Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. We are following up with
Speaker 1: what has become a warrior week here at Ridiculous History. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's give a big shout out to our super producer,
Speaker 1: mister Max Williams, Max.
Speaker 2: King. What's that thing where they pull your lungs out
Speaker 2: your back?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 3: An eagle, blood Eagle, Blood Eagle, Max the Blood Eagle Williams.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: If uh, if you're like us, us being Nold Brown
Speaker 1: out in Ben Bullen, you're a fan of historical propaganda
Speaker 1: prestige television like the creatively named amazing show Vikings or
Speaker 1: countless Films.
Speaker 2: Which I think depicts the blood already a certain it does?
Speaker 2: It does?
Speaker 1: We already know the typical image of these reavers, right
Speaker 1: and all. They're big, they're hairy, they're smelly maniacs, they
Speaker 1: have horned helmets. They just want to wage war on
Speaker 1: the civilized world at large. They overwhelm people like a
Speaker 1: blitzkrieg force, and they kill their enslave everybody. They take
Speaker 1: whatever they can carry back on their ships. They go
Speaker 1: back to their own settlement to resupply, They party hard,
Speaker 1: they do strange rituals like a blood eagle, and then
Speaker 1: they question their surviving victims for information to help them
Speaker 1: plan the next raid, like where's the next closest village
Speaker 1: to you?
Speaker 3: Dark stuff, but you know, exciting the stuff of legend,
Speaker 3: the stuff of lore, and often what's that movie with
Speaker 3: a scar our guard recently that was did a fine
Speaker 3: job of depicting normand.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, yes beautiful.
Speaker 1: Just rewatch that actually in preparation for this, and no,
Speaker 1: there's something that stood out to us so much that
Speaker 1: we did an episode similar to this on our sister shows.
Speaker 1: Stuff they don't want you to know, So check that
Speaker 1: out if you want a different take on this. Dude,
Speaker 1: can you imagine us be Vikings and in our crew
Speaker 1: we're all hard cases, right, but in our crew we
Speaker 1: have this one group of fighters that even frighten us.
Speaker 1: They're dangerous, they're unhinged. Even when we're just hanging out
Speaker 1: at home. They are as likely to assault and murder
Speaker 1: us as they are to raid a village. We wonder
Speaker 1: if they're touched by gods. We wonder if they're possessed
Speaker 1: by evil spirits. We wonder whether they are even human
Speaker 1: at all. These are the berserkers.
Speaker 2: My love for you is like a truck berserk.
Speaker 3: In the next line, I can't say on the pot,
Speaker 3: but the following line is my love for you is
Speaker 3: ticking clock berserk.
Speaker 2: Would you like to some pot berserk?
Speaker 3: Sorry as Kevin's a fictional fictional song from Clerks, but
Speaker 3: the berserk bend. First of all, let's just get this
Speaker 3: out of the way. Were these big burley naked guys
Speaker 3: that ate a lot of drugs and scared people on
Speaker 3: the battlefield, Let's get to it.
Speaker 1: The answer is maybe, Okay, we'll see there were pelts
Speaker 1: involved too, right, I think there were some animal pelts
Speaker 1: involved too. That's what the historians are still arguing about
Speaker 1: thousands of years after the fact. We know that Viking,
Speaker 1: yeah right, and congrats to everybody writing their dissertation. So
Speaker 1: the Vikings, we know were a seafaring culture from the
Speaker 1: area of the world that is present day Denmark, Norway
Speaker 1: and Sweden on your map. But no, we don't really
Speaker 1: know where the word Viking comes from.
Speaker 3: That's true, which is odd. You know, we're such etymology fans.
Speaker 3: But the old Norse word the king gear usually was
Speaker 3: translated to pirate or raider. That is one of the
Speaker 3: theories of the etymology, but we have numerous ones, and
Speaker 3: one of our favorites suggests that the words origin is
Speaker 3: actually from Old English vising or weissing and the Old
Speaker 3: Frisian word whizzing.
Speaker 2: It makes me think of wizard powers, it makes me
Speaker 2: think of piek. Wait a minute, it makes on the
Speaker 2: electric fence. Don't do it, don't do it? And who
Speaker 2: are the Frisians?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 2: They sound fun.
Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody back then was super fun and smelled
Speaker 1: super great. The reason we like vc or wheezing or
Speaker 1: vzing is because both of those words are almost three
Speaker 1: hundred years older than the Old Norse word viking gear.
Speaker 1: And those two words, the Frisian and the Old English,
Speaker 1: they derive from vic spelled wic, relating to the Latin
Speaker 1: vicus meaning village or habitation. So we have decided on
Speaker 1: ridiculous history that Viking as a word means the village people.
Speaker 1: It's fine the way at the y MCA.
Speaker 2: That's amazing, the village people.
Speaker 3: Oh Ben, And I was doing a little digging into
Speaker 3: so good, Yes, so good.
Speaker 2: I was doing a little.
Speaker 3: Digging into the Frisian people and They had a codex
Speaker 3: of law called the Lex Frisonium, which I just think
Speaker 3: is fun beautiful. We should get They were master fishermen.
Speaker 3: They were really good at dyke building.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And they were also really good at like land reclamation
Speaker 3: and other like you know, sustainable farming techniques. So them,
Speaker 3: along with many other seafaring folks from the region where
Speaker 3: we're super innovative.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially when they weren't getting raided by these mad
Speaker 1: Max level monstrous warships down It's weird because, as our
Speaker 1: pal Jabbari pointed out in some previous episodes, history happens concurrently,
Speaker 1: not necessarily as a series of isolated distinct events. So
Speaker 1: at the same time that the Crusades are coming into
Speaker 1: play in the eighth century to about the late one
Speaker 1: thousands or so, the Vikings are a huge expansion force.
Speaker 1: They travel all the way from the Mediterranean to North Africa,
Speaker 1: the Middle East and Newfoundland in Canada, which they called Venland.
Speaker 1: That makes them, by the way, so far as history knows,
Speaker 1: the first Europeans to reach North America. It's weird because
Speaker 1: they were raiding a lot, that's what they're most well
Speaker 1: known for. But sometimes they would just peacefully trade with
Speaker 1: other cultures, especially, I think if they looked at the
Speaker 1: other cultures, army and bruisers said, we're gonna get our
Speaker 1: butts kicked if we try to fight these guys that
Speaker 1: particular bear. Yeah, yeah, that's not to poke, that particular berserker.
Speaker 1: And then they would settle in places with better weather.
Speaker 1: They were pretty misunderstood. They're portrayed as illiterate, uncultured, barbaric.
Speaker 1: At least some of this has to be trash talking
Speaker 1: from their regional rivals.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, as is often the case, you know, when
Speaker 3: different cultures are depicted by the cultures who were not
Speaker 3: fond of them. So much of the prevailing history about
Speaker 3: Vikings was written century later by, as we pointed out,
Speaker 3: descendants of their victims, rivals and blood enemies, so similar
Speaker 3: stories about the Knights, Templar and the Hashishim. They were
Speaker 3: maligned oftentimes, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't a
Speaker 3: seed of truth to some of these more outland distales.
Speaker 1: Yeah, their haters wrote the history and embellished and exaggerated
Speaker 1: it just like a cod piece. But but yeah, there
Speaker 1: was there was a country there.
Speaker 2: They're always it.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll keep it. Typologies to all the substitute
Speaker 1: teachers touting in. So we know that the Vikings did
Speaker 1: have literacy. They did make inscriptions via runs, but literacy
Speaker 1: was late to their cultural game, and a lot of
Speaker 1: what we think of as that popular Viking appearance is
Speaker 1: misinfo and propaganda or disinfo. Actually, the horned helmets, they
Speaker 1: don't make a lot of sense in realistic combat. And
Speaker 1: I think you, as a former wee German boy, would
Speaker 1: love that we we found why horned helmets became a thing.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: They probably started based around an illustration from an eighteen
Speaker 3: twenty five edition of a piece of Nordic lore. Fro
Speaker 3: Jesus is a tough one, Frith the Off sounds like
Speaker 3: I got a list, but that's how it's sled Frith
Speaker 3: the Off's saga. And then of course this myth and
Speaker 3: this tale and collection of myths was interpreted and injected
Speaker 3: into the neck of popular culture through Recard Wagner's ring cycle,
Speaker 3: and of course the fat Ladies what sang with their
Speaker 3: horned helmets, the valkyries that are depicted, and my mom actually,
Speaker 3: as a metso soprano, played one of the valkyries in
Speaker 3: several multiple.
Speaker 1: Ways, that's awesome, dude, Toyota, that's awesome. We know that
Speaker 1: when we see Wagner's ring cycle get interpreted over and
Speaker 1: over again. There is one person responsible for this horned
Speaker 1: helmet idea. It's Carl Ebel Doppler. This is a costume
Speaker 1: designer from eighteen seventy six and had a flair for
Speaker 1: the dramatic way more than a flair for his oracle accuracy.
Speaker 1: So that's where it comes from. Another stereotype. No, were
Speaker 1: these guys just sewing chaos for the for the hall
Speaker 1: of it, for the heck of it.
Speaker 3: Just for the get, just for the smell of it. Well,
Speaker 3: I mean you already kind of addressed this, Ben, I mean,
Speaker 3: they were in many cases just trying to survive and
Speaker 3: you know, be functional and move to places where they
Speaker 3: could have community. But they certainly there were bands of
Speaker 3: bad apples I imagine within the vikings. Sure they didn't
Speaker 3: just wake up though, No, huh, exactly to your point, Ben,
Speaker 3: They didn't just wake up one day and randomly decide
Speaker 3: that they were going to be the agents of chaos.
Speaker 3: There were multiple factors that led to the spread of
Speaker 3: this kind of behavior. Yeah, yeah, just conquering pillaging, at
Speaker 3: least you know a version of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, Because Vikings were also farmers, they weren't always outrating,
Speaker 1: but the problem often came down to their home turf,
Speaker 1: very punishing weather, not great soil, very poor soil that
Speaker 1: necessitated them looking outward for sustenance. Otherwise they would and
Speaker 1: in several cases did, starved to death, like entire areas.
Speaker 1: So not every Norse person is a Viking, like not
Speaker 1: every puzzle is amazed. Most Vikings were more like young
Speaker 1: college bros on their gap year, and they were trying
Speaker 1: to get rich before they settled down. But as he
Speaker 1: said earlier, there's a grain of truth to every story,
Speaker 1: even the trash talking. So yes, some of these guys
Speaker 1: were indeed career killers. And those career killers didn't actually
Speaker 1: have a long work life. Their careers were pretty short.
Speaker 1: They met with a brutal end. And the most infamous
Speaker 1: of the killers are the berserker.
Speaker 4: The berserkers, the old Norse berserkers, the legend of the
Speaker 4: Old Norse berserkers, a word that roughly translates to bear
Speaker 4: shirt and now.
Speaker 3: Just means going wild. You're berserk, But not everybody agrees.
Speaker 3: Much like Viking, you will often also hear instead of
Speaker 3: And just to be clear, my initial spelling would.
Speaker 2: Be bear like like the creature.
Speaker 3: Others thought that it meant bear as in no shirt
Speaker 3: at all, bare or bear chested.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tops off, party time. And it's it's weird because,
Speaker 1: like you were teasier earlier in the stories, these strange, implacable,
Speaker 1: unstoppable warriors are running into battle naked save for like
Speaker 1: a bear skin cloak, and they're howling like beasts. They're
Speaker 1: attacking not just their victims or their foes, but also
Speaker 1: anybody who's in their way. So, if you believe the legends,
Speaker 1: these are early versions of things like suicide bombers or
Speaker 1: Kama case divine wind. They're living weapons. They have no
Speaker 1: regard for their own personal safety, let alone anybody else's.
Speaker 5: I mean, come on right, no way, yeah, but way,
Speaker 5: but yes, way yeah, yeah, I'm picturing Sampson from the
Speaker 5: twenty eight Years Later movies, just like you know, big
Speaker 5: giant hanging dong and just running ats, just screaming and
Speaker 5: then ripping off heads. I like, twenty eight years Maybe
Speaker 5: not that, maybe that is a little bit, you know,
Speaker 5: it's a fun to think about, but now not quite
Speaker 5: that but of course quite something.
Speaker 3: Berserkers were very much a real thing, as in there
Speaker 3: were definitely Viking warriors. Of course, when we get to
Speaker 3: the Berserkers, we are hitting a boundary between fantasy and fact.
Speaker 3: Not everyone agrees that these guys actually ran around in
Speaker 3: their skivvies or under well, maybe no skivies at.
Speaker 2: All, commando, or under some sort of pelt a bear skin.
Speaker 3: Even if we think they can consider that that might
Speaker 3: be true, people also can't quite agree on whether it
Speaker 3: was a bear skin, a wolf skin, or some other
Speaker 3: type of animal hide. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe it's propaganda because bears are scary, but the
Speaker 1: Vikings could have I love your point about wolves because
Speaker 1: the Vikings could have been wearing the skin of wolves,
Speaker 1: which are also common in the area, and that gives
Speaker 1: us an interesting bit about speculation to resurg and so
Speaker 1: wear wolf legends in Europe. By the way, if you
Speaker 1: haven't seen Brotherhood of the Wolf, check it out. No spoilers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, unrelated to this story, but we definitely did an
Speaker 3: episode on the Beast of govel Down.
Speaker 2: I believe that that was based on we did, didn't we?
Speaker 2: We sure did. Yeah, there was.
Speaker 3: Some sort of mythical beasts plaguing the French countryside and
Speaker 3: it had to be stuff. But this movie definitely goes
Speaker 3: way farther with that concept, and it's a hoot somehow,
Speaker 3: like a kung fu movie mixed with a historical kind
Speaker 3: of intrigue period piece. And then it also has like
Speaker 3: some kind of sci fi kind of elements too.
Speaker 1: It's really really cool, some mortal combat elements. Next up,
Speaker 1: we've got those rumors of super strength, because berserkers are
Speaker 1: always depicted kind of like Bucky in Marvel's Winter Soldier.
Speaker 1: Did you see that one? It was one of the
Speaker 1: best ones of that time.
Speaker 2: You like that one? Yeah? No, I remember Bucky's the
Speaker 2: one with like the robot arm right.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, Captain America's sidekick who gets
Speaker 1: spoilers folks three to one, kidnapped by the Soviets and
Speaker 1: then turned into a brainwashed It's like a Manurian candidate almost, right,
Speaker 1: Just so, yeah, So the berserkers are depicted as having
Speaker 1: almost superhuman levels of physical ability but definitely not mental ability. Well,
Speaker 1: and that comes from or at least some speculation around
Speaker 1: that that I think is also represented in that movie
Speaker 1: The Northmen. Is this idea that they were taking some
Speaker 1: psychoactive substances to make them, you know, kind of unhinged,
Speaker 1: and we've got to get to that part. We also
Speaker 1: have to let you know that even in the provable
Speaker 1: literature of the time, not written by enemies the North Sagas,
Speaker 1: the characters that are often interpreted as Vikings are also
Speaker 1: depicted as villains in their own hometowns because they will
Speaker 1: assault and murder people in their own host communities during
Speaker 1: peacetime between raids. So what about the rumors that we're
Speaker 1: teasing here about what makes them so beastly? No, we
Speaker 1: got to go to Peter Pence, the curator of Danish
Speaker 1: prehistory at the National Museum of Denmark. Pete breaks down
Speaker 1: the pickle of this in a great interview from a
Speaker 1: few years back with Millilitary History.
Speaker 3: According to Pens, Berserkers are mainly known from written medieval
Speaker 3: accounts and not from the Vikings themselves. So again we
Speaker 3: kind of maybe have another slightly is there an agenda here,
Speaker 3: unreliable narrator kind of thing. Pence does make a note
Speaker 3: at the primary written source of information on berserkers capital
Speaker 3: B the real ones, not the legends, does come from
Speaker 3: a guy with a fabulous name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fabulous name. His name is Snorri Sterlson.
Speaker 3: But I would I would love it only slightly more
Speaker 3: if it was Snorri Snirlsen. But it is Snorri Sterlson,
Speaker 3: an Icelandic historian who lived around twelve hundred CE, which
Speaker 3: is just after the golden age of vikingdom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and our buddy Snory thinks of the berserkers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we got to go first name on that, which I just.
Speaker 2: Think he sounds like us.
Speaker 3: It's like a sleepy boy with a candle, you know,
Speaker 3: like and like a little sleep hat kind of clunk
Speaker 3: shoeing his way through research.
Speaker 6: It sounds like a Nordic knockoff of Winnie the Pooh
Speaker 6: A little bit.
Speaker 1: There it is, Uh so, Snory, we're gonna use your
Speaker 1: first name for this right in. If you have a
Speaker 1: problem with.
Speaker 2: That, uh yeah, we'll berserk. You will perserk.
Speaker 1: The uh berserkers in Snorri's writing are a kind of
Speaker 1: holy warrior. He writes that Odin's own men went into
Speaker 1: battle without coats of mail and acted like mad dogs
Speaker 1: or wolves. They bit their shields and were as strong
Speaker 1: as bears of bulls. They killed people and neither fire
Speaker 1: nor iron affected them. This is called berserker rage.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, he's hulking out. Yeah, we're going to keep
Speaker 2: in the in the marbledom of it all. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So okay, So if we go back to modern day
Speaker 1: Pence over at the museum, we'll see that, he says,
Speaker 1: Snorri is going with two interpretations of berserker. You're either
Speaker 1: a fighter who goes to battle like you were saying
Speaker 1: Nolan animal skins without armor, or you might be as
Speaker 1: strong as a bearer, if not actually a bear yourself.
Speaker 1: So the question that becomes, why on earth would anybody
Speaker 1: go into battle but naked to.
Speaker 2: Freak out the enemy? Man?
Speaker 1: Right right, you daaled it. You should work with the
Speaker 1: National Museum of Denmark because that is one of their guesses.
Speaker 1: They thought maybe it was a psyop man. Maybe you
Speaker 1: see him running while they're hanging dong and you both
Speaker 1: these guys are bonkerstras.
Speaker 2: Yeah they are, indeed they are.
Speaker 3: Indeed, the museum knows that the nudity might have exactly
Speaker 3: been what you said, been a psyop showing disregard for
Speaker 3: their own personal safety, like those people that play Skyrim
Speaker 3: with naked characters, you know or not not not Sky
Speaker 3: elden Ring. But also you could do it with Skyrim.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it is. It is definitely a flex, right.
Speaker 3: It's saying like I either think I am so such
Speaker 3: a badass that no one can touch me, or I'm
Speaker 3: an insane person.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or maybe they were.
Speaker 2: Some some ven diagram of those two things as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or maybe they were thinking that they would be
Speaker 1: ordering a god of war so they would be willing
Speaker 1: sacrifices in the battle.
Speaker 2: Now, even Kratos wore some gear though.
Speaker 1: Man, that's true, that's true. That's how we got through
Speaker 1: so many video games.
Speaker 2: Also true. Yeah, I think you know what if you
Speaker 2: heard all the hubbub with all these like internet nerds
Speaker 2: that are upset that the next God of War is
Speaker 2: a woman? No, why are they because they're jerks.
Speaker 1: There's so many real world things to be upset about.
Speaker 2: I know, Man, it's so weird.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, guys, do your best.
Speaker 2: I guess now, you know what, Ben, I'm gonna one
Speaker 2: up beyond that one. Do better, do better?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I agree with that. So we we also know,
Speaker 1: especially if you've already checked out our episode on Nights
Speaker 1: in Shining Armor, we know that there were probably horrid
Speaker 1: ekin making practical issues at play, because first, armor is expensive,
Speaker 1: it takes so much time from highly skilled laborers, especially
Speaker 1: metal armor. And Second, honestly, folks, wearing a bunch of
Speaker 1: armor slows you way down. It doesn't fit Viking rating tactics.
Speaker 1: So those are about speed and overwhelming force. These are
Speaker 1: hit and run jobs. Armor is not great for running,
Speaker 1: so maybe it doesn't make sense for him.
Speaker 3: No, and to the point we actually both made in
Speaker 3: the Knights and Armor episode that we published earlier this week,
Speaker 3: there is a world where the less armor you have,
Speaker 3: technically you're you've got a bit of an advantage on
Speaker 3: your more heavily armored opponents.
Speaker 1: Potentially, Yeah, because you're nimble and they're not. You want
Speaker 1: to you, I mean, it's it's like fighting a really
Speaker 1: big slow dude. Do you want to wait, make him
Speaker 1: slower for them to clank over to you. Yeah?
Speaker 3: Right, I mean the these berserkers would largely be the
Speaker 3: beefiest of the boys too, which means that they would
Speaker 3: be even more expensive to armor up.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a great point too. Uh, here's the
Speaker 1: part we've all been righted. Do we talk to drugs
Speaker 1: ban Yeah, we got to figure out how they got.
Speaker 2: A rage so they do it, how they get into
Speaker 2: hulk moon.
Speaker 1: I don't want to put you on the spot too much,
Speaker 1: but uh, you don't have to answer this, but what's
Speaker 1: the most bloodthirsty and pissed that.
Speaker 2: You have ever been? At one time? I took PCP?
Speaker 3: No, I'm kidd I've never done that, but you do
Speaker 3: hear that is a drug that comes to mind when
Speaker 3: you're thinking about this kind of behavior because there have
Speaker 3: been stories of it, like giving people super strength, or
Speaker 3: like you know, getting hit by a car and then.
Speaker 1: Jumping back up, showing away out of a three story
Speaker 1: window from the cops and a ducat of rolling and
Speaker 1: then sca dadling on your broken ankle.
Speaker 3: Ooh skadatdling Indeed, And Ben, I don't do blood thirsty really.
Speaker 2: I really only get mad when.
Speaker 3: Other people are being messed with. Frankly, But I can't
Speaker 3: think of an exact example. But they didn't have PCP
Speaker 3: back then, so what would they have potentially been ingesting,
Speaker 3: Ben that would have caused them to hulk out in
Speaker 3: this fashion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've got three ideas. We're going to save the
Speaker 1: fun one for last. The first is religious zeal. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: hell of a drug on its own, right, Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like in the beginning, the idea of these kinds of
Speaker 1: warriors was linked to some sort of mysterious cult, an
Speaker 1: inner circle of people worshiping Odin.
Speaker 2: Being imbued with superpowers.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Just so, it is possible that this famous rage was
Speaker 1: a result of intense religious indoctrination in the beginning, and
Speaker 1: we see that unfortunately, even today, members of modern cultic
Speaker 1: organizations can be manipulately into acts they wouldn't commit otherwise,
Speaker 1: like you know, suicide, Bobby, I mean, the more controversial one,
Speaker 1: that is my opinion, the least fun We do have
Speaker 1: to mention it, nol. What if these guys were bugging
Speaker 1: out and hulking out because of mental health issues.
Speaker 3: M entirely possible they could have been identified and as such,
Speaker 3: and they're commanding officers, let's call them, looked.
Speaker 2: At it as a feature, not a bug.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and also a way that they would potentially be
Speaker 3: able to use them as cannon fodder because they lacked
Speaker 3: the self awareness to literally safeguard themselves.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah, It's it's more piece of well thought out speculation.
Speaker 1: There isn't much in the way of proofd for this
Speaker 1: because obviously we didn't have like the DSM five at
Speaker 1: the time, but maybe they were, as you were saying,
Speaker 1: hand selected based on recognition of schizotypal conditions. So instead
Speaker 1: of executing them for witchcraft or like anthropy like other
Speaker 1: societies were doing. This theory argues exactly what you just said.
Speaker 1: Viking authorities may have gone, hell, yeah, you're an animal.
Speaker 1: We got the perfect job for you.
Speaker 2: Ye put you right out in the front.
Speaker 1: You know how you like running and you're always angry,
Speaker 1: hop on the boat. Try not to kill any of
Speaker 1: us on the boat, but you know, one or two
Speaker 1: is fired.
Speaker 2: That's a good point.
Speaker 3: But I wonder if there was any friendly berserker behavior
Speaker 3: tons apparently.
Speaker 1: To this parent if you depending on the legends, you.
Speaker 3: Know what I mean, friendly fire, yeah, without fire, friendly smash.
Speaker 1: And they were like, well, that's what he got for
Speaker 1: standing in front of us.
Speaker 2: Ven, that's why don't stand in front of you. Don't
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: So we got to get to the third most exciting theory,
Speaker 1: which I know we are privately the personally the most
Speaker 1: excited about drugs. Okay, noelque break down the drug theory
Speaker 1: for us for sure.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think we've we've probably trickled a little
Speaker 3: bit of it throughout the episode, but the idea was
Speaker 3: that berserkers were often just regular folks, regular Viking warrior
Speaker 3: raider types, which we know wouldn't be compared to a
Speaker 3: normal citizen regular at all, But their ferocity really only
Speaker 3: came into play once they ingested a particular kind of
Speaker 3: hallucinogen or a psychoactive substance, often described as a combination
Speaker 3: of herbs and mushrooms that to this day a lot
Speaker 3: of speculation about and I know we've talked about this
Speaker 3: on stuff they don't want you to know, and got
Speaker 3: into some specifics about what these substances might have been.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what they could have been, right, because it's not
Speaker 1: plausible by any means, but it is just possible because
Speaker 1: we know, like in the excellent film of the north Man,
Speaker 1: we know that there were rituals involving ingesting substances, right,
Speaker 1: the shamanistic vulva did that. So there's historical precedent in
Speaker 1: Viking communities. But in a way, is that not like
Speaker 1: is that not similar to say, twentieth century Americans had
Speaker 1: access to LSD and cocaine. Therefore all marines were always
Speaker 1: on acid and cocaine.
Speaker 3: Well, for sure, it's definitely a bit of a leap.
Speaker 3: But you know, we do, of course have examples of
Speaker 3: military use of stimulants. For example, it is something that
Speaker 3: can give folks an edge, whether it be for sleep
Speaker 3: deprivation or just making you more aggressive. You know, we
Speaker 3: know that the Nazis were quite fond of their their stimulants.
Speaker 6: Well, to jump in here real quick, I'm keeping this,
Speaker 6: going to keep this very anonymous, but I have a
Speaker 6: I have a friend of mine who was who has
Speaker 6: done you know, sensitive military operations, and he was an officer,
Speaker 6: and he talked about me about the presence of how
Speaker 6: prevalent methmphetamines are in special operations, and he's just kind
Speaker 6: of like, part of me is like, man, this is
Speaker 6: with part of me is like, these guys are pretty terrifying.
Speaker 6: They want to be like raised or focused while they're
Speaker 6: doing this stuff.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, like, yeah, absolutely, the use of stimulants is as
Speaker 1: old as war, you know.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, to Max's point, you would
Speaker 3: want it to sharpen you up, not make you an
Speaker 3: unhinged you know, madman.
Speaker 1: You'd still want to be an asset, right because otherwise
Speaker 1: you're useless to the operations. So with all this stuff
Speaker 1: in mind, honestly, in our opinion, religious fervor seems to
Speaker 1: be the most plausible consideration, primarily because fighting berserker style
Speaker 1: might have been a one off thing for some of
Speaker 1: these combatants. It may have been more like what we
Speaker 1: could call an audition or a gang initiation. Because if
Speaker 1: you survive and people are singing your praises and they're like,
Speaker 1: this guy was awesome, running point, you've earned your stripe.
Speaker 1: You become kind of a special forces or elite person.
Speaker 1: So you get better job opportunities, right, you get better
Speaker 1: going gigs. You can maybe become a bodyguard for the
Speaker 1: political class. That's why things like, Okay, I don't love
Speaker 1: this name, but there was a dude named King Harold
Speaker 1: fine hair.
Speaker 2: That's a fun one. That's a weird one, Like, what
Speaker 2: is it King Harold receding hairline.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if it meant that he was
Speaker 1: balding or his hair was thinning, or if it meant
Speaker 1: that he just had really great claireal herbal Essence's hair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, lustrous and voluminous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe he was just always kind of in the wind.
Speaker 1: Shaking his long hair. Maybe, but what seems most likely
Speaker 1: is that something like Baserka exists or existed, we should say.
Speaker 1: And they were mainly young men seeking wealth and status.
Speaker 1: And if they could survive a dangerous raid, they were
Speaker 1: get out of the game, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: They would buy the.
Speaker 1: Farm, they would marry the girl. They would have a peaceful, much.
Speaker 2: Longer life for sure.
Speaker 1: And this is where we're gonna leave it today, folks. Again,
Speaker 1: if you want a different look at this, check out
Speaker 1: our episode on stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: If you haven't checked out our episode on Knights and
Speaker 1: Shining Armor, please do give that a gander on your
Speaker 1: podcast platform of choice. I've been our research associate for today.
Speaker 1: Big thanks to our super producer mister Max Williams, as
Speaker 1: well as his anonymous and very experienced friend.
Speaker 3: Indeed, huge thanks to Christopher Hasciotis and Eve's Jeffcoates here
Speaker 3: in spirit, Alex Williams who composed our.
Speaker 1: Theme, Jonathan Strickland aka the quist A, j Bahamas, Jacob's Doctor,
Speaker 1: Rachel big Spinach, Lance and Ben.
Speaker 2: You know what. I've said it before and I'll say
Speaker 2: it again.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to you and an excellent job on the
Speaker 3: berserk research you did.
Speaker 5: On this one.
Speaker 1: Thanks Man, and I thought we did a really good
Speaker 1: job navigating that sensitive drug conversation.
Speaker 2: I think so too.
Speaker 3: Not so much with the DOM conversation, but Reord, we
Speaker 3: do our level best.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't win the wall.
Speaker 2: We'll see you next, Tie Polks.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.