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of a muscular frame, ready to handle arms at any moment, the 
Scandinavian grew up, as he was sure to do, a warrior. The 
fountain-head of all that was noblest and best in the greatest 
epoch of the race, the barren island of Iceland, was too poor a 
country to support a nation by agriculture or commerce. Its 
inhabitants were a race of aristocrats — the nobility of the whole 
of Scandinavia — and in the splendour of their manhood and the 
pride of their birth they regarded neighbouring nations with 
much the same scorn as the Hellenes regarded Persians or 
Sicilians. War, with its glory and its spoils, became the 
highest and only fit occupation for a gentleman, and the tradi- 
tions of religion gave their approval. The great iEsir were gods 
of war. The most solemn oaths were taken by the implements 
of battle, as in the Volundarkvula, where Volund makes Nidud 
swear by ship, by shield, by steed, and by sword. But of all 
forms of the religious frenzy of fighting, there is none so strange 
as the tales told of the Berserker, those high priests of Odin, 
whose marvellous feats have given rise to so much bewildered 
controversy. The name of Berserk is familiar enough to us all, 
but the full meaning of the word is not so well known but 
that I may be excused in pausing to define it. The Berserk 
was a warrior, who went into battle in his bare shirt or sark, 
that is, unprotected by armour ; it was believed that the flesh of 
these fanatics had become so perfectly hardened by exposure 
and by divine influence, that spear or sword could scarcely 
wound it, and that these men themselves were endowed with a 
superhuman strength, so as to be capable, during one of their 
fits of exalted excitement, of feats far beyond the power of ordi- 
nary mortals. The physical explanation of this extraordinary 
phenomenon, which rests on far too abundant evidence to be 
thrown aside as absurd, has never satisfactorily been given. It 
is certain that moods of furious afflatus would pass over whole 
companies of men, when they would seem to forego their mortal 
nature, and, becoming something more or less than men, would 
rush on what was called berserksgdn.gr , an expedition of berserk - 
ing. It was impossible for sane men to oppose these half-naked 
maniacs, who would fill the air with their howls, bite pieces 
out of their shields, rush through fires with their bare feet un- 
scorched, and perform actions of the most unbridled violence. 
In later times, kings of the stamp of Rolf Krake kept a group 
of these men as a kind of body-guard, for it appears that this 
superhuman excitement might be directed into definite channels 
and prove of use to an army in moments of sudden emergency. 
The archetype of the Berserker was Thore himself, who put on 
