Category: Real men

As for the clothing of symbolic animal skins, it obeys a shamanic, totemic and pagan tradition to the core, and we pay attention to this because it expresses a very important idea.

The wolf and the bear are signs of free masculinity—pure, wild, fertile and unrestrained. The skin of the bear or the wolf was achieved by fighting the animal in body-to-body combat and killing it. An initiatory test of the berserkers as well as among some Celts was killing a boar.

The berserkers were thus suggested that they seized the totemic qualities inherent in the animal in question—bear or wolf—acquiring their strength and ferocity, possessing their qualities as if they had conquered for themselves, and adopting the skin of the vanquished beast as symbol of this transformation. As a sign of prestige, many berserkers added the word björn (bear) to their names, resulting in names such as Arinbjörn, Esbjörn, Gerbjörn, Gunbjörn or Thorbjörn. The wolf (proto-Germanic ulf) resulted in names like Adolf, Rudolf, Hrolf or Ingolf.

Mircea Eliade said regarding the appropriation of animal skins that the man became a berserkr after an initiation that specifically involved warrior tests. Thus, for example, among the Chatti, Tacitus tells us, the applicant did not cut his hair or his beard before killing an enemy. Among the Taifali, the young man had to shoot down a boar or a bear and among the Heruli it was necessary to fight without weapons. Through these tests, the applicant appropriated the form of being of the beast: he became a fearsome warrior insofar as he behaved like a beast of prey. He transformed himself into a overman because he managed to assimilate the magical-religious force shared by the butchers.

Once again, this will be seen as primitive and barbaric, but the Romans did it as well, as we can see in the standard bearers of the legions, which were covered with skins of wolves, bears or wild cats (as a Barbarian Indo-European people, the ancient peoples of the Italian peninsula, ancestors of Latins, should have had their own version of the ‘possessed warrior’).

Also the Greek hero Heracles, after fighting a monstrous lion and killing him with his bare hands, put on his skin. The Irish Cú Chulainn killed a monstrous mastiff and took his place as guardian of Ulster. Siegfried, the hero of Germanism, bathed in the blood of the dragon Fafnir, killed by him, and with it he became almost invincible.

In the mysteries of Mithras, a restricted military cult only for men and practiced by the legions of Rome, the initiates were covered in the blood of the sacrificed bull in a ceremony of high suggestive power.

In the same line of related examples, we have other cases that refer to ‘second skins’ and hardening baths: Achilles was bathed by his mother in the waters of the dark Styx River, which made him invulnerable.

The Celtic goddess Ceridwen possessed a magical cauldron that gave health, strength and wisdom to all who bathed in it. Spartan mothers bathed their newborns in wine, because they thought that it hardened the hard and finished off the soft.

The waters of the Ganges, even today, are considered healthy for the Hindus. The idea behind all these myths was that exposing oneself to destructive, telluric and dark forces would help to harden the ‘envelope’ of the initiate and protect him in the future against similar experiences in the field of death and suffering.

All this symbolised, in addition, the struggle of the spirit to take control of the telluric beast, after which it was covered with the conquered; it entered the empty shell, possessed it, transformed it in its image and likeness and, at the same time, changed his personality for a different one, entering a new phase and also symbolising the transition to a new way of perceiving the environment and seeing things—a new skin, a new shell, a new shield—; the perception of the world through the senses of the beast; to take possession of matter and, from within, transform it into the image and likeness of the spirit.

This philosophy of possession is a characteristic feature of all initiatory warrior societies. In certain elite units of the Nazi SS, one of the tests was to fight, unarmed and bare-chested, against a wolfhound or a raging mastiff. As reminiscent of all these issues in the middle of the 19th century, the Imperial Hussars of the II Reich, heirs of the elite warrior units of Germanism, sang: ‘We dressed in black / blood we bathed / with the Totenkopf in the helmet / Heil! / We are invincible!’

Those Berserkers who fought naked were related to the behaviour of the early Celts, who also did it (in fact, the figure of the ‘possessed warrior’ was also recurrent among the Celts). Their bodies, tanned from childhood, did not feel cold even if they were naked on the snow. As we have said, some of them also painted themselves in black, vindicating the dark and fiery side, typical of the ages in which light is harassed.

We have already seen how the Roman Tacitus described the Harii who, painted and with black shields, launched themselves into combat with superhuman ferocity. For the ancient Indo-Iranians, the god Vishnu in the dark ages was dressed in dark armour to fight the demons, hiding to the world his luminous appearance. But at the dawn of the new golden age, he would strip off his black breastplate and the world would know his luminous inner aspect.

In Iran, the männerbund of the Mairya wore black armour and carried black flags. Symbolically, it was said that they killed the dragon, and usually they acted at night. The Cathars were dressed in long black robes, and their religious banners were black (some with a white Celtic cross inside). Also the SS dressed in black and wore black flags, in addition to the macabre Totenkopf which symbolised the domain of the darkness; of what belongs to the left hand, to the sinister side, fear, death and horror.

To dominate and to know the enemy is to dominate and know the bear, the wolf, the dragon, the bull or the totemic animal that the fighting man discovers in himself. To cover oneself with black is to cover oneself with the skin of the enemy beast, because darkness is the enemy—until it is dominated.

by Evropa Soberana

 
The ‘berserkergang’ or possession

Before combat, the berserkers entered together in a trance called berserksgangr or berserkergang. This trance was the process of possession, for which not everyone was prepared, because their energy could destroy the body of the profane. According to the Scandinavian tradition, such a state of ecstasy began with a sinister chill that ran through the body of the possessed and made his hair raise on end and produce goosebumps.

This was followed by contraction of the muscles, a premonitory tremor, increased blood pressure and tension, and a series of nervous tics in the face and neck. Body temperature began to rise. The nasal fins dilated. The jaw tightened and the mouth contracted in a psychotic grimace revealing the teeth. Then came a disturbing grinding of teeth. The face was inflated and changed colour, ending in a purple tone. They began to foam through the mouth [1], to growl, to shake, to roar and scream like wild animals, to bite the edges of their shields, to beat their helmets and shields with their weapons and to tear their clothes, invaded by a fever that took possession of them and turned them into a beast, their blind instrument.

Witnessing such a transformation must have been something really alarming and anguishing, reminiscent of the most urgent panic. It was a full-fledged initiation transformation, and some have seen in it the origin of the legends of werewolves.

After this process, the berserkers received the Od or Odr (called Wut in Germania and Wod in England), the inspiration that Odin granted to some warriors, initiates and poets, touching them with the tip of his spear Gugnir (‘shuddering’).

With it they became a furious whirlwind of blood and metal. The physical strength of the ‘inspired’ by Od fever increased in a superhuman and inexplicable way, and also increased their resistance, aggressiveness and combative fanaticism. The pain, the fear or the fatigue disappeared, and what replaced them was an intoxicating sensation of will, unstoppable power and desire to destroy, devastate, kill, annihilate and overthrow. A good reference to the Celtic version of the berserkergang can be found in Táin Bó Cúailnge, which describes the transformation of the hero Cú Chulainn before the battles:

Then contortion seized him. You would have thought that it was a hammering wherewith each little hair had been driven into his head, with the arising with which he arose. You would have thought there was a spark of fire on every single hair. He shut one of his eyes so that it was not wider than the eye of a needle. He opened the other so that it was as large as the mouth of a meadcup. He laid bare from his jawbone to his ear; he opened his mouth to his jaw so that his gullet was visible.

The Berserkers went on to fight furiously without caring at all about their own lives or physical safety. Many preferred to carry a sword and an axe instead of a single weapon with the shield [2]. In groups of twelve, they charged savagely against the enemy regardless of their numerical inferiority, and wounds that would kill anyone did not change them in the least. In cases of defence against overwhelming crowds, they formed an impenetrable circle from which they fought until the death of the last man.

If we imagine the appearance of those men laden with muscles, veins, nerves and tendons, with their face twitching under the skin of the beast, the fanatical clear eyes opened like plates and shining with that acies oculorum that Julius Caesar and Tacitus noticed among the German warriors; the teeth clenched with fury and foaming, splashed with enemy blood… we will instantly understand that those warriors had nothing to do with modern Western man. These berserkers were of the same blood as many modern Europeans, but they were men who lived for war, while the middle Westerner of today is a soft effeminate who lives for peace and, in his nearsightedness, persists in believing that he knows everything about the world and life.

The Wut, Wod, Od or berserkergang was a terribly intense and violent trance, in which one completely lost control and reason, and in which the beast freed itself of its iron chains to vent its claustrophobia and to ride in glorious and unbridled freedom through the dark and blurred forest, without responsibilities, without ties, without limits and without laws. It was not just about letting the inner beast emerge, but letting itself be possessed by the absolute, external divinity. The body of the warrior, in the hands of these tempestuous forces, and totally disconnected from the rational mind, was a simple puppet that could barely cope with so much anger.

Those affected could be fighting for hours and even days in the most furious and fierce way without pausing a single moment. In fact, thanks to their brutal contribution, often the battles ended too soon, and the berserkers could not stop fighting, needing to vent their fury, running without stop to scream and unload their weapons against trees, rocks, animals or people, even coming to attack members of his own army (although apparently the berserkers never attacked each other), since in such states they did not distinguish between friends and enemies.

However, when the berserkergang passed, they fell into a state of total weakness, in which they were unable to defend themselves or even stand. This hangover lasted several days, in which the warrior should stay in bed. According to the Scandinavian sagas, often their enemies took advantage to kill them at that time. Some berserkers, without receiving any injury, fell dead after the battle for their superhuman effort: their bodies were not prepared to be instruments of divine fury—at least for such a long time. Life expectancy was probably shortened for many years after each ‘session’ of berserkergang.

_________

[1] Foaming at the mouth may be related to the rage that possesses the fanatical fighter transformed into battle. Interestingly, in certain battles during the Spanish Civil War, many members of the Spanish Legion, visibly fanaticized and altered by the brutality of the fighting and by their own pseudo-mystical indoctrination, foamed at the mouth.

[2] The latter-day Almogavars of the Kingdom of Aragon also had this custom.

by Evropa Soberana

 
The role of the berserkers in the Germanic world

The Berserkers are associated with Germanity, that is, the set of Germanic tribes. These include Scandinavians, Anglo-Saxons, Dutch and Germans. Those were times when the pre-Christian Vikings terrified a Europe castrated by Christianity, and in which the Roman Empire had disappeared. Generally, the Viking despised the Christian and the Christians feared the Viking. On one occasion the Vikings kidnapped a bishop. When they did not get a ransom for him, they killed him by hitting him with animal skulls. They were souls still wild and uncontaminated, possessed by that brutal and forceful mentality so typical of Nature.

Among all these barbarians, the most faithful guardians of the sacred fury were the berserkers. This word survived in the vocabulary of the nations that knew these men: in England, the word still designates a person of wild or untamed character, or a state of irrational anger. Berserk can be translated as ‘bear shirt’ or ‘shirtless’. It comes from the fact that the berserkers fought dressed in bearskins, and sometimes half-naked or naked.

Among the ancients, every man was a warrior. He was not warring during all his life, but was called to it on turbulent occasions, while in peace he dedicated himself to his field work or domain. So it was throughout the ancient world—except Egypt, Sparta, Rome, the Byzantine Empire and some other exceptions, which had ‘professional’ armies. In Germanity, however, there existed a curious caste, the artists of war, considered touched by the Divine.

Selected warriors lived in small communities, isolated from population centres and led by a priest of the cult of Odin / Woden / Wotan according to the region, a skald (bard), a gothi (druid), a vikti (master of the runes) or another type of shaman, wizard or tribal magician. They formed authentic sects in the Germanic world, part of the tradition of the männerbunden: the unions of men, alliances of warriors, military brotherhoods or, as the Romanian Mircea Eliade called them, ‘secret societies of men’.

In the families of the Germanic aristocracy, there was a tradition similar to that of the oracles in Greece: at the birth of the child, a priest performed a ritual through which one could glimpse his fate. We can assume that some of the most promising babies were offered by their parents to be raised in a ‘military’ community of this type. This would not take place right away, but at a slightly later age. At that age, the corresponding shaman would appear to take the child to his new life in the woods, where he would learn to acquire the instincts of the predator.

From childhood, berserkers were fitted in the neck an iron ring that is related to the Celtic torques and that would not be removed until killing their first victim. The type of instruction given to them is not completely known, but basically it would be a kind of military and ascetic camp in the Spartan style, in which they were taught how to handle themselves with weapons, in close combat and in life in Nature, in addition to acquiring hardness and resistance against all kinds of deprivation, within the framework of a hunter-gatherer life.

They also learned tribal techniques and dances designed to generate large amounts of adrenaline. Over the years, they were building the body of the warrior, accustomed to fatigue, deprivation and suffering. All this conjugated with some unknown form of yoga. One of the skills they achieved through their mysterious asceticism was sitting on the snow during a snowstorm or blizzard, melting with their own inner heat the snow that fell on them.

This advanced test takes place, even today, among some Tibetan lamas (the respiratory exercise they use to generate heat is called tumo or ‘fire in the belly’). And in the Celtic legends, one of the qualities that was attributed to the great heroes was to melt snow a hundred feet away (30 m) with their own body heat. An interesting case, dating from Ireland in 700 BCE, is that of folk hero Cú Chulainn. Legend has it that, after a battle, Cú Chulainn returned to his village still in a frenzy of combat.

His compatriots, fearing that he would kill the whole town, threw themselves on him and put him in a barrel of cold water. By the ardour of the hero, the water broke the wooden plates and the metal straps, and exploded the barrel into a thousand pieces, ‘like a nut breaks’. In the second barrel of cold water, Cú Chulainn produced large bubbles like fists. And in the third, he produced a boiling phenomenon where some men could bear to dip their hands but others not. This inevitably reminds us of the Greek Heracles, who had to rush to the waters of Thermopylae to quench an attack of internal fire, turning the waters of the place into thermal springs.

Very young berserkers received initiation in a cult that could be called the mysteries of Odin, the patron of these warriors. Berserkers were often called ‘men of Odin’ or ‘wolves of Odin’ for their predominant cult of this deity, called ‘father of all’ or ‘the strong one of above’. The berserkers could therefore be described as sects of elite warriors, severely trained from childhood in the arts of struggle and inner alchemy, and initiated into a cult of Odin by some kind of extremely violent ritual.

Mircea Eliade specified that one did not get to be ‘berserk’ only by bravery, physical strength or hardness but also after a magic-religious experience that radically modified the young warrior’s way of being. He had to transmute his humanity through an access of aggressive and terrifying fury, which he assimilated from the enraged butchers. ‘He warmed up’, continues Eliade, to an extreme degree, transported by a mysterious, inhuman and irresistible force: his combative impulse thus emerged from the depths of his being.

In combat, berserkers presented a terrifying aspect to their enemies. Dressed in bear or wolf skins (in which case they were called ulfhednar or ulfsark, ‘wolfskin’), naked or painted black, they threw themselves into the battle always in groups of twelve (*), shouting as if possessed, throwing foam by the mouth and being immune to the most terrible wounds. In the sixth chapter of the Ynglinga Saga people talk about them:

His [Odin’s] men rushed forwards without armour, were as mad as dogs or wolves, bit their shields, and were strong as bears or wild bulls, and killed people at a blow, but neither fire nor iron told upon themselves. These were called Berserker.

In the Hrafnsmál, the skaldic Torbjørn Hornklove describes them in combat:

There the berserkers shouted—the battle was unleashed—, wolf skins howled wildly, spears whistled… wolf skins, they were called. You see them act, the shields bloodied. The swords roared when they reached combat. The wise king in combat is protected by tough heroes who raise their shields.

Left, a Viking helmet with chainmail mask to protect the face. The fantasy of horned helmets comes from a European black legend.

It was the Celts (and many medieval knights) who wore helmets with horns, and often more as ceremonial ornaments than as combat helmets.

__________

[*] The group of twelve men (plus the leader or protégé, the thirteenth) is a constant not only in various Indo-European mythologies but in the daily life of the Germans, and represents the select circle. Twelve were the men who were normally required to carry out a sacred mission. Twelve were the representatives of the Council among the Nordic peoples. Twelve were the sworn witnesses who appeared in certain cases of justice. Twelve were the representatives of a large group that were invited to a party. Twelve were the select gentlemen of the Arthurian round table, as well as twelve are the rays that depart from the central point in the archetypal symbol of the black sun.

And, as we all know, twelve were the apostles of the Jewish plagiarism in the gospel story.