Ancient World Review

Were The Viking Berserkers High On Something?

"In the Old Norse written corpus, berserkers ... were warriors who purportedly fought in a trance-like fury, a characteristic which later gave rise to the modern English word 'berserk' ... Berserkers are attested to in numerous Old Norse sources, with their name literally rendered as 'bear-coats', along with úlfhéðnar ('wolf-coats')." Source: Wikipedia.

"...It is proposed by some authors that the northern warrior tradition originated in hunting magic. Three main animal cults appeared: the bear, the wolf, and the wild boar." The legend of the werewolf may be related to these ancient stories:

"Old Norse had the cognate varúlfur, but because of the high importance of werewolves in Norse mythology, there were alternative terms such as ulfhéðinn ('one in wolf-skin', referring still to the totemistic or cultic adoption of wolf-nature rather than the superstitious belief in actual shape-shifting). In modern Scandinavian also kveldulf ('evening-wolf'), presumably after the name of Kveldulf Bjalfason, a historical berserker of the 9th century who figures in the Icelandic sagas." (Wikipedia)

Berserkers, like Shieldmaidens, may be completely mythological. According to the National Museum of Denmark, there is little to no archaeological evidence that they ever existed. Assuming that they were real, however, and that the stories about their ultraviolent frenzies are accurate, what could account for their deranged behavior?

The Viking berserkers, we are told, went into battle in a trance-like rage and were supposed to be almost uncontrollable killing machines. Dressed in wolf and bear pelts, they would attack friend and foe alike and their homicidal madness sounds a lot like a drug-induced frenzy of some kind:

"This fury, which was called berserkergang, occurred not only in the heat of battle, but also during laborious work. Men who were thus seized performed things which otherwise seemed impossible for human power. This condition is said to have begun with shivering, chattering of the teeth, and chill in the body, and then the face swelled and changed its colour. With this was connected a great hot-headedness, which at last gave over into a great rage, under which they howled as wild animals, bit the edge of their shields, and cut down everything they met without discriminating between friend or foe. When this condition ceased, a great dulling of the mind and feebleness followed, which could last for one or several days." -- Fabing, Howard D. (1956). "On Going Berserk: A Neurochemical Inquiry. (Subscription-access only)

Note: A detailed commentary on berserkers in general and Fabing's paper can be found here.)

The legends suggest that the berserkers might have taken some kind of drug that caused these fits of berserkergang. Whatever it was, it came on with a rush of "shivering, chattering of the teeth and chill in the body," caused a spike in blood-pressure ("the face swelled and changed its color") and body temperature ("a great hot-headedness") and ended with a hangover with could last for days. No one really knows if the berserkers were high on something, but various candidates have been suggested:

"While some researchers believe the Berserkers simply worked themselves up into a self-induced hysteria before fighting, others maintain that it was sorcery, the consumption of drugs or alcohol, or even mental illness, that accounted for their behaviour. Some botanists have claimed that berserker behaviour could have been caused by the ingestion of the plant known as bog myrtle, one of the main spices in Scandinavian alcoholic beverages." Source: Ancient Origins.

The problem with the bog-myrtle theory is that the plant was commonly used to make beer back then and doesn't appear to produce this kind of dramatic effect on people. Maybe I missed something, but I couldn't find any mention of it in The Vaults of Erowid, a site which covers psychotropic plants and herbs in exhaustive detail.

Bog Myrtle (Myrica Gale) is a natural insect repellent, among other things. It was used (along with other herbs) to flavor beer in the middle ages until "hops supplanted gruit herbs for political and economic reasons." (Wikipedia). Bog Myrtle itself isn't psychedelic, as far as I can tell, but various mixtures of gruit herbs could act as euphorics and some of them had hallucinogenic or deliriant properties, so the idea that the Berserkers were stoned on some kind of herbal drink when they went into battle isn't all that outlandish.

"Helpful for enhancing lucid dreaming and astral work generally, bog myrtle was a flavoring for a type of European beer known as gruit up until the introduction of hops. The other components of gruit (1) were yarrow and wild rosemary. Some say this brew was behind the Berserkers [sic]. In northern Europe, bog myrtle and yarrow have been ingredients in fermented drinks made from grain, honey, or fruit since the Iron Age, and it is still used in Scandinavia to make a liqueur called 'snaps.'" Source: Alchemy Works.

(1) Medieval brewers used a wide variety of gruit herbs in their beer.

If the berserkers were high on something, the most likely candidate is gruit beer, but if they were that drunk it's hard to see how they could function very effectively. Some sources I've found speculate that they were tripping on the psychedelic amanita muscaria mushroom, but the psychoactive ingredient in the mushroom is muscimol, which is described as a "sedative-hypnotic," i.e., a tranquilizer -- just the opposite of what you would expect. Also, I've never heard of a psychedelic that consistently produces outbursts of violent rage. If the berserkers were taking a drug, it sounds like it was a medieval form of PCP.

Were the berserkers mentally ill? Again, it doesn't sound like it. Their furies seem to have been situation-specific, only occurring during battles or perhaps when they were working in their villages. If they were crazy they would've been prone to go berserk for no reason at all, but none of the sources I've found describe them flipping out at random. So, unless they were elite warriors who ate some plant that drove them into a homicidal rage the most plausible explanation for their reported behavior is that the berserkers are simply characters from Old Norse mythology. In other words, maybe they never actually existed.

Related:

Norse Power: A Brief Look At Berserker Rage

Did The Vikings Get A Bad Rap?

The Mysterious Woman Of Tadcaster

Note: The Romans originally built a settlement and fort on this site. According to Wikipedia, "The suffix of the Anglo-Saxon name Tadcaster is derived from the borrowed Latin word castra meaning 'fort', although the Angles and Saxons used the term for any walled Roman settlement. Tadcaster is first mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where it appears as Táda, referring to the place where King Harold assembled his army and fleet before entering York and proceeding onwards to the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066."

Footage From King Midas' Tomb 1951/1957

Note: This footage shows the excavation of Gordium, Turkey and the supposed tomb of King Midas by a team of University of Pennsylvania archaeologists in 1951/1957. According to the video description, "The Midas Mound was opened in 1957 by an archaeological team headed by Rodney Young who appears at the beginning of the film and makes a brief appearance as he pieces together decorative wall moldings."

The burial chamber of King Midas was discovered under the Midas Tumulus or burial mound. According to the LA Times (1988), "About 90 pyramid-shaped mounds of earth rise on the land [Anatolian plateau in western Turkey] where the Phrygians had their ancient capital of Gordion. The largest and highest of the burial mounds is believed to be the tomb of King Midas, who is said to have lived from 725 BC to 675 BC."

Proto-Elamite - A Still Undeciphered Ancient Language

Video from 2012.

"Proto-Elamite is the last undeciphered writing system from the Ancient Near East with a substantial number of sources (more than 1600 published texts). It was used for a relatively short period around 3000 BC across what is today Iran." Source: Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CLDI, 2013).

Reflectance Transformation Imaging, the technology being used to study these tablets, "...is a computational photographic method that captures a subject’s surface shape and color and enables the interactive re-lighting of the subject from any direction," according to Cultural Heritage Imaging.

"For a majority of the tablets the only available images are hand copies, drawn 80-100 years ago, but for a growing number of texts kept in the Louvre Museum high quality images are available," according to the CDLI.

Related: Deciphering Proto-Elamite

Elamite Scripts

8 Ancient Writing Systems That Haven't Been Deciphered Yet

Did Nero Burn Rome?

Was Nero the victim of an ancient smear campaign? Of course he was. Just to take one example, the famous story that he set fire to Rome and then played the lyre while watching the city burn is an obvious fabrication.

Here's the Roman historian Suetonius's description of what happened:

"Pretending to be disgusted by the drab old buildings and narrow, winding streets of Rome, he brazenly set fire to the city; and though a group of ex-consuls caught his attendants, armed with tow and blazing torches, trespassing on their property, they dared not interfere. He also coveted the sites of several granaries, solidly built in stone, near the Golden House; having knocked down their walls with siege-engines, he set the interiors ablaze. This terror lasted for six days and seven nights, causing many people to take shelter in monuments and tombs. Nero's men destroyed not only a vast number of apartment blocks, but mansions which had belonged to famous generals and were still decorated with their triumphal trophies; temples, too, vowed and dedicated by the kings, and others during the Punic and Gallic wars -- in fact, every ancient monument of historical interest that had hitherto survived. Nero watched the conflagration from the Tower of Maecenas, enraptured by what he called 'the beauty of the flames'; then put on his tragedian's costume and sang The Sack of Ilium from beginning to end." -- from "Nero", paragraph 38, Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars.

This is an entertaining story, but it's pure fiction. In fact, this account of Nero's crime is so outlandish that it's almost comical.

Just think about it. According to Suetonius and other sources, Nero sent his flunkies out to burn the city because he wanted to clear land to build his Golden Palace, aka the Domus Aurea, a "vast landscaped palace ... in the heart of Rome." (Wikipedia) This would be like an American president sending out his personal staff to burn down the neighborhoods around the White House so he could build a gigantic complex of mansions and pleasure gardens.

Nero's men weren't subtle about their arson, either. If Suetonius is to be believed, they ran completely amok for six days and seven nights, using siege engines to knock down walls and torching apartment blocks and other buildings that were presumably swarming with people. The chaos and panic this would have caused can easily be imagined. That would be bad enough, of course, but Nero also destroyed monuments and tombs and temples and "mansions which had belonged to famous generals."

This wholesale destruction would attract some attention, to say the least.

Rome was a big city at the time, but it wasn't that big and Nero's orgy of destruction supposedly went on for an entire week, right out in the open. Everybody would have known what was happening and who was responsible. According to Suetonius, a group of ex-consuls, no less, caught Nero's men setting fires but were afraid to do anything about it. In other words, they knew who the arsonists worked for.

The point is that none of this was a secret. When it was all over, everyone from the patricians in the Roman government to the ordinary plebs on the street would have known that Nero was responsible. He would have been universally condemned, but that isn't what happened:

"The Great Fire of Rome was an urban fire in July of the year AD 64. It caused widespread devastation in the city on 19 July, before being brought under control after six days. Differing accounts [emphasis added] either blame Emperor Nero for initiating the fire or credit him with organizing measures to contain it and provide relief for refugees." Wikipedia.

Why would there be differing accounts of what happened if Suetonius's version of events is correct? Remember, some of Nero's arsonists were supposedly caught in the act. This wasn't a covert operation. If Nero really did order his people to "brazenly" attack and burn his own city, it wasn't exactly deniable.

Nero himself was in Antium when the fire started. According to Wikipedia, "[h]e returned to the city and took measures to bring in food supplies and open gardens and public buildings to accommodate refugees." Curiously, he wasn't lynched on the spot after committing such an atrocity. On the contrary, he was given credit, at least in some sources, for his relief efforts.

Nero, like Caligula, was the victim of an ancient smear campaign, but that doesn't mean he was a particularly good emperor. He wasn't, but even though Rome apparently rejoiced at his death (according to Suetonius), he was still popular with part of the population when he was finally overthrown and murdered during the revolt of Vindex and Galba in 68 AD. Even Seutonius concedes as much:

"...there were people who used to lay spring and summer flowers on his grave for a long time, and had statues made of him, wearing his fringed toga, which they put up on the Rostra; they even continued to circulate his edicts, pretending he was still alive and would soon return to confound his enemies. What is more, King Vologaesus of Parthia, on sending ambassadors to ratify his alliance with Rome, particularly requested the Senate to honor Nero's memory. In fact, twenty years later, when I was a young man, a mysterious individual came forward claiming to be Nero; and so magical was the sound of his name in the Parthians' ears that they supported him to the best of their ability, and only handed him over with great reluctance." -- "Nero," from paragraph 57.

People don't usually put up statues to honor deranged lunatics who attack and burn their own capital cities. For the real story, at least as far as it can be reconstructed, check out The Great Fire of Rome by Stephen Dando-Collins. Highly recommended.

Is The Necronomicon A Real Book?

Some people believe that the Necronomicon was invented by the writer H.P. Lovecraft. These same deluded people also believe that Lovecraft wrote fiction.

Fools! Their minds have been poisoned by modern rationalism and their ignorance of our true position in the cosmos.

In reality, of course, the abhorred Necronomicon is all too real and it is just one of a number of forbidden texts which include ancient books like "the sinister Liber Ivonis, the infamous Cultes des Goules of Comte d'Erlette, the Unausprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt, and old Ludvig Prinn's hellish De Vermis Mysteriis." Source: The Haunter of the Dark. More information here.

The rest of this nonfiction article can be found here.

The history of the Necronomicon is well known to adepts. It was written around 730 AD by the mad poet Abdul Alhazred in Damascus under the title Al Azif -- "Azif being the word used by Arabs to designate that nocturnal sound (made by insects) suppos'd to be the howling of daemons." The book was translated into Greek by Theodorus Pheltas in 950 AD as the Necronomicon and in 1228 AD the Danish physician, natural historian and antiquarian Olaus Wormius translated the Greek version into Latin. Over the years, various editions were printed in Germany, Italy and Spain. According to Lovecraft, "an English translation made by Dr. Dee [I think the reference is to the famous John Dee] was never printed, and exists only in fragments recovered from the original manuscripts." Source: A History of the Necronomicon.

The original Arabic version of the Necronomicon has supposedly been lost, but the book still survives despite centuries of suppression by the church and secular authorities. Copies of the Latin text (various editions) can be found in the British Museum, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the Widener Library at Harvard, Miskatonic University in Arkham and the University of Buenos Aires. According to Lovecraft, "numerous other copies probably exist in secret, and a fifteenth-century one is persistently rumoured to form part of the collection of a celebrated American millionaire. A still vaguer rumor credits the preservation of a sixteenth-century Greek text in the Salem family of Pickman; but if it was so preserved, it vanished with the artist R. U. Pickman, who disappeared in 1926."

Note: Pickman may have taken his copy of the Necronomicon with him when he disappeared. The artist was encountered, presumably at a later date, by the author Randolph Carter in an episode described in Lovecraft's nonfiction work The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.

The libraries mentioned above have the Necronomicon under lock and key. If you ask them about it, they'll just laugh and deny that the book is even real, but obviously they're lying to conceal its existence from the world, probably under the advice of Henry Armitage, head librarian at Miskatonic University in the late 19th or early 20th century (the dates of his term of office are unknown, but he was definitely head librarian in 1928, the year of the terrifying Dunwich Horror, a real event which has been assiduously covered up ever since).

Books which purport to be the Necronomicon have been published over the years, but they're all hoaxes. If for no other reason, we know that they can't be the real Necronomicon because they're not long enough. The real Necronomicon (the Latin edition) is at least 751 pages long, a fact attested to by Wilbur Whateley's father, Old Whately, who owned a copy of the incomplete English translation:

"More space, Willy, more space soon. Yew grows -- an' that grows faster. It'll be ready to sarve ye soon, boy. Open up the gates to Yog-Sothoth with the long chant that ye'll find on page 751 of the complete edition, an' then put a match to the prison. Fire from airth can't burn it nohaow." (The Dunwich Horror)

If you research this material, every source you'll find will claim that the Necronomicon is fictional. Most sources even claim that Miskatonic University doesn't exist even though you can look it up in the Arkham, Massachusetts, telephone directory. The university even has its own web site. As for Lovecraft, he wasn't a fiction writer at all. He may have started off writing Poe-like short stories, but his interests changed in later years as his research led him into new and unexpected areas. Above all else, he was a journalist recounting the stories of obscure antiquarians, explorers and scientists who stumbled upon secrets that ended up driving most of them mad. I'm putting my own life and sanity in jeopardy by revealing all of this, but the truth must be known.

Related: The complete Cthulu Mythos stories from HorrorBabble. Highly recommended.

Mystery Of Anglo-Saxon Girl Buried In Bed With Gold Cross

Video from 2012.

"One of the earliest Anglo-Saxon Christian burial sites in Britain has been discovered in a village outside Cambridge. The grave of a teenage girl from the mid 7^th century AD has an extraordinary combination of two extremely rare finds: a ‘bed burial’ and an early Christian artefact in the form of a stunning gold and garnet cross." Source: Cambridge University (2012).

"The girl, aged around 16, was buried on an ornamental bed - a very limited Anglo-Saxon practice of the mid to later 7^th century - with a pectoral Christian cross on her chest, that had probably been sewn onto her clothing. Fashioned from gold and intricately set with cut garnets, only the fifth of its kind ever to be found, the artefact dates this grave to the very early years of the English Church, probably between 650 and 680 AD."

What Is A Modern Human?

Video from 2013.

"[Christopher Stringer] is one of the leading proponents of the recent African origin hypothesis or 'Out of Africa' theory, which hypothesizes that modern humans originated in Africa over 100,000 years ago and replaced, in some way, the world's archaic humans, such as Homo floresiensis and Neanderthals, after migrating within and then out of Africa to the non-African world within the last 50,000 to 100,000 years." Source: Wikipedia.

It now appears that Stringer is rethinking the Out of Africa theory, at least to some extent:

"I'm thinking a lot about species concepts as applied to humans, about the 'Out of Africa' model, and also looking back into Africa itself. I think the idea that modern humans originated in Africa is still a sound concept. Behaviorally and physically, we began our story there, but I've come around to thinking that it wasn't a simple origin." Source: Edge (2011?).

Stringer apparently still believes that modern humans evolved in Africa, but "the exact processes involved in our African origin are still unclear. We don't know exactly when it happened, we don't know exactly where it happened" and "our picture is still limited in terms of the sites that have been excavated and the information we've got from them."

The most interesting thing about this article is that Stringer seems to believe that there are different types of modern humans. These variations can be traced back to the probable interbreeding of modern humans with human ancestors like the Neanderthals. According to Stringer, "this means that in a sense some modern humans have got more archaic genes than others. [Emphasis added] That does seem to be so. So it leads us on to ask again: what is a modern human?" (1)

Stringer argues that "our evolutionary story is mostly, but not absolutely, a Recent African Origin," but the recent [2017] analysis of Graecopithecus frebergi fossils discovered in Greece and Bulgaria have called this into question. According to this new study "the birthplace of modern human beings may have been the eastern Mediterranean and not Africa..." (Ancient Origins) It's still too early to know whether this study is accurate, though, and some sources are already saying that there's not enough evidence to back the claim. Whatever the case, it's starting to look like the Out of Africa Theory is oversimplified, if not completely inaccurate.

(1) Stringer's conjecture that some modern humans have more archaic genes than others is a dangerous thing to say in today's toxic environment of political correctness. The idea that people aren't genetically identical is blasphemous. As for the Out of Africa Theory, the current orthodoxy regarding human origins is so mixed up with modern identity politics that a lot of people will resist the idea that it could be wrong no matter how much evidence is produced in the future.

Medieval Warrior Woman Found In Viking Grave Was No Viking

"When archaeologists discovered the remains of a woman in a Viking graveyard in Denmark, an axe near her skeleton told them that she may have been a fighter. But closer examination of both the weapon and her burial revealed something unexpected: She was no Viking." Source: Live Science.

"Rather, the woman was Slavic, and likely came from a region in Eastern Europe that is now Poland, representatives of Poland's Ministry of Science and Higher Education said in a statement."

Note: About thirty 9th - 10th century women's graves which contain weapons have been discovered in Scandinavia. According to Science In Poland, these graves "are most often equipped with axes, less frequently arrowheads or spears. In addition to real weapons, in numerous women's graves there are also miniatures of weapons in the form of, for example, small shields, axes or swords. It is a mystery for researchers whether it means that those women were warriors. The old Icelandic texts, especially the so-called legendary sagas, in addition to the warlike and beautiful Valkyries, also mention dragons, trolls and... flying carpets."

The Isle Of The Dragon's Blood Trees

"Socotra Archipelago, in the northwest Indian Ocean near the Gulf of Aden, is 250 km long and comprises four islands and two rocky islets which appear as a prolongation of the Horn of Africa. The site is of universal importance because of its biodiversity with rich and distinct flora and fauna..." Source: UNESCO.

Socotra was called Dioskouridou ('of the Dioscurides') or Dioscorida in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a first century AD shipping manual. According to the author of the Periplus, "Dioscorida ... is very large but desert and marshy, having rivers in it and crocodiles and many snakes and great lizards, of which the flesh is eaten and the fat melted and used instead of olive oil." Source: Fordham University Internet History Sourcebooks (paragraph 30).

Note: I'm not sure about this, but I think the Erythraean Sea is the old name for the Red Sea and at least part (?) of the Arabian Sea in the Indian Ocean. A map of the Erythraean Sea drawn in 169 BC by the Greek historian and geographer Agatharchides of Cnidus, can be found here. Socotra (lower right at the bottom of the map) was ideally located to be a jumping-off point for voyages to India.

Socotra has been called "the world's strangest place" with good reason. The plants on Socotra are truly bizarre, as can be seen in these pictures. The island's spectacular and alien landscape looks like something out of a science-fiction movie.

The ancient history of Socotra is obscure, but its inhabitants traded spices and the sap of their Dragon's Blood trees to Egypt and Rome. Its location near the mouth of the Red Sea made it an important stopover for cargo ships involved in the thriving maritime trade with the far east.

"The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all tapped the treasures of Socotra’s natural world: aromatic resins such as frankincense, medicinal aloe extract, and the dark red sap of the dragon’s blood tree, used for healing and as an artist’s color. Adventurers came to harvest the island’s wealth, despite stories that it was guarded by giant snakes living in its caves. The Queen of Sheba, Alexander the Great, and Marco Polo were among those who coveted Socotra’s riches." Source: National Geographic.

"The value of incense and dragon’s blood peaked during the time of the Roman Empire. Afterward, the island served mostly as a way station for traders, passing centuries in relative cultural isolation. Socotra’s residents lived generation after generation as their ancestors had: the mountain Bedouin minding their goats, the coastal residents fishing, and everyone harvesting dates. Island history was passed down through poetry, recited in the Socotri language."

According to Socotra Eco-Tours, Aristotle, Alexander the Great's tutor, selected a group of colonists to settle on Socotra. The idea was to harvest its myrhh, valued for its medicinal properties, and turn the island into a base for Alexander's invasion of India. The Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily (1st cent BC) mentions Socotra as a major source of myrhh, ladanum and various aromatic plants. The island was an important way station where "[s]ailors and tradesmen not only bought precious resins and medical herbs...which they later on sold at markets in the Roman empire or the Indian kingdoms, but also gained strength and supplies necessary for their long journeys to the African coast, Madagascar or to Persia." Inscriptions in various languages have been found inside Hoq cave on the island. (See video below)

Considering the island's strategic location and valuable resources, I imagine it was fought over repeatedly by various empires in the ancient world. Most of this history, unfortunately, has been lost forever. 

Note: "In 1834, the East India Company, in the expectation that the Mahra sultan of Qishn and Socotra, who resided at Qishn on the mainland [southern coast of modern Yemen], would accept an offer to sell the island, stationed a garrison on Socotra. Faced with the unexpected firm refusal of the sultan to sell, however, as well as the lack of good anchorages for a coaling station to be used by the new steamship line being put into service on the Suez-Bombay route, the British left in 1835." (Wikipedia)