Were berserkers real?How effective is fur for armor btw?
I kind of like the theory that berserkers are essentially man-children who never grow up and settle past the koryos cult of adolescence but so are able to pass on the tradition as well as being absolute mad lads on the battlefield. It at least explains why berserkers were considered hooligans in the late Icelandic sagas.
>>17049239>Were berserkers real?Most likely yes. The concept of drugged up religious fanatics being used as cannon fodder really is not that unthinkable.>How effective is fur for armor btw?Depends on the animal. Bear fur can get pretty fucking tough.Of course any metal armor shits all over it, but it's much better than nothing.
>>17049239>Were berserkers real?We don't know>How effective is fur for armor btw?Not very but it's better than nothing. Usually the point of armour outside of mail was for reducing force impact through layers.
Yeah they were real, the sagas are full of themIf you read the sagas you’d realise that they didn’t need armour, they had magical powers and weapons didn’t bite their skinIn Egils saga we’re told that only the berserkers survived a major battle without dying or being wounded, because they had berserker magic skinThey bit their shields and were insane
>>17049390literalist retard detected
>>17049239Berserking was real enough that Norway passed laws against berserks during the period.
>>17049239It's one of those grey areas where we don't know. It's plausible, but no reliable history about them.
>>17049500>in pastoral days we used to dress in animal skins and raid neighbors >at some point reach civility >hey let's stop doing that Makes sense desu
A sword has no reachNo aim
>>17049239They were real>fur armourThey were called shield biters. This means they had shields long and big enough to reach their faces so they could bite and gnaw and chew on them. So they didn't use "fur armour" they used shields to protect themselves, which is something a lot of depictions leave out unfortunately
>>17049568>A sword has no reachNeither do Romanlets so it all evens out
>>17049239Warriors wearing bear coats (or wolf coats as in your image) are attested, warriors that went berserk is only attested in legendary sagas.
yes they were real, they are very well documented from the roman times to the viking period. the question is how prevalent they were and how exaggerated some of the stories around them are; they obviously become more mythologized as time goes on and they became a more and more rare group. >how effective is fur armor?anon, they didnt wear the fur because it provided much protection, they wore it because it made them look like bestial creatures which was supposed to be unnerving or intimidating in the field of battle. in the sagas this is interpreted more literally, where the furs are magical and sew themselves into the skins of the berserkr when worn, and if they wear the skins too long they will lose their humanity forever and devolve into beasts. this happens to sigurd the dragonslayers father sigmund. there are also accounts of similiar traditions in europe and other parts of the world; the scythians would send their princes to a hidden island in the black sea, where they would leave their clothing, kill a wolf, and wear its skin. they would have to live on the island eating nothing but plants and herbs for 9 months, and at the end of that period they would return as a full-fledged man, initiated into the tribe. but if he consumed any flesh or meat, he would devolve into a bestial creature and lose control. this was given as an origin of werewolves in the ancient world. also I fucking hate artwork like yours OP. it looks so fucking stupid. we have multiple actual depictions of what berserkrs looked like; what is this gay shit?
>>17050130the berserkrgang was real just likely exaggerated to some degree. romans speak of the germanic tribes having spectacular, inhuman rages during the heat of battle, which they called 'teutonic furor', or the fury of the teutons. they said it was short-lived, but gave them great strength and savagery, biting into their enemies and simply ripping their shields and weapons away from them with their bare hands. to me that just sounds like an adrenaline rage explained in a cultural-religious context. there are similar things in roman culture itself, like the ritual of devotio; where a desperate roman soldier would sacrifice his own soul to the cthonic and martial powers in order to imbue himself with a kind of supernatural rage. theres a few accounts of this; some legate losing a battle prays to mars and then goes headfirst into a horde of suebians completely apeshit and kills like 30 of them before hes brought down. again I think this was just how latins explained the inhuman levels of strength that humans are capable of when pushed to desperate situations. how the berserkrs were able to systematize this into an entire cult is unknown. I dont believe the drug theory though; thats just stupid. you dont need drugs to go apeshit like that, just desperation and alot of rage. and more physical strength than most people today have
>>17049239I wonder if Berserkers were literally just furries, and like how most furries today are alcoholics, they Beserkers had a mini furcon before battle to get pumped up and high enough to fight
>>17050308Don't forget how common eagle, bear, and especially wolf names were back then.>Especially as second element, -ulf, -olf is extremely common. Förstemann explains this as originally motivated by the wolf as an animal sacred to Wodanaz, but notes that the large number of names indicates that the element had become a meaningless suffix of male names at an early time. Förstemann counts 381 names in -ulf, -olf, among which only four are feminine.Not nearly so common among Slavs, Romans, Greeks, Indo-Aryans, etc.
>>17050208>also I fucking hate artwork like yours OP. it looks so fucking stupid. we have multiple actual depictions of what berserkrs looked like; what is this gay shit?I take it you hated Eggers' movie?
>>17050408I got about 10 minutes into the movie. around then the norse guy and his son go to a temple and bend over on their 4's and start barking and violently farting. I close vlc player, deleted the torrent and emptied my trash bin. one of the most reddit movies I have ever seen
>>17050444I wonder (((why))) it was being shilled for so heavily on /pol/ and /tv/.
>>17050511>>17050444scatological humor isn't unheard of in authentic norse literature.
>>17050338historically speaking, why are anthro enjoyers so attracted to wolves? Foxes are a close second
>>17050600Why are there people who are into gfur (also frequently with wolves) while finding human males a complete turn-off?
>>17050616Speaking as a hmofa enjoyer, while also being adverse to body hair on women, maybe it's because anthros are softer, their hair is always silky and comfortable, they're always (bar weird fetish art) clean and healthy. They don't have human faults like smelling bad or sweating up the bed like a 3d person would.
>>17050641like listening to a woman
>>17049568It was too big to be called a sword...
>>17049239Did early Germanic tribes have these types of guys, or were they only from the later Viking Age?
>>17049239rawhide can stop swords so fur might do some good against glances and sniping strikes.
>>17049239Autistic men in a fur costume chimping out
>>17049851Romanlets used spears and javelins more than swords anyhow.They also made up for their shorter stature with iron discipline and super kino crests
>>17049493>the same book that says they existed also says they had magical powers>I'm going go believe they existed but ignore the bit about magical powers>you're the retard btw
>>17052043>double down retard
>>17049493>ok engi var ósárr á konungsskipinu fyrir framan siglu nema þeir, er eigi bitu járn, en þat váru berserkirYou see this time and time againI'm not misunderstanding poetic language, it literally says that the only people who were left unwounded on the king's ship in the thickest part of the action were the berserkers and we're told that iron did not bite them You can see this in the duelsThey try to hit these guys who cast magic spells and yet their swords wouldn't cutThere's another time, I forget the saga but there was a guy who could render any sword dull through his magic powers so long as he looked at it before the fightThey didn't wear armour because they didn't need it, they had magic fucking armour
