: Thanks for the literal translation. Yes, it's "Bear
: Shirt," not "Bear Skin". Hey, does
: "Bjork" come from the same root?
"Björk" means birch (tree). It's something more or less exclusively Icelandic as far as I know. I've never heard of any Danes, Norweigans or Swedes going by that name.
: Depends how you define "Vikings" (since no one
: at that time actually called themselves that). If
: you're calling all the Norse of the time Vikings, as a
: lot of modern scholars do, then yes, berserks made up
: a very small fraction of that group. But if you're
: using the term (as I was) to refer only to the Norse
: who actually went "a-viking," doing the
: whole looting and pillaging routine, then the berserks
: were not an inconsiderable fraction of those folks.
: They made up the cream of their fighting force.
The Vikings were Scandinavians, more or less. They were a fairly homogenous group as far as I know, and it was the same ones who did the looting and pillaging raids in the west that helped build (and fight for) a lot of the Russian city-states. There was internal fighting amongst dominant of... uhm... let's call it nobility, I think. It's a matter of time rather than factions, I think. The early Vikings raided more and the latter ones became entrepreneurs, traders and settlers.
If "berserks" fit in this, I don't know. I doubt it since I have seen few references from serious scholars of the matter. I was being taught Viking history already in third grade, and I don't recall mucb being said about these ferocious warriors.
To further add to this, there was recently a modeling of cross section of Viking skulls found and the result was far, far from anything frightening. Not anything impressive at all, in fact. It looked more like a slightly malnourished Midieval peasant than anything else.
Peter Isotalo
