From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mishing controlled decans. Most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. This evening, folks, we are returning to a bit of a continuing obsession legendary mysterious fighters from ages past. Please do check out our earlier series on assassins and our recent episode on the Night's Templar. But tonight, this evening, we're asking a question that haunted Western history for centuries.
What on earth were the Viking beerze Kerra? Were they real? Here are the facts? I mean, before we do any of this, we have to talk about the Vikings, because those guys got a They're very popular in pop culture, but I think they got a short shrift in the historical record.
Remember that song and I think it was Clerks Sor it's Jay and Son Bob and he's.
Like something something something some berserk to to to t tou tou berserk.
They say some naughty words in there, but they have the first time I heard the word berserker, I guess it's a very metal concepts, which makes sense for Vikings.
It stays with us, you know, like you'll you'll occasionally hear in modern English, you'll hear somebody went berserk, and it's uh, it's sometimes a compliment, but it all harkens back to again, this thing that is sometimes described as the special forces of the Viking culture. And I think to really understand this, to get into it, we kind
of have to talk about the Vikings. Like before we went on air today, we were just shooting the breeze as we do before we record, and we're talking about music that we like you were saying, no, we're talking about music that we found harkening back to the berserks. Matt, what was that?
What was that song you hit us to as from? I think you say donheim d A n h E I M. The name of that song was, Oh, I'm gonna pronounce it wrong. It's whispered in the song ulf I don't know how to say it right, or something like that. They say, like, it's very interesting. It's just it's this music that it's Norse folk music, and it goes deep into my body and it resonates something that's in there that you guys, it kind of makes me nervous, Like, bro,
I it sends shivers through my body. I get goosebumps and I feel like warmth. I'm like, what are you awakening in me? Bro?
Stop it?
But then you shared a song.
What was that one? Oh highlung? Yeah, the so there is a there's a bit of a like housetuff works backstory to that. So we are people with abiding interest and very weird specific things that is true, that is known. And the song we were sharing there is called Hilong Norupo n O Rgupo. It is a re enactment or a song inspired by the idea of religious ceremonies occurring before a conflict.
Yeah, dude, there's something in there. There's something in there.
We'll speaking of stuff that gives shivers. Does this ring a bell, guys?
Ah?
They come from the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun where the hot springs flow. The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands. To fight the Horde, sing and cry Valhalla, I am coming.
And image. A lot of this is inspired by this actual group, this culture that did exist. The Vikings are legendary in their own right if you're looking at the facts. These folks were a seafaring culture from what we will call Denmark, Norway and Sweden today. Why do we keep calling them legendary? Why do they inspire so much Western culture and indeed, why do they inspire so much Eastern anime? Shout out to the nerds in the crowd, it's because
we don't know a ton about them. Like even the etymology Okay, there's a bit of a ride, but please go here. Even the etymology of the word Viking is uncertain. The prevailing scholarly conclusion is that it comes from the old Norse word viking gear, which usually is taken to mean pirate or raider, which makes sense because they raided a ton of places.
Yeah, and you can see that that reflected in the imagery of popular culture. Right if you close your eyes and you imagine a Viking. For me, it's on a ship, one of those very characteristically quote Viking ships, and they
are on their way to shore, to perform a raid. Right, that's like, I think that's the thing we see we were talking about the Assassin's Creed, what has it been Valhalla, the imagery on the front of that game, and just how that is the quintessential version at least that the West the way the West portrays what a Viking.
Is, and a lot of us, of course, or thinking of Elmer Fudd and bugs Bunny the Valkyrie is.
Yeah, Wagner indeed he was fascinated by that too, for some maybe problematic reasons. There's also a lot of associations with Vikings with you know, white supremacy.
But no way, Yeah, it's true, we get out of here with those conspiracy theories. Is absolutely correct by the way he is.
But it is an image of that type of human being in a form of power, right, profection and almost and fear. We're going to get into that, right, a symbol of fear.
The hyperborean concept that would later inform, uh inform a lot of racist area ideologies. Right. So I do have a pitch for favorite etymological theory on the Vikings. Uh. The words origin could be traced to Old English and Old Frisian uh vising with a w or vising also with a w h. And these words are about three hundred years older than the old Norse words. And if this theory is true, if then game, then vising and vising probably derived from vic, which is related to the
Latin Latin word vicus, which means village or habitation. So logically we could say that viking ultimately means Paul. I don't know if we can afford the sound cube, but here we go. The village people nice rate at the MC brother. It's funny too.
I always go down these silly coper usually incorrect itmological rabbit holes, but the German word for white is vice, so just better thrown that out there.
That's I think that's kind of blowing my mind, man, because I'm getting an image of what we're going to talk about here with the berserker, specifically some of the bear chested, bare chested fighting, some of the like almost not sexualized, but the very I don't know, bear male masculinity going into battle because there's some form of in vulnerability perceived by like having fewer clothes and armor on hyperchats, and then just now I'm just imagining that like vibe
that you get from the band the Village People.
That Okay, yeah, they were a group of renegade folklorees before they began. I think so their boy band, so I like it too. We're going to see all these threads come together in a in a weird tapestry in tonight's episode from the late eighth century CE to about the late eleventh century. So like, right when the crew Usades are popping off, vikings are this massive expansionary force. These guys were all over the place. These men and women, by the way, were all over the place raiding, but
they were also trading. They were also settling and attempting to create new communities for their culture. They got so far they went to the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East. They were probably the first Europeans to create a settlement in North America. They called Newfoundland, Vinland or Winland, and this was once treated as a conspiracy. Turns out it's true.
One more quick line from a Zeppelin song on we sweep with thrashing or our only goal will be the western Shore.
I mean, come on, it's like the image there, dude.
What was that episode we did where we were looking back at early North American exploration outside of indigenous peoples that were it was a gosh, I can't remember the name of it. You'll have to like search back through our our shows. But we covered theories about early early expansion into what we call in North America now by people who would be maybe described in this way like Norse, Viking, whatever. Fascinating. They're fascinating potential artifacts that date back to that time.
Yeah. Man.
Also my favorite, like hanging out off air conspiracy, there is the idea that what was that Eric the Red conspired to mislead people in his explorations by calling the icy waste Greenland, Yeah, and by calling the one place you could live up there Iceland. Don't go there, don't go Yeah, that's so fun. I always figured it's not.
The most beautiful place you've ever seen.
Right right, It's no small barred islands. But for centuries, Vikings were pretty misunder stood for a lot of us, as Noel, Matt and I have described today and as you are doubtlessly imagining in your mind, there is a very clear imagistic association evocation when you hear the word Viking like a hairy, horned helmet wearing marauder murdering and pillaging his or her way up the European coast. And it's just like endless cycle of raids and mercenary violence.
And usually the villain in those cases is portrayed as illiterate, uncultured, barbaric. But here's the thing that's not entirely true. Vikings did make inscriptions in ruins, but a lot of it was like graffiti. Some of the earliest graffiti in fact is it translates to English as something like Wagner was here, and it's in ruins. And because literacy, as we understand it was very late to the Viking game, a lot of the history about Vikings was written centuries later by
descendants of their victims, their rivals, their enemies. It's kind of like stories about the Night Templar. To be honest, I.
Can see the similarities there. It really goes back to the scant amount of historical artifacts, right, the actual things written down, actual things, what chiseled into stone somewhere.
There's like a couple, Yeah, yeah, there's stuff, Like there's stuff like Eric is cool? Who was ERICQ? The History Channel? Eric with a K no doubt, Eric with a K no doubt.
But like you know, these folks didn't just like randomly decide to rape and pillage their way across the globe.
Like there were real.
Reasons, functional reasons for this expansion, right Yeah.
I love that you point that out, man, because history loves a very clear good and a very bad, and unfortunately that's not how the real world works. The Viking communities, what we call the Viking culture, that expansion, that cycle of raids and pillaging, it was triggered by multiple social factors, and I would say also ecological factors overpopulation, resource demand at home. And then also again, they're not like the super best people. They were noticing that nearby communities or
cultures that they could touch with their naval acumen. Those communities were also struggling with similar domestic problems. They were surviving in the wake of chaos, the wake of instability. They were easy to get and so they got got.
Do you guys think that because of the nature of just survival and the difficulty of living in this type of time, that there would have been maybe a shorter some of quote unquote good people because people didn't have the luxury of being good. It was very doggy dog I just I don't know. I think about this sometimes.
It's a good question. I mean to answer that we would have to put in the piece of xenophobia, like what do you consider also a peer member of humanity? And that's something that humans continue to struggle with today. Thankfully. One good thing about the age of abiquitous information is that there are slightly more opportunities for empathy. But to your point, Noel, in terms of good or bad, that's
often sort of a tinplate rationalization. The idea of absolute good and absolute bad is kind of a convenience.
The stuff of stories too. Really, it's an easy narrative.
Device, you know, Yeah, yeah, I mean think about it. You know, you're you're just a regular farmer like everybody else. You're just a humble farmer, like in that excellent film. We got a couple of emails.
It's up you've upgraded it.
I think it's a movie. He's a humble farmer, boy, is he? Ever?
So?
H imagine you're this person and you know you're you're breaking your heart over growing whatever crop you can grow, and that all of a sudden in the distance, you hear a deep resonant horn. Paul, can we get a scared perfect, and then you're here like howling, Paul, can we get some howling the animals? Yeah, and then you look out across the coast and you see some ships. That's how people encountered Viking. So no wonder they thought they were monsters and maybe not quite human, look like.
Monsters with those outfits, right, I mean, if you're in a place of superstition, this invading horror that you've never witnessed before, they're literally decked out with devilish kind of get ups, and you might well believe that they're supernatural or not of this world.
But again, is that actually how they were dressed when they came through? And how much of that is myth? How much of that is psychological force projection? Which artifacts? Though of these type of things, don't we is horned some of them, the historical.
Record is pretty pretty scant. Again, like the horned helmets just don't make a lot of sense in realistic combat. Like it's there's a reason that most of the MMA fighters you know, and most of the boxers you know don't have long hair, they don't have a bunch of stuff on their head, because when you are in malay situations or melee situations. That's an opportunity to grab something and introduce you to a kneecap. You know. True, so they probably I don't know about the kneecaps, but anyway,
like horned helmets, we know they became. It's kind of like how Coca Cola made the image of Santa Claus, right, the horned helmets association with Vikings. There are some ancient artifacts horns, primarily like horns like Paul just played that have some engravings of people who appear to have horns. But the idea of all Vikings wearing horns on their
helmets as a uniform comes about because of Wagner. It comes about specifically in eighteen seventy six because Wagner had a costume designer named Carl Emil Doppler, and Carl was great at costumes, maybe not so much historical accuracy.
Well, either way, what we do know is that they are get ups. Whatever they may have been exactly, they were going for a show of force and intimidation. And I think that Egger's film The Northman, he's really well known for really getting historical details right. Like in The Witch they used like old English texts and stuff for
the dialogue. But I've read in multiple places that the visuals like they had, like their teeth would be engraved into like and it's a they got that detail in the film, and a lot of the outfits and armor and stuff, no horns I I don't believe in the film are apparently pretty period accurate.
And it also depends, like period accuracy is tricky because like even unto whether or not Viking communities had tattoos, we know the technology was present, but we don't know whether they engaged in it. Because again, when you have a community that is only putting written records in ruins, then you're kind of like trying to base your understanding
of a culture on their graffiti. It's sort of like asking, you know, it's sort of like it's sort of like saying, hey, you're a historian hundreds of year in the future, what can you tell us about America? The only record we have, by the way, is stuff written in barroom bathrooms, So like, you know, there's a there's an emphasis then on perhaps the wrong things.
These folks were crass, These folks a lot of ding dongs.
These folks had a love of Pallas. Yeah, and not every Obviously, not every Norse person was a Viking, just like how most of the templars at their height were not warrior monks. You know, there was a lot of infrastructure. I mean, the blood eagle thing is probably super embellish. The nicknames like Ivar the Boneless and Ragnar hairy Breeches, those were made up years and years after those biological humans were well god typos, mistranslations, misunderstandings. There's one legend
that we think deserves closer scrutiny. What about the you're what about this.
Now?
Before we get to that ben you said, blood eagle. Let's just quickly describe it. If you're listening to this and you've got kids in the car or something, skip forward fifteen seconds.
What's the work? Go quick easily? Yeah, okay. So the blood Eagle, as popularized by the History Channel, its weird right by the History Channel's program The Viking or just vikings. I think it is according to the stories, it's a method of ritual execution, and it's it's laid out in the written record in poetry, which is open to interpretation. But the idea is help me here, guys. The idea is that you would sever the ribs of your victim from the spine, right, with some sort of bladed instruments.
Yes, with someone laying down on their stomach, basically right, and.
Then you would pull their lungs back and out and stretch them such that they created a pair of grizzly wings.
If you want to see it, picked a pretty grizzly. It's in the film Midsommar by Ari Astor. No spoilers as to who receives the blood Eagle, but it is very much fully on display.
And when you get introduced to the characters in Midsummer, Yeah, just guess which one that'll that'll make it pretty despicably obnoxious. So how would we describe berserkers specifically, because they were not your average vikings according to the stories.
Maybe what you might think of as a tank in a D and D party, right, the biggest and burliest, like a barbarian.
Two handed weapon wielder.
Right.
Yeah, maybe sometimes they might have issue, you know, sometimes they might have two little hatchets. Sometimes they might have a big battle axe. Then they might be nude, right, The main thing is they're naked. The main thing is you can see they're junk, so they are but they're they're clad in animal skins, right. Conventionally it's supposed to be a bear skin, but it may also be any other large predator. So we know Viking communities respected bears,
but also wolves also, you know, large wild dogs. And and to think with those guys is they're so ten toes down, they're so pawsed down on this that when it is time to tangle, they kill whomever is in front of them, even a friendly force. They're just swinging. They're they're like bullets, you know, and the ships like the gun.
Yeah, well, I mean, but like they likely many of them wouldn't survive because of their lack of armor. They really were almost like comic cop type situations, you know. And again just to reference the North the Northmen, they take a lot of psychedelics in that film, a lot of like weird you know, described psychedelic herbs or whatever. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these berserkers were also hopped up on some kind of go go juice.
That's the idea. The main differentiation you've hit on it is that they encounter some sort of disassociative mental state, a feugue, a trance that gives them temporarily something like a super soldier Captain America ask abilities. They take damage that would incapacitate the average person, indeed, the average Viking. They continue to fight on and they don't stop until the battle is done. The trance leaves and if and then they're weak, you know, and they're out of it,
we would say shock. I think most medical professionals would call it these days. And if they do survive, if they do not succumb to their wounds, they also have short form amnesia. They have no recollection of what just happened. So imagine it's like the trope from every Western werewolf film, right or most of the I would say, the good Western werewolf films. They wake up and they they're covered in blood, and they're like, Eric, what happened? What the heck?
And he's like, good job, dude, And there's all amazing imagery. We are describing the story of a berserker, right, Yeah, the myth or the legend or the thing that is out there right as what this thing is or could be. We're not describing historical you know berserkers.
The image, yes, the brand, which will become important later over the centuries. Scholars wondered whether these warriors were an exaggeration, a fabrication, maybe a secret group of drug users, maybe a religious sect or wait, what were they even real? Questionable answer after a word from our sponsors, Here's where it gets crazy. Yes, I mean something like the berserker was a real thing. Like there were definitely Viking warriors. We know that that happened. They rated a ton of people.
You can trace that in the DNA of Scandinavia.
Yeah, the word itself is often thought to arrive from Old Norse berserker. It's just that the e, which translates roughly to bear shirt. But like many of the things involved in this tale, not everyone agree. Is you'll often hear folks argue that berserker actually means bear shirt, like they are e like Matt was a was alluding to earlier or bear chested, once again implying the thing we mentioned about them, you know, going in commando.
Yeah, and like you said, classic D and D Barbarian inspiration for anybody who is interested in playing Dungeons and Dragons. What you need to know is that your barbarian character does better when they don't have a ton of armor. If you want armor, you're looking for fighter class, paladin, a couple types of cleric.
But you gotta put points into armor, you know, like it's a thing like in and of itself, is a superpower that you got to kind of cultivate throughout the game.
Yeah, it depends on depends on the game. I think that's largely accurate. And speaking of depending on the game, when we're playing the game of historical accuracy, we quickly find that Berserkers as a concept sort of move back and forth over the boundary of fantasy and fact. There's a lot of speculation about these guys. There's a lot
of strange stuff out there. And because some of these stories were created so long ago, more than a thousand years ago, these they're treated as though they are fact.
Right.
You could see sources, numerous sources that claim Berserkers had superhuman powers, you know, like you could cut off a leg. Oh crap, he's still coming, you know, How is he hopping like that? How is he dangerously hopping toward me? Yes?
Think about how strategically advantageous that would be if you could see those stories into the mythology of your army. Right, So then when you do show up, when those horns do sound off in the distance, right, and you see that there are ships heading your way, and you've heard stories about that very sound, and you know what's on that ship. It's these berserker guys who are gonna get off, you know, get off that ship and just immediately go
ham on everything in sight. That's like, that is terrifying.
Yeah, there may be three hundred of you, but you're all usually farmers. There may be only you know, one hundred and fifty other like operators on this ship. But you've heard the stories.
Yeah, well maybe it only takes one. And even if I do somehow lop off a leg, like you're saying, this guy's not gonna stop.
It's just so funny to me. He's like the most dangerous pogo stick in Europe at this point.
But just that what it would do to effectively have people throw down whatever weapons or tools they had and just GTFO. And there's a a very sparsely inhabited village now that this ship rolls up onto because you've you've scared everybody off, like well in advance of actually arriving.
It's pretty smart. And we know that most people throughout history, given the opportunity to learn are incredibly intelligent. I mean also, it's funny to me that even in what we know about Viking communities, the berserker class is typically not going to be considered the cream of the social crop. They're
in North Sagas. Like in the old school North Sagas, scholars often interpret villains as berserker characters, and it all goes back to the penchant for killing their own like, oh, there's not a war, I'm just hanging out in town. Well screw this guy.
Yeah, Well, aren't there stories of them actually kind of incorporating themselves into like a nobility, so like into the king's circle or whatever, So that it's almost like, I imagine, at least from the royalties perspective, having that weapon you're talking about, right, and not a nuke necessarily, but or
a tactical nuke, but it is mad. Yeah. Right, So if you if you've got a couple of berserkers on your team that you could send in if you wanted to, it would be Again for me, it's all about the psychological bit, where if if some other king just across the way knows that you've got a couple of berserkers on lock Uh, They're like, no, I don't want to mess with that guy.
Well, okay, so, berserkers, why are you the way you are? What made you this way? Yeah?
Damn mean, at this point there's there's no hard proof, no conclusive proof of what informed this legendary brutality. And we owe a big, a big thanks to Peter Pence, who is the curator of Danish Prehistory at the Nash Museum of Denmark and Denmark's National Museum is one of the best sources on Viking lore and Viking history, and so what he points out some of the things we
mentioned earlier. Pence says, again, this phenomenon of berserkers, it's primarily known from written medieval era sources, not from the Vikings themselves. One of the first written records of what we would call berserkers comes from an Icelandic historian who lived around twelve hundred, so again, several centuries after this era of berserkdom had passed. And this guy, his real name is Snorri Stirlson. That's not a real name, that's his real name.
I love that so much, right, and yeah, okay, okay, it makes sense at tracks It is Icelandic and lived around twelve hundred CE.
Got it, And he writes to the Berserkers, where.
A type of almost monk warrior in a way at the very least imbued with Odin's wrath and his power and blessing or what have you. He says that Odin's own men went to battle without coats of mail and acted like mad dogs or wolves. They bit their shields and were as strong as bears or bulls.
A lot of animal illusions here.
They killed people and neither fire nor iron affected them.
This is called there's their garage.
Well, you get into that spiritualism thing. A lot of it goes back to this concept that we like being naked, at least to some extent when in battle, showed your enemies that you at least felt invulnerable. And if some of them believed some of the legends they thought you were invulnerable, then just talking about the leg and keep
thinking about Poco guy again. But just that concept, right, Gosh that like, I don't know, there's something too that that goes so deep in this in the spiritual side, in the like a like a holy warrior of some sort by.
The gods, yea, by zoos, psychos, you know, the psychos that Elden Ring builds where they're basically nude, you know, a flex man John.
I mean, that's that's my second character.
But I thought it was solo. Also, there's a there's another thing I want to point out here to uh, the idea of fighting nude as a sig up still occurs in the modern day. You get people out, that's for sure.
At this point, if I ever get in the street fight, that's the first thing I'm doing. Strip.
Okay, So here, I'm going to give you a tip. And this is this is not I shouldn't even say tip, but this is the this is okay, let me put it this way without compromising any Imagine again, you're that farmer and the the vikings are running at you. You hear the horn, thanks Paul. You hear the howls, Thank you, Paul. And then the people running at you are not just naked and screaming and howling at animals, but they have visible erections.
Yeah right, I'm gonna work on that one.
We'll see there we go, all right, Maybe maybe just don't get into fights. That's the best way to handle a fight is to avoid it in the first place. Well, gosh, I'm just picturing sexual.
Occurred on the battlefield in the midst of it, covered in blood, I mean, in some gnarly stuff.
Shout out to Judge Holden for a new fans of blood Meridian. So so to pence this idea from our Icelandic historian way way back. It's interesting because as two interpretations of berserker, one fighters who go to battle clad only in animal skins, and then two fighters who have some sort of preternatural, supernatural strength. And the question that we've been obviously quarreling with because we are all grown ups, is why would you go into battle but naked? It's
it's the sye up aspect. It always has been. It's such a potent psychological weapon. If you're on the other side and you've never encountered these people, if you're an enemy on the other side, you're thinking, these guys are bonkers, they don't give a f and it shows. It shows like again, you know, if you've ever been in a fight or an interrogation where the first thing you do is harm yourself in front of your enemy to establish the stakes of the encounter, then that's what's happening here.
Like if they don't care about their own personal safety. What do they think about yours? Are they indeed? Are they indeed and vulnerable due to the favor of a god.
It's like when someone in a film or something allows themselves to take a brutal beating and just like eggs them on.
You know, just to show that I'm insane. You know, I try.
I'm thinking about everything you guys are saying. I'm trying to find instances of a fenciclidine or PCP, like a similar chemical that occurs in nature or something like is I don't know if there is anything, I can't find it in the moment at least, but like something like that that would offer that dissociative thing we talked about, but also the altered state to where pain perception goes way down right, and all the things we're describing here.
We have drugs at home, says the human brain, right like you can you can create We'll get to that, but you can create that. The thing is also we have to bust a little bit of a myth. These guys probably weren't just running around butt naked with bone. They had weapons, they had shields, and according to Peter Pence, again one of the best sources on this. Wolf skin and bear skin do offer some protection against bladed weapons,
I just not as much as armor. But also on a financial standpoint, it's easier to at this point to kill an animal and wear its skin than it is to craft armor, which is quite expensive in terms of resources, time and finance.
Really quickly too, back to the potential drugs that they might have been taking. I found an interview with David Eggers, the director of the Northman Or. He talks about the historical evidence of this, and it's something called henbane. Henbane seeds were found in some Viking graves of folks who were known to be serruses or witbals rats.
Exactly right, Ad, you can tell which direction we're heading in, fellow conspiracy realist, We're going to take a pause for a word from our sponsor, and then we're going to explore the most legendary part of the story, the origins of the berserker rage. We've returned. Over the centuries, there have been multiple theories about this legendary rage or what
could have originally inspired it. In general, we can trace it to three primary paths of speculation, and to be completely clear, as a bit of a disclaimer, there's some sticky stuff in here. We're not personally condoning it, nor do we personally agree with it, but you need to know the scholarship. The first one is religious fervor, Like, what if these guys just got so hyped up, right, inner circle of odin are we are the tip of the spear? We are not for ourselves but for something larger,
indeed our God. Could that have inspired this rage? Could you have been so consumed by this idea that you would have been able to ignore revis injury like losing a hand, you know, like the god tyr or you know, losing a leg or something like that.
I mean, I'm going back to the Templars episode. It feels similar to that, right, where if you have enough conviction about your purpose, of the purpose of battle in the moment and in general, I think you I think the human mind can go past a lot of things like that.
It's yeah, physicality, I mean, belief is a hell of a drug, right m m.
Yeah. And it's surprising too, the association of bears and wolves with elite warriors in what we'll call Scandinavia today that far predates the age of Vikings. In the beginning, it appears that this idea of a religious Berserker level was linked to the concept of an inner circle of Odin or Voden worshippers, and as time went on, the religious links became less prominent and these guys became more like your ordinary warrior of the day. And look, okay,
so sounds crazy. Sure. We have to recognize though, that religious indoctrination can be very powerful. Members of modern cultic organizations can be manipulated into acts they would not commit otherwise. So I think there's some sand to this. We just don't know how far it goes into the physiological aspects of the legend.
Well, and Ben, you mentioned also that some of these folks maybe were not exactly the cream of the crop in terms of their ability to do other things which you likely could interpret as mental health issues. Yeah, perhaps developmental issues of some kind. And then because of the lack of sensitivity around those sorts of things, they're like, oh, you're perfect, let's give you up, big boy.
You know, yeah, this is the sticky one. This is more controversial, but there are scholars arguing Berserker were handpicked on the basis of what we today would recognize as
mental health issues. The argument is, like, let's say there are people, there are people in the community who have what we will call schizotypal conditions, right, schizophrenia, disassociative disorders, and so on, And then the argument is that instead of executing them for witchcraft or like aanthropy, the way so much of Europe later did, the leaders of these communities would say, heck, yeah, man, you really are an animal, and I've got a for you.
Yeah, dude, let's okay. It goes back to psychological warfare, both exterior that we're talking about with the deaths, but and interior, right, bringing some like really creating something like that monster. Yeah, like your own golm. But it's a human being that just had you know, suffers from dissociative states, that is also really strong.
Turned on their masters. Of course, it's not your fault, bro, you were a bear at the.
Time like that because it's so uncomfortable, But I could I can see that functioning with these these two religious fervor plus these mental health issues. If only you could add one more thing, law and order vikings.
It's interesting too.
I mean again, we're talking about all these pop culture touch points. But like in the God of War most recent God of War game Valhalla Rising, like one of the characters turns into a bear. That's like they're you know there there are a lot of transformations into animals, but one of the really powerful ones into a bear.
The proper word for like anthropy, what is it theoanthropy or something like that. Shape shifting belief in shape shifting, well, not just were wolfrey, it's any type of shape shifting. Yeah, weather, so like skin walkers who in across the pond. But whether that is metaphorical, metaphysical shape changing, or indeed physiological shape changing, the belief is quite common in all the
cultures in these regions at this time. And this is where to your point, Matt, into your earlier foreshadowing, you know, this is where we add the third ingredient to the recipe, the idea of drugs, the idea that these guys were normal folks until they got into the ritualistic ingestion of particular forms of hallucinogen or psychedelic It could it's often
described like you mentioned henbane. A lot of scholars will say it could be a combination of herbs or mushrooms, ingested in sort of a pre battle amped up ceremony. So like right before you play a sports game, you get in the huddle.
Almost like ayahuasca with that altered state, but not not super agro exactly.
Not looking for self actualization, but.
Imagine the ritualization of something like that. That's why I thinking the ayahuasca rituals, where it's something that's very spiritual, it's something you do and then you're off to the races.
Yeah, that was depicted in the In the Norsemen to the Northman too, there was a scene where they do a ritual using this stuff.
And suck like dougs exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah, and vulva volva is or so. Anyway, there is a shamanistic class in Viking culture. These are what we will call the holy folks, the seers, or the Syruses. And there is historical precedent because we do know that that class ritualistically ingested hallucinogenic substances to arrive at a greater spiritual understanding. They were soothsayers, they were clairvoyance. According to their communities, they participated in the non material world.
But there's I think there's logical leap there because none of those substances have been found within the bodies of like ingested in the bodies of these warriors. They may have been buried with them to show that they had an appreciation of that shamanistic class. But is it not kind of like a future historian saying, in twentieth century American society, some people did LSD and cocaine. Therefore all marines were always on LSD and cocaine. It's kind of like,
I think there's a little too much red string connection there. Yeah, no, I feel you. So does it feel to you, guys?
Like the religious argument is maybe the strongest, because we know how that can really transform the mind and make you fear fearless, you know, if it's weaponized.
In that way.
Maybe I'm thinking I haven't seen The Northman yet, guys.
Oh, it's so good. It's very good. It's time.
Also, Valhalla Rising, the Nicholas winning Refin movie, is also about that same kind of air.
It's also quite good. Yeah.
Well, I'm looking at a clip from The Northman where Byork apparently byk plays those witches called the Whispering Cirrus. Yes, where I think that's what you're describing here at least as what the imagery at least is is looking like that to me. And I'm just imagining someone like that in your not inner circle, right, but someone in your village,
in your city where you live. Would that person would appear to have lots of power, especially depending on preconceived notions and beliefs about you know, all of that stuff. I can see that manipulation totally being a thing.
And now they're paying attention to you. Yes, weird audio podcasts and no one saw it was a really cool move. But there's also a shout out to uh Willem Dafote, villain the ws and v's are getting to me anyway. He's also one of those examples. And there were the idea of these shamans. It was primarily female led, but there were male identifying or non binary shamans in the mix.
That has proven that's part of historical record. If you are that person, Uh, if you are considering a career in berserkery, uh, there's one thing you have to know. And I think there's a piece of the puzzle that informs our episode. It wasn't a career for a lot of these guys. What if going berserker was not an all the time vocation. Peter Pence again one of the best sources here. He notes that it may have been
an initiation ritual. It may have been a thing you did once to get your stripes, to make your post, to join the gang. So like, hey, you want to be down with us? You really? Are you really cool with the God of War? My guy? If so, you can fight with us the first time, you gotta be naked. We don't make the rules. Sorry, we don't make the rules. That's God's call.
Well, yeah, you have to do this ritual and embody the God of War and then you're in. That's fascinating to me. I could I could see that as a thing or just at least someone who's chosen right you again going back to thinking, think about that person, A special person chooses you for this mission, and maybe it is just to get in, but maybe it's also a special thing that like almost as a self sacrifice or I see, I see, I see, I don't know, I don't know.
A passage, a passage to a higher socioeconomic status. And if you die, a one way ticket to Valhalla. And not everybody gets to go to the good death.
But if you don't. You're rewarded here, right, Yeah.
Yeah, you can get more freelance gigs in the proto Blackwater or Academi or EXI, or for more stability, you can, like we said earlier, be a bodyguard for the political class. Yeah, and then your main job becomes being the dude who stands behind the yarl or the king and just makes crazy eyes.
Oh, in psychological warfare, because it's now their tails now of you, this berserker that went into battle, enslayed all these people, and now all you got to do, as you said, Ben, is stand behind the yarl, and everybody who looks at the RL sees you and they go, oh crap.
I know that is and then you just yes. And the crazy stories they're like, did you really kill all those people and eat their livers?
And then just grunt God and it's and it functions to protect the king, the you know, the person running the place without actually having to do anything further.
So, what do we think have we have we laid out a good case? I mean.
I think so. I'm freaked out that that music has such an effect on me internally.
I don't like this.
I don't want to have been a berserker in a past life.
Guys, you got some bodies on those two hands.
Maddie, I have not technically nol is. I don't want to put you on the spot, bro, but technically I believe you're the most Nordic. Yeah, I was once a young gentleman. Point well, I would say, with all this in mind, we can reasonably conclude at the very least the following something like there's a Geitra was real, operating both before and during the age of the Vikings. They probably did not have superpowers. They were not some weird
ancestor of Marvel super soldier serum. I personally do think the story is more interesting if they were hopped up on some kind of drug, but we we don't have hard proof. That's not to say it didn't happen, it's just to say that there isn't a lot of documentation about it.
I think too, that the combined with the religious fervor angle, the mental illness angle is very interesting because you know, there's all kinds of stories about folks who thought they were communicating with God, but it turns out they may have had schizophrenia or so. We've talked about that on
the show recently. So can you imagine if someone like that was manipulated and like you know, browbeaten into believing that they were communicating with God and that those voices were voices telling them to kill for the gods, that could be turned by Burk at the very least he got.
Burke, they could have they could have called them buerkers whatever. So what seems most likely then is that the combatants called berserker today their ranks were probably composed of young men seeking wealth and status in society, possibly through intensely dangerous positions in raids. In most cases, they were not planning to make a career out of doing this every weekend. There were exceptions to the rules. Probably your career, yeah right, exactly.
There were warlords that were there are always a couple of, as they would say, bad apples. But one of the best pieces for the evidence of the existence of berserkers comes in ten fifteen Yarl Eric Hakanasson and Gagas the medieval Icelandic stuff. They had a code of law that made it illegal to be betzerkiir, and that means that they did really exists. There's also a huge like stolen valor aspect to this where like, it's really good for your job if you're a raider, to have it be
believed that you were bozekir. Anyway, I think these the thing is these exceptions they make a better story than the truth. That's what their enemies latch onto when they write these history books. And perhaps the best lesson in twenty twenty four is that we see a very common thing, and all too common thing. Power structures can, will and do manipulate the vulnerable into very dangerous positions. Sign up, right, delce et de koro mest pro patria mori?
What did which one?
Did we use that in? What was that?
Thirteen Days?
We used that? And no, we used it in.
One of the things you wrote for this show?
Right?
Uh?
Maybe it's the English is it is both sweet and fitting to die for one's country. It's an old war poem.
Gosh, I know, I swear, I swear you've used it in something that we did that was fictional, that was awesome and I can't remember it right now.
I use it.
It's an it's an easter egg somewhere that somebody's gonna find. I think it also is a lesson about the psychological warfare that these same groups will use right uh not about not just to get someone to become a berserker or get someone to go on a mission like that, but using fear to control the uh up the opposition right, internal and external fear.
I think agreed, And perhaps these are the things the modern world doesn't want you to know. But you know what we want to know, folks. We want to know your thoughts. We can't wait to hear your stories of other legendary fighting groups. Tell us if you think they got a short shrift, tell us if any of the legends are true. We try to be easy to find online. Correct.
You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff, where we exist on Facebook, on x FKA, Twitter, and on YouTube where you can find new video content coming out every single week. And boy do we have some doozies coming your way. On Instagram and TikTok, you can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff.
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