propertius

turn to the viewer. The one to the left,

a head taller than the men next to him. This

(middle and right foreground). Trajan's Column,

reckless and brave.62

B.c. and was still held

their army in Italy still included bare-chested

2,5,3; 2>6,7- Merovingians:

96of. Legends: G?ntert,

shirts, they very likely threw them off to fight

in part the translation

He threw off his armor

forbade berserks,83 but their spirit lived on. Among

is, to the coming

years will do.

Its Practice and Concepts, Columbia,

on the battlefield; Vedic

naked Celtic warriors, wearing only golden neckbands

war dances and images of early medieval

13, 1959, 169-183,

like a hero, he twirls shield, ax, spear, and club,

into mythic heroes.107 As Mircea

this may be how bear- and

104 See Woden

fire nor steel hurt him.112 Of

for berserk, unless

son's Ynglinga saga, quoted

104. Pokorny, W?rterbuch,