#REAL NORDIC WARRIORS HOW TO#

The bond with the savage world is indicated not only on the geographic plane – life beyond the limits of the civilized life of the towns… but also on what we would consider a moral plane: their existence is assured by the law of the jungle.” The candidate ceased to be an ordinary human being and became instead a wolf-man or a bear-man, more a part of the forest than of civilization. To quote the esteemed archaeologist Dominique Briquel, “ Rapto vivere, to live in the manner of wolves, is the beginning of this initiation. Candidates for Germanic shamanic military societies underwent such a process before being admitted into the group: they spent a period in the wilderness, living like their totem animal and learning its ways, obtaining their sustenance through hunting, gathering, and raiding the nearest towns. One of the defining features of shamanic traditions across the world is an initiation process characterized by a symbolic (and occasionally literal) death and rebirth, whereby the shaman-to-be acquires his or her powers. It’s hard to imagine a grislier or more frightening thing to encounter on the late Iron Age battlefield. These names are a reference to the practice of dressing in a ritual costume made from the hide of the totem animal, an outward reminder of the wearer’s having gone beyond the confines of his humanity and become a divine predator. Īs far as we can tell today, the berserkers and úlfheðnar shared a common set of shamanic practices, with the only substantial difference being that the totem animal of the berserkers was, as the name implies, the bear, while that of the úlfheðnar was the wolf. These groups were a late development of the earlier Germanic warband, and shared much in common with the warlike shamanism of other circumpolar peoples. Among the most common of these forms, especially for men, was the attainment and use of an ecstatic battle-fury closely linked to a particular totem animal, usually a bear or a wolf, and often occurring within the context of certain formal, initiatory military groups.ĭuring the Viking Age, these “warrior-shamans” typically fell into two groups: the berserkers ( Old Norse berserkir, “bear-shirts”) and úlfheðnar (pronounced “oolv-HETH-nahr” with a hard “th” as in “the ” Old Norse for “wolf-hides”). The shamanism of the pre-Christian Norse and other Germanic peoples took several different forms. Ritually costumed “weapons dancers” on a Migration Period bronze plate from Öland, Sweden Book Review: Neil Price’s The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia.Who Were the Indo-Europeans and Why Do They Matter?.The Swastika – Its Ancient Origins and Modern (Mis)use.

#REAL NORDIC WARRIORS HOW TO#

The Old Norse Language and How to Learn It.The 10 Best Advanced Norse Mythology Books.The Vikings’ Conversion to Christianity.

Real nordic warriors