"All of this and what I will write, is taken from books that I own"
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The berserkers were elite warriors of ancient Scandinavia, active mainly during the Viking Age, approximately 8th–11th century.
The term (Berserker) comes from the ancient Norse (Berserkr), composed of “ber” (bear) and “serkr” (shirt), translatable as (one who wears the bear's skin).
They were famous for entering a murderous frenzy, called (Berserkergang), during battle.
In this state, the warriors fought without fear or feeling pain, often described as invulnerable and unstoppable. Later you will understand the reason.
They were also physically strong, tall, and trained, and were chosen for both their ferocity, character and physical size.

The bear was a sacred animal among the Nordic peoples, symbolizing strength, courage, and ferocity.
The berserkers, by wearing bear or wolf skins (a ritual called Ulfhednar), identified with the animal spirit, acquiring the animal's strength and brutality.
The transformation into a berserker could be achieved through shamanic rituals, trance induced by meditation techniques, substance use and ritual chanting.
Berserkers were part of the warrior elite, often in service to Kings or Viking lords.
They were both battlefield warriors and raiders during incursions, feared and respected, but also considered dangerous, as their fury state could become totally uncontrollable during Rage.

Most historical sources speak of male Berserkers, but their fury and fighting style were always described in a similar way.
Harald Hardrada (the last Viking and one of the first King of Norway), Cnut, Forkbeard, Egill Skallagrimsson, Hakoon, Styrbjörn Starke, and Kveldúlfr Bjálfason nicknamed Evening Wolf, (Thor father) a Berzerk warrior who used the Ulfhednar metamorphosis ritual of the Wolf.
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Even Thor who really existed, though NOT as portrayed like games or movie.
Now I will explain the meaning of Thor because Thor is not a name and the truth about him, I will show how I dismantle Marvel Studios about fake "Thor" and all the bullsh*t they invented, so remember the various movies and compare it with what I will write below.

Thor REAL name: "Þórólfr Kveldúlfsson" in ancient norse, pronounced as Thor-olf Kveld-ulf-son
Þórólfr = is a proper name and it means “wolf of Thor” (composed of Þórr = Thor and úlfr = wolf.
Kveldúlfsson = "son of Kveldúlfr", his father, whose name means "evening wolf".

* note= Kveldúlfr Bjálfason, the wolf Berzerk mentioned above was his real father (NOT Odin like in the movies) and he was nicknamed "Evening Wolf" because he would go insane when evening fell.

---I’m telling a bit about Thor, but only a little because his story is long---
Thor took part in the Battle of Hafrsfjord (a battle that would have decided who would control Norway) and his power began to threaten King Harald Fairhair (not Harald Hardrada mentioned above, but Fairhair, another King of Norway who reigned much later, after Hardrada).
King Harald Fairhair gathered an army and attacked Thor’s hall and when Thor refused to surrender, King Harald created the hall of flames.
After, Thor’s warriors charged at King Harald’s army, but they were met by a storm of arrows and In the chaos Thor was killed by Harald, collapsing at the King’s feet.

Thor's father, Kveldúlfr Bjálfason, demanded compensation from King Fairhair for his son's death, but it was refused and he even had to flee.
Thor was a wolf berserker like his father, but in the movies and comics he's portrayed as a God, another lie.
This is who the real Thor was and how he died, and not like in the movies!

There are many more things about this story, and after Thor’s death, a trail of blood and vengeance began.
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*......so
All the bullsh*t created around and about Þórólfr "Thor" just to making money, is the usual Marvel total bullsh*t, from comics to movies, and nothing else.
-if they knew at least a little REAL history it would already be something, Instead of raping the real histories of other peoples...and since we’re on the topic, I want to make one more thing clear, NO Viking ever wore helmets with horns as they are portrayed.
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These few mentioned were all Berserkers when they entered battle, the metamorphosis ritual also took place for them of course, for all.

Telling the full story of each one of them would be an enormous task in terms of writing, and it’s not necessary to do it here. If you're interested you can do your own research.

Historical sources are rarer but Norse writings mention female warriors, sometimes called shieldmaidens (Skjaldmær), who may be considered analogous to Male Berserkers.
There were also women capable of entering similar states to berserkergang, fighting with fury and courage comparable to men.

In particular Norse mythology celebrates figures like Brynhildr, a warrior Valkyrie who could be seen as inspiration for these warrior women.

Lagertha, a Danish warrior who fought fiercely, “with her hair loose and fury in her eyes.”

Freydís Eiríksdóttir from Greenland and daughter of Eric the Red, who while pregnant faced the Native Americans (Skraelings) during an expedition to Vinland (now called North America).

They were considered Sacred Furies, letting themselves be possessed by the spirit of the Valkyries and under the influence of berserkergang, they could fight even naked or only wearing animal pelts.
There were female cults and sects where they guarded ancient rituals passed from mother to daughter and symbolized metamorphosis by wearing skulls of wolves, foxes, crows, facial paintings—connected to Odin.
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Remember
(Skjald) means shield and (Mær) means young woman, maiden, virgin. So the term is (shield maiden) Skjaldmær in ancient Norse, even though many words haven’t changed from ancient Norse to modern Norse.
Skjaldmær can be translated like: Girl of shield, Young Girl of shield, Virgin of shield, Woman of shield etc etc.
The definition varied from person to person, but the meaning (Skjaldmær) was the same for all Berserker women.
That’s why in the video game, Elamein who is a female Berserker is very well represented and carries a shield and fights with it, because she is exactly a Skjaldmær, and that’s what the real female Berserkers were called. They actually charged enemies with shield attacks.
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"Ancient Norse is a very old Viking language"
Forget about using Google to translate ancient Norse, it will get almost everything wrong, unless there are some modern Norse words, but even then it won’t be accurate. You absolutely need to know ancient Norse or almost a bit of modern but is hard to learn, and of course someone Nordic like me has an advantage in understanding it, but modern Norse is still different from the ancient one.
Compared to the modern ones it was much more complex because it had grammatical cases, declensions, verbs conjugated by person and an archaic vocabulary. Modern Icelandic is the closest, while the other languages have become much more simplified over time.

"This words below is ancient Norse like the norse words up, and translating it with google would make it just crazy!"

Góðan dag, látið blóð renna ok sverð syngja, engi fjandi skal standa fyrir oss!

and it means
Good day, let blood flow and swords sing, no enemy shall stand before us!

Or my Steam profile bio in ancient Norse:

Björns blóð rennr enn, ek berjask eigi fyrir dýrð, heldr því at þat er í eðli mínu,
líkamr minn er hert, hugarlog minn brennr, ek em af heilögum gálgum kominn — ok ek skelfi eigi!

literally means exactly this, and I'm referring to my activities and myself anyway

The bear’s blood still flows. I do not fight for glory, but because it is in my nature.
My body is hardened, my soul-fire burns. I am born of sacred gallows, and I do not tremble!
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In the past several terms did not exist, so if you want to translate correctly, you need to make adaptations sometime that convey the same meaning, and for this it is necessary to know the ancient Norse alphabet. For us nordics it is more easier to learn because it is similar to the modern Norse, but it took me over 2 years to really learn ancient Norse because it is different from the modern one despite being similar, including the runic writing which is absolutely beautiful, 24 rune Norse alphabet called Elder Futhark which I studied, and I'm sorry but there are NO keyboards to write in runic, only with paper and pen.

The 24 rune alphabet is not the most difficult, but it is certainly the oldest, used roughly between 150 and 800 A.D.
It was used for a language called (Proto Germanic) that had more distinct sounds, and each rune represented a precise sound.
After 800 A.D, it was simplified into the Younger Futhark with only 16 runes, because the language changed; fewer sounds to represent, therefore fewer runes needed.
Elder Futhark is older, more complete, more precise but more difficult to learn for those who do not know ancient Norse, that’s why I had to learn ancient Norse first, and then the runes to learn to read and write with the runes as well as with the characters like above.
Whereas Younger Futhark with 16 runes is more recent, simpler, but more ambiguous because many runes had to represent multiple sounds.
Basically it’s like having an alphabet with fewer letters. It's faster to learn but more complex to form a sentence, in a way and in my opinion it’s more complex than the 24 rune.

These were the languages spoken in those times, now lost and transformed.

In the past there were several Viking tribes whose warriors used facial paint during battle, which also served as a means of identification and some tribes even carved the initials of their names onto their foreheads

An example of Viking face paint is my profile photo, my face is completely with war makeup during an event in Sweden last year. I already have long copper-red hair, just as sometimes I wear two big braids that start from four but unite into two, like in the photo, (except for that assassin like face) or one single big braid. At the event they used a dark foundation for fake tanning on the face and to give a dirty effect, (also because I have fair skin and not tanned like in the photo) and then they sprayed a matte red hair dye and a few sprays of brown color everywhere to give the hair a dirty effect too, while some front and side strands were made with more contrast, more color. I have several other photos but this is one of the few in close-up, but it’s cropped here to fit the profile obviously, I remember it took them 2.5 hours to do the makeup, since there were people assigned to this too. I went on too much but it was to give an example of Viking war face paint.

Berserkers also used war paint on their faces, sometimes with runes drawn.

They would enter a trance state in battle (berserkergang), becoming almost uncontrollable.
They were described as able to fight without heavy armor, often wearing only an animal skin.
Their fury made them feared, as they could ignore wounds and keep fighting.
Pain resistance came from the use of drugs that numbed and dulled pain, and the use of psychoactive substances (such Amanita Muscaria as hallucinogenic mushrooms) facilitated the berserker rage state.

With the spread of Christianity in Scandinavia, the attitude toward berserkers changed radically.
They were demonized as sorcerers or madmen, and their practices were gradually banned.
By the 13th century, sagas began to speak of them as mythical or legendary figures, no longer as real warriors.
The berserker has thus become today a legendary and symbolic figure, rather than an active historical reality.

Khazan does not reflect reality at all. It exaggerates everything to the point of science fiction, just like many other video games. But in the end, it’s still fiction, not the truth. Superpowers didn’t exist, just as Berserkers did not exist the way they are portrayed today. They were enormous, strong and cruel men without fear, but still human.
Religious functions, such as sacred rituals like the Ulfhednar, which was performed BEFORE the transformation into a Berserker, were meant to psychologically push the warriors to bring out the most savage part of their souls. Not everyone could become a Berserker, they were chosen based on their size and brutality.

Those were truly dark ages. The only underrated but truly great video game that actually reflects those times is Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II
One of the most brutal scenes is when Senua reaches the first village massacred by the Vikings slavers, and that is exactly how things really happened in the past, ruthless raids and invasions, blood and death everywhere.
There are plenty of documentaries and books, but for those who speak and read modern Norse or ancient Norse like me, it’s even better for truly understanding how things worked, without any modern alteration. And it was nothing like what is shown in video games, it was far worse.
I avoid talking about things that would surely hurt someone, but I’ll let you imagine, at that time, people ended their own lives with their own hands, as often happened if they had the time to do so, rather than be captured by one of them or by many of them together. I won’t go further on this topic.

It might sound strange, but it’s not, those were the times when the geography of the Nordic countries changed, precisely thanks to the conquest of other territories.

Remember
The ritual called Ulfhednar (pagan ritual) was nothing more than wearing the head of a Bear or a Wolf to embody the beast, and the use of hallucinogens and other substances did the rest, but they still had to be predisposed in terms of character, that’s how the Berzerk Rage was unleashed.

Here is what a Berserker (Bear-Shirt) really is, without fictions!

Probably due to my height (I am 1.87 tall), red long hair, strong spirit and body from years of volleyball, gym training, various types of support exercises to have power in my legs and arms because of Volleyball, and my nordic origins (born and raised in Denmark) I like to think I am a modern descendant of the Vikings just like my fellow citizens, with the difference that I do not use drugs or hallucinogens, at most a few beers on weekends.
I’ve even studied ancient Norse and the runic alphabet called Elder Futhark which has 24 runes, It took me more than two years.
It’s not even difficult to study, but there are different variants of the alphabet, depending on the eras.
The spirit of strength and fierce will runs in my blood, reflecting my fearless and strong character of which I am proud, but sometimes unfortunately a d!ckhead too.
For the rest I’m a normal person like everyone else but curious, and outside of work, I am almost entirely for myself, my time is almost fully occupied by sport activities.
But there are a lot of people like me who carry the spirit of their ancestors within them. I have tried to express my true self through sports, studies, and various curiosities about my past, I’m not a ordinary woman and I am proud of my origins.
More details on my profile but no much and no further.


Anne Grethe