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136-451: In the Old Norse written corpus, berserkers ( Old Norse : berserkir ) were those who were said to have fought in a trance -like fury, a characteristic which later gave rise to the modern English word berserk , meaning 'furiously violent or out of control'. Berserkers are attested to in numerous Old Norse sources. The Old Norse form of the word was berserk (plural berserkir ),

272-553: A cairn on the lands of the farm No 5 Björnhovda in Torslunda parish, Öland, Sweden, one of them showing what appears to be a berserker ritual. In 1887, the graves of two 7th century Alemanni men were found during construction work in the immediate vicinity of the St. Gallus Church in the Gutenstein district of the city of Sigmaringen , Germany. One of the graves contained, among other things,

408-570: A bear mating with a human woman, and producing a male heir, functions as an ancestor myth to peoples of the northern hemisphere , namely, from North America , Japan, China, Siberia and Northern Europe. The existence of an ancient bear cult among Neanderthals in Western Eurasia in the Middle Paleolithic has been a subject of conjecture due to contentious archaeological findings. Evidence suggests that Neanderthals could have worshipped

544-459: A caretaker role for the bear cub, allowing it to suckle on the human female milk and raise the bear as if it is one of the village’s own children, entertaining it with music and dance. One account of a bear ceremony performed by the Ul’chi people describes the following established gender roles on the day of the bear sacrifice: “Two men would guide the bear on two chains around an ice hole in the river. It

680-400: A carved wooden platter and was treated better than Ainu children for they thought of him as a god. If the cub was too young and lacked the teeth to properly chew food, a nursing mother would let him suckle from her own breast. When the cub reached 2–3 years of age, the cub was taken to the altar and then sacrificed. Usually, Kumamatsuri occurred in midwinter, when the bear meat is the best from

816-701: A change known as Holtzmann's law . An epenthetic vowel became popular by 1200 in Old Danish, 1250 in Old Swedish and Old Norwegian, and 1300 in Old Icelandic. An unstressed vowel was used which varied by dialect. Old Norwegian exhibited all three: /u/ was used in West Norwegian south of Bergen , as in aftur , aftor (older aptr ); North of Bergen, /i/ appeared in aftir , after ; and East Norwegian used /a/ , after , aftær . Old Norse

952-675: A compound word of ber and serk . The latter part is an old germanic word, meaning "shirt" and thereof (also found in Middle English , see serk ). The first part, ber , on the other hand, can linguistically mean several things, but is assumed to have most likely meant " bear ", with the full phrase, berserk , meaning just "bear-shirt", as in "someone who wears a coat made out of a bear's skin ". Thirteenth-century historian Snorri Sturluson , an Icelander who lived around 200 years after berserkers were outlawed in Iceland (outlawed in 1015), on

1088-486: A contentious relationship with the Russian state since the beginning of the colonial era. However, in the modern day, the sources of cultural contention have had economic implications as well. The act of raising a bear cub in a village is now deeply costly for the participants of the ceremony, for example. Meanwhile, bear hunting has led to conflicts between indigenous Siberian cultures and the Russian law as well. For instance,

1224-522: A dangerous threat to people in the village, which is a central pillar of “revenge on the bear.” The “revenge on the bear” constitutes one of the beliefs in bear worship, whereby bears are never to be hunted unless they harm the humans first. This practice is particularly characteristic of societies living in the Amur region of Siberia. The financial burden on indigenous populations by the Russian Federation

1360-499: A dynamic evolution of indigenous belief systems, where the veneration of one animal gradually transitioned into the worship of another, reflecting the adaptability and continuity of spiritual traditions within these communities. Such interpretations shed light on the interconnectedness of various aspects of indigenous cultures and the complex interplay between different forms of animal worship in Siberia's rich tapestry of traditions. Some of

1496-490: A family would raise the bear cub before sacrificing it, either within the confines of the family abode until the bear grew too big to be kept inside. According to one account of the Ul’chi bear ceremony, “[the] bear slept with the dogs and came out to play and to be hand fed by the woman of the house.” There have also been records of the bear cubs sucking on female human milk, and indigenous families’ children are reprimanded when they express jealousy toward how bears are treated in

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1632-417: A female raven or a male crow. All neuter words have identical nominative and accusative forms, and all feminine words have identical nominative and accusative plurals. The gender of some words' plurals does not agree with that of their singulars, such as lim and mund . Some words, such as hungr , have multiple genders, evidenced by their determiners being declined in different genders within

1768-422: A forest to find a bear den, kill the mother bear and catch the bear cub to bring back to the indigenous encampment. The people in the region then raise the bear cub as if the bear cub is one of the tribes’ own children. The duration of raising the bear varies between different cultures, but the process can take anywhere from one to five years, depending on the age at which the bear reaches sexual maturity, as well as

1904-412: A front vowel to be split into a semivowel-vowel sequence before a back vowel in the following syllable. While West Norse only broke /e/ , East Norse also broke /i/ . The change was blocked by a /w/ , /l/ , or /ʀ/ preceding the potentially-broken vowel. Some /ja/ or /jɔ/ and /jaː/ or /jɔː/ result from breaking of /e/ and /eː/ respectively. When a noun, pronoun, adjective, or verb has

2040-531: A fundamental tenet governing the relationship between humans and bears is the prohibition against hunting bears, except under specific circumstances. Bears are only pursued if they pose a direct threat to human life or property, such as in cases where they have caused harm or invaded dwellings. This strict adherence to non-lethal measures underscores the deeply ingrained belief in a harmonious coexistence between humans and animals, particularly bears, within these communities. The reverence accorded to bears extends beyond

2176-409: A given sentence. Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns were declined in four grammatical cases – nominative , accusative , genitive , and dative  – in singular and plural numbers. Adjectives and pronouns were additionally declined in three grammatical genders. Some pronouns (first and second person) could have dual number in addition to singular and plural. The genitive

2312-399: A glance from their evil eyes. This appears as early as Beowulf where it is a characteristic attributed to Grendel . Both the fire eating and the immunity to edged weapons are reminiscent of tricks popularly ascribed to fakirs . In 1015, Jarl Eiríkr Hákonarson of Norway outlawed berserkers. Grágás , the medieval Icelandic law code , sentenced berserker warriors to outlawry . By

2448-596: A great bear went before King Hrolf's men, keeping always near the king. He slew more men with his fore paws than any five of the king's champions." Wolf warriors appear among the legends of the Indo-Europeans, Turks, Mongols, and Native American cultures. The Germanic wolf-warriors have left their trace through shields and standards that were captured by the Romans and displayed in the armilustrium in Rome. Frenzy warriors wearing

2584-399: 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. When Viking villages went to war in unison, the berserkers often wore special clothing, for instance furs of

2720-401: A gun to shoot the bear. As such, the bear has to be killed with a bow and arrow, knife, or spear. Also equally important is the vocabulary used to describe the act of sacrificing the bear. It is common for indigenous peoples to use euphemisms such as “I obtained a child” to convey killing a bear, as using direct language can offend the sacred animal, as well as the gods and spirits presiding over

2856-584: A long vowel or diphthong in the accented syllable and its stem ends in a single l , n , or s , the r (or the elder r - or z -variant ʀ ) in an ending is assimilated. When the accented vowel is short, the ending is dropped. The nominative of the strong masculine declension and some i-stem feminine nouns uses one such -r (ʀ). Óðin-r ( Óðin-ʀ ) becomes Óðinn instead of * Óðinr ( * Óðinʀ ). The verb blása ('to blow'), has third person present tense blæss ('[he] blows') rather than * blæsr ( * blæsʀ ). Similarly,

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2992-472: A man called Kveldulf ( Evening-Wolf ) who is said to have transformed into a wolf at night. This Kveldulf is described as a berserker, as opposed to an ulfheðinn . Ulfheðnar are sometimes described as Odin 's special warriors: "[Odin's] men went without their mailcoats and were mad as hounds or wolves, bit their shields...they slew men, but neither fire nor iron had effect upon them. This is called 'going berserk'." The helm-plate press from Torslunda depicts

3128-474: A noun must mirror the gender of that noun , so that one says, " heill maðr! " but, " heilt barn! ". As in other languages, the grammatical gender of an impersonal noun is generally unrelated to an expected natural gender of that noun. While indeed karl , "man" is masculine, kona , "woman", is feminine, and hús , "house", is neuter, so also are hrafn and kráka , for "raven" and "crow", masculine and feminine respectively, even in reference to

3264-621: A proponent of the bear-cult hypothesis, found bear remains in Switzerland and at Morn Cave ( Mornova zijalka ) in Slovenia . Along with Bächler's discovery, bear skulls were found by André Leroi-Gourhan arranged in a perfect circle in Saône-et-Loire . The discovery of patterns such as those found by Leroi-Gourhan suggests that these bear remains were placed in this arrangement intentionally; an act which can only be attributed to Neandertals due to

3400-583: A result of governmental support, bear worship across various cultures in the northern hemisphere has seemed to “account for both some convergence of forms and some variations (Moldanova 2016; Wiget and Balalaeva 2004a) …. especially okrugwide festival programs in Khanty-Mansiĭsk, probably accounts for the convergent use throughout the northern regions of festival shirts, decorated with rickrack, and felt hats, decorated with traditional symbols.” Bear ceremonialism practiced among indigenous Siberian peoples holds

3536-485: A royal bodyguard . It may be that some of those warriors only adopted the organization or rituals of berserk Männerbünde , or used the name as a deterrent or claim of their ferocity. Emphasis has been placed on the frenzied nature of the berserkers, hence the modern sense of the word "berserk". However, the sources describe several other characteristics that have been ignored or neglected by modern commentators. Snorri's assertion that "neither fire nor iron told upon them"

3672-431: A scene of a one-eyed warrior with bird-horned helm, assumed to be Odin, next to a wolf-headed warrior armed with a spear and sword as distinguishing features, assumed to be a berserker with a wolf pelt: "a wolf-skinned warrior with the apparently one-eyed dancer in the bird-horned helm, which is generally interpreted as showing a scene indicative of a relationship between berserkgang ... and the god Odin". In Norse poetry,

3808-651: A silver sword scabbard, the Gutenstein scabbard  [ de ] . Highly ornate, it features a warrior figure with a wolf's head, holding a sword and a spear. It is thought this depicts an ulfheðinn (wolf warrior), as pre-Christian Central Europe was part of the same tradition as the Norse. Other animal headed figures have been found, such as an antlered figure on the Gundestrup cauldron , found on northern Jutland, Denmark, in 1891, which has been dated from 200 BC to 300 AD. It

3944-472: A similar development influenced by Middle Low German . Various languages unrelated to Old Norse and others not closely related have been heavily influenced by Norse, particularly the Norman language ; to a lesser extent, Finnish and Estonian . Russian, Ukrainian , Belarusian , Lithuanian and Latvian also have a few Norse loanwords. The words Rus and Russia , according to one theory, may be named after

4080-459: A spiritual significance as this tradition is a manifestation of paganism in Russia. Believing that everything has a soul, bear worship thus represents a spiritual worldview, wherein humans are meant to live in harmony with the natural environment around them, rather than attempt to conquer it. Paganism promotes a relatively more egalitarian structure of existence, compared to the hierarchical one that lays

4216-517: A touch of the uncanny about a number of them ... they [were] built and shaped more like trolls than human beings." This has sometimes been interpreted as the band of men being " hamrammr ", though there is no major consensus. Another example of " hamrammr " comes from the Saga of Hrólf Kraki . One tale within tells the story of Bödvar Bjarki , a berserker who is able to shapeshift into a bear and uses this ability to fight for king Hrólfr Kraki . "Men saw that

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4352-601: A voiced velar fricative [ɣ] in all cases, and others have that realisation only in the middle of words and between vowels (with it otherwise being realised [ɡ] ). The Old East Norse /ʀ/ was an apical consonant , with its precise position unknown; it is reconstructed as a palatal sibilant . It descended from Proto-Germanic /z/ and eventually developed into /r/ , as had already occurred in Old West Norse. The consonant digraphs ⟨hl⟩ , ⟨hr⟩ , and ⟨hn⟩ occurred word-initially. It

4488-460: A vowel or semivowel of a different vowel backness . In the case of i-umlaut and ʀ-umlaut , this entails a fronting of back vowels, with retention of lip rounding. In the case of u-umlaut , this entails labialization of unrounded vowels. Umlaut is phonemic and in many situations grammatically significant as a side effect of losing the Proto-Germanic morphological suffixes whose vowels created

4624-430: A wolf or bear, to indicate that this person was a berserker, and would not be able to tell friend from foe when in " bersærkergang ". In this way, other allies would know to keep their distance. Some scholars propose that certain examples of berserker rage had been induced voluntarily by the consumption of drugs such as hallucinogenic mushrooms , massive amounts of alcohol , or a mixture only known as 'butotens.' This

4760-448: A word. Strong verbs ablaut the lemma 's nucleus to derive the past forms of the verb. This parallels English conjugation, where, e.g., the nucleus of sing becomes sang in the past tense and sung in the past participle. Some verbs are derived by ablaut, as the present-in-past verbs do by consequence of being derived from the past tense forms of strong verbs. Umlaut or mutation is an assimilatory process acting on vowels preceding

4896-406: Is a good omen if the bear takes a drink. Then they went along a corridor of poles with wood streamers on them, about one kilometre to the place called arachu , prepared for the killing. Women played special rhythms on a musical instrument made of a hollow log. The women dance the part of the bear.” Additionally, the bear ceremony holds a special significance for men, who are the designated hunters of

5032-460: Is additionally exacerbated by ecological deterioration. The ecological deterioration has been caused by the state’s exploitation of natural resources in Siberia, especially recently. Notably, the Russian oil and gas extraction industry has greatly undermined the state of bears’ natural habitats in the Siberian taiga, leading to the animals’ increased wandering into human villages and potentially attacking

5168-533: Is also such a euphemism. In the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala , the bear is called Otso , which is the sacred king of animals and leader of the forest, deeply feared and respected by old Finnish tribes . Calling a bear by its true name was believed to summon the bear. A successful bear hunt was followed by a ritual feast called peijaiset with a ceremony as the bear as an "honoured guest", with songs convincing

5304-537: Is classified as Old West Norse, and Old West Norse traits were found in western Sweden . In what is present-day Denmark and Sweden, most speakers spoke Old East Norse. Though Old Gutnish is sometimes included in the Old East Norse dialect due to geographical associations, it developed its own unique features and shared in changes to both other branches. The 12th-century Icelandic Gray Goose Laws state that Swedes , Norwegians , Icelanders , and Danes spoke

5440-461: Is expected to exist, such as in the male names Ragnarr , Steinarr (supposedly * Ragnarʀ , * Steinarʀ ), the result is apparently always /rː/ rather than */rʀ/ or */ʀː/ . This is observable in the Runic corpus. In Old Norse, i/j adjacent to i , e , their u-umlauts, and æ was not possible, nor u/v adjacent to u , o , their i-umlauts, and ǫ . At

5576-574: Is more common in Old West Norse in both phonemic and allophonic positions, while it only occurs sparsely in post-runic Old East Norse and even in runic Old East Norse. This is still a major difference between Swedish and Faroese and Icelandic today. Plurals of neuters do not have u-umlaut at all in Swedish, but in Faroese and Icelandic they do, for example the Faroese and Icelandic plurals of the word land , lond and lönd respectively, in contrast to

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5712-427: Is much debated but the theory is further supported by the discovery of seeds belonging to black henbane ( Hyoscyamus niger ) in a Viking grave that was unearthed near Fyrkat, Denmark in 1977. An analysis of the symptoms caused by Hyoscyamus niger revealed that they are also similar to the symptoms ascribed to the berserker state, which suggest it may have been used to generate their warlike mood. Other explanations for

5848-574: Is proposed by some authors that the berserkers drew their power from the bear and were devoted to the bear cult , which was once widespread across the northern hemisphere. The berserkers maintained their religious observances despite their fighting prowess, as the Svarfdæla saga tells of a challenge to single-combat that was postponed by a berserker until three days after Yule. The bodies of dead berserkers were laid out in bearskins prior to their funeral rites. The bear-warrior symbolism survives to this day in

5984-462: Is reiterated time after time. The sources frequently state that neither edged weapons nor fire affected the berserks, although they were not immune to clubs or other blunt instruments. For example: These men asked Halfdan to attack Hardbeen and his champions man by man; and he not only promised to fight, but assured himself the victory with most confident words. When Hardbeen heard this, a demoniacal frenzy suddenly took him; he furiously bit and devoured

6120-456: Is that the nonphonemic difference between the voiced and the voiceless dental fricative is marked. The oldest texts and runic inscriptions use þ exclusively. Long vowels are denoted with acutes . Most other letters are written with the same glyph as the IPA phoneme, except as shown in the table below. Ablaut patterns are groups of vowels which are swapped, or ablauted, in the nucleus of

6256-481: Is turning into our own destruction. We understand that the country needs oil, but not at the expense of our lives! All local industrial works operate as if we weren’t here, as if our ancestors weren’t here, as if our existence were over. Where are the principles of government policy toward Native peoples?” Centuries-long state repression of cultural traditions and spiritualism has led to an overall decline in bear worship among indigenous populations in Siberia. Throughout

6392-557: Is unclear whether they were sequences of two consonants (with the first element realised as /h/ or perhaps /x/ ) or as single voiceless sonorants /l̥/ , /r̥/ and /n̥/ respectively. In Old Norwegian, Old Danish and later Old Swedish, the groups ⟨hl⟩ , ⟨hr⟩ , and ⟨hn⟩ were reduced to plain ⟨l⟩ , ⟨r⟩ , ⟨n⟩ , which suggests that they had most likely already been pronounced as voiceless sonorants by Old Norse times. The pronunciation of ⟨hv⟩

6528-603: Is unclear, but it may have been /xʷ/ (the Proto-Germanic pronunciation), /hʷ/ or the similar phoneme /ʍ/ . Unlike the three other digraphs, it was retained much longer in all dialects. Without ever developing into a voiceless sonorant in Icelandic, it instead underwent fortition to a plosive /kv/ , which suggests that instead of being a voiceless sonorant, it retained a stronger frication. Primary stress in Old Norse falls on

6664-518: The Germani . Scene 36 on the column shows some of these warriors standing together, with some wearing bearhoods and some wearing wolfhoods. Nowhere else in history are Germanic bear-warriors and wolf-warriors recorded fighting together until 872 AD, with Thórbiörn Hornklofi 's description of the battle of Hafrsfjord , when they fought together for King Harald Fairhair of Norway. In 1639 and 1734 respectively, two vastly decorated horns made of sheet gold,

6800-591: The Golden Horns of Gallehus , were discovered in Southern Jutland, Denmark. As part of its decoration, the first horn, the larger of the two, depicts two armed animal headed men facing each other. Dated to the early 5th century, these depictions could represent bearserkers. In the spring of 1870, four Vendel era cast-bronze dies, the Torslunda plates , were found by Erik Gustaf Pettersson and Anders Petter Nilsson in

6936-580: The Kuznetskaja Taiga as well as among the Sagai tribes in the regions of Minusinsk , near the Kuznetskaja Taiga (1927). In Finnish paganism , the bear was considered a taboo animal, and the word for 'bear' ( oksi ) was a taboo word. Euphemisms such as mesikämmen 'honey-palm' were used instead. The modern Finnish word karhu (from karhea , 'coarse, rough', referring to its coarse fur)

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7072-525: The Latin alphabet , there was no standardized orthography in use in the Middle Ages. A modified version of the letter wynn called vend was used briefly for the sounds /u/ , /v/ , and /w/ . Long vowels were sometimes marked with acutes but also sometimes left unmarked or geminated. The standardized Old Norse spelling was created in the 19th century and is, for the most part, phonemic. The most notable deviation

7208-657: The Rus' people , a Norse tribe, probably from present-day east-central Sweden. The current Finnish and Estonian words for Sweden are Ruotsi and Rootsi , respectively. A number of loanwords have been introduced into Irish , many associated with fishing and sailing. A similar influence is found in Scottish Gaelic , with over one hundred loanwords estimated to be in the language, many of which are related to fishing and sailing. Old Norse vowel phonemes mostly come in pairs of long and short. The standardized orthography marks

7344-439: The cave bear ( Ursus spelaeus ) and bear bones have been discovered in several cave sites across Western Eurasia . It was not just the presence of these bones, but their peculiar arrangement that intrigued archaeologists. During the excavation, on-site archaeologists determined that the bones were arranged in such a way that could only have resulted from hominin intervention rather than natural deposition processes. Emil Bächler,

7480-464: The wild boar . The bas-relief carvings on Trajan's column in Rome, completed in 113 AD, depict scenes of Trajan 's conquest of Dacia in 101–106 AD. The scenes show his Roman soldiers plus auxiliaries and allies from Rome's border regions, including tribal warriors from both sides of the Rhine . There are warriors depicted as barefoot, bare-chested, bearing weapons and helmets that are associated with

7616-654: The word stem , so that hyrjar would be pronounced /ˈhyr.jar/ . In compound words, secondary stress falls on the second stem (e.g. lærisveinn , /ˈlɛːɾ.iˌswɛinː/ ). Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark , runic Old Norse was originally written with the Younger Futhark , which had only 16 letters. Because of the limited number of runes, several runes were used for different sounds, and long and short vowels were not distinguished in writing. Medieval runes came into use some time later. As for

7752-551: The 11th century in most of Old East Norse. However, the distinction still holds in Dalecarlian dialects . The dots in the following vowel table separate the oral from nasal phonemes. Note: The open or open-mid vowels may be transcribed differently: Sometime around the 13th century, /ɔ/ (spelled ⟨ǫ⟩ ) merged with /ø/ or /o/ in most dialects except Old Danish , and Icelandic where /ɔ/ ( ǫ ) merged with /ø/ . This can be determined by their distinction within

7888-553: The 12th century, organised berserker war-bands had disappeared. The Lewis Chessmen , found on the Isle of Lewis , Outer Hebrides , Scotland , and thought to be of Norse manufacture, include berserkers depicted biting their shields . Scholar Hilda Ellis-Davidson draws a parallel between berserkers and the mention by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII (CE 905–959) in his book De cerimoniis aulae byzantinae ("Book of Ceremonies of

8024-957: The 12th-century First Grammatical Treatise but not within the early 13th-century Prose Edda . The nasal vowels, also noted in the First Grammatical Treatise, are assumed to have been lost in most dialects by this time (but notably they are retained in Elfdalian and other dialects of Ovansiljan ). See Old Icelandic for the mergers of /øː/ (spelled ⟨œ⟩ ) with /ɛː/ (spelled ⟨æ⟩ ) and /ɛ/ (spelled ⟨ę⟩ ) with /e/ (spelled ⟨e⟩ ). Old Norse had three diphthong phonemes: /ɛi/ , /ɔu/ , /øy ~ ɛy/ (spelled ⟨ei⟩ , ⟨au⟩ , ⟨ey⟩ respectively). In East Norse these would monophthongize and merge with /eː/ and /øː/ , whereas in West Norse and its descendants

8160-642: The 13th century there. The age of the Swedish-speaking population of Finland is strongly contested, but Swedish settlement had spread the language into the region by the time of the Second Swedish Crusade in the 13th century at the latest. The modern descendants of the Old West Norse dialect are the West Scandinavian languages of Icelandic , Faroese , Norwegian , and the extinct Norn language of Orkney and Shetland , although Norwegian

8296-701: The 20th century, bear ceremonialism in Siberia became a rarely observed phenomenon. The Ob-Ugrian intelligentsia began the revival process for bear worship in the 1980s and 1990s, when state repression measures of indigenous cultures had been relieved. Since then, the participation of tourists in Khanty bear ceremonies has also increased in the modern day. Bear ceremonialism has thus taken on an economic significance for indigenous subsistence in modern times as well as tourists would pay to see bear worship in action. Revival activities often come about through state support, as well as televised through state-sponsored media channels. As

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8432-550: The Byzantine court") of a " Gothic Dance" performed by members of his Varangian Guard , Norse warriors in the service of the Byzantine Empire , who took part wearing animal skins and masks: she believes this may have been connected with berserker rites. The rage the berserker experienced was referred to as berserkergang ('berserk fit/frenzy' or 'berserk movement'). This condition has been described as follows: This fury, which

8568-560: The Faroe Islands, Faroese has also been influenced by Danish. Both Middle English (especially northern English dialects within the area of the Danelaw ) and Early Scots (including Lowland Scots ) were strongly influenced by Norse and contained many Old Norse loanwords . Consequently, Modern English (including Scottish English ), inherited a significant proportion of its vocabulary directly from Norse. The development of Norman French

8704-577: The Haraldskvæði saga describes Harald's berserkers: I'll ask of the berserks, you tasters of blood, Those intrepid heroes, how are they treated, Those who wade out into battle? Wolf-skinned they are called. In battle They bear bloody shields. Red with blood are their spears when they come to fight. They form a closed group. The prince in his wisdom puts trust in such men Who hack through enemy shields. The "tasters of blood" (a kenning ) in this passage are thought to be ravens, which feasted on

8840-424: The Khanty and the bear is based on their likeness, and on how both are related in a hierarchical relationship with the heavenly father and are linked with each other in a relationship of respect and reciprocity.” The bear ceremony is a heavily and strictly gendered practice, as men and women play distinct roles throughout the entire process. Only men are allowed to hunt and ultimately kill the bear, while women play

8976-439: The Khanty have subsistence hunting rights in their traditional region, but the Russian legal framework imposes a heavy financial burden on this indigenous Siberian culture by mandating “expensive and difficult to procure individual species licenses for non-food hunting and trapping.” According to reports by Wiget and Balalaeva, recently, there have been records of Ob-Ugrians being arrested for hunting bears that have previously posed

9112-468: The Swedish plural land and numerous other examples. That also applies to almost all feminine nouns, for example the largest feminine noun group, the o-stem nouns (except the Swedish noun jord mentioned above), and even i-stem nouns and root nouns , such as Old West Norse mǫrk ( mörk in Icelandic) in comparison with Modern and Old Swedish mark . Vowel breaking, or fracture, caused

9248-405: The Ul’chi people of the Amur region opt for a longer period, typically three to four years, before they perform the ritual sacrifice. These differences in duration reflect the diverse traditions and customs found across different communities, shaping their respective approaches to this practice.) The bear is raised in captivity in the encampment alongside the people’s animals and children. Usually,

9384-512: The banquet, the bear is killed and eaten in an elaborate religious ceremony. The festival was arranged by relatives to honour the death of a kinsman. The bear's spirit returns to the gods of the mountain 'happy' and rewards the Nivkh with bountiful forests. Generally, the Bear Festival was an inter-clan ceremony where a clan of wife-takers restored ties with a clan of wife-givers upon the broken link of

9520-435: The bear ceremony prohibits seances performed by shamans as this worship represents one of the few practices where humans are able to communicate directly with spirits without necessitating aid from a third party agent. Before the sacrificial ritual, the people of the village generally invest a lot of effort into traditions that serve the purpose of “amusing” the bear. For example, some people would pour water on each other, or

9656-426: The bear head is often separated from the rest of the body and used as a protective ornament in the home of the family hosting the celebratory feast. Meanwhile, the tongue is gifted to the eldest male of the village as a sign of respect in the culture. Although most indigenous peoples generally follow the same rituals and practices in executing ceremonies for bear worship, some populations also adopt unique versions of

9792-484: The bear is the head of the gods. For the Ainu, when the gods visit the world of man, they don fur and claws and take on the physical appearance of an animal. Usually, however, when the term “kamuy” is used, it essentially means a bear. The Ainu people willingly and thankfully ate the bear as they believed that the disguise (the flesh and fur) of any god was a gift to the home that the god chose to visit. The Ainu believed that

9928-537: The bear that its death was "accidental", in order to appease its spirit. The skull of the bear was raised high into a pine tree so its spirit could climb back into its home in the heavens, and this tree was venerated afterwards. There are annual bear festivals that take place in various towns and communes in the Pyrenees region of Spain and France. In Prats de Molló , the Festa de l'ós  [ ca ; fr ] ('festival of

10064-431: The bear'; also known as dia dels óssos , 'day of the bears') held on Candlemas (February 2) is a ritual in which men dressed up as bears brandishing sticks terrorize people in the streets. Formerly, the festival centered on the "bears" mock-attacking the women and trying to blacken their breasts (with soot), which seemed scandalous to outside first-time observers. But according to the testimony of someone who remembered

10200-541: The beginning of words, this manifested as a dropping of the initial /j/ (which was general, independent of the following vowel) or /v/ . Compare ON orð , úlfr , ár with English word, wolf, year . In inflections, this manifested as the dropping of the inflectional vowels. Thus, klæði + dat -i remains klæði , and sjáum in Icelandic progressed to sjǫ́um > sjǫ́m > sjám . The * jj and * ww of Proto-Germanic became ggj and ggv respectively in Old Norse,

10336-412: The berserk state at the heart of their most severe psychological and psychophysiological injuries. It has been suggested that the berserkers' behavior inspired the legend of the werewolf . Old Norse Old Norse , also referred to as Old Nordic , or Old Scandinavian , was a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse

10472-486: The berserker rage of soldiers and the hyperarousal of posttraumatic stress disorder . In Achilles in Vietnam , he writes: If a soldier survives the berserk state, it imparts emotional deadness and vulnerability to explosive rage to his psychology and permanent hyperarousal to his physiology — hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder in combat veterans. My clinical experience with Vietnam combat veterans prompts me to place

10608-485: The berserker's madness that have been put forward include self-induced hysteria , epilepsy , or mental illness , among other causes. One theory of the berserkers suggests that the physical manifestations of the berserker alongside their rage was a form of self-induced hysteria. Initiated before battle through a ritualistic performance meant for effect, which included actions such as shield-biting and animalistic howling. Jonathan Shay makes an explicit connection between

10744-633: The center square of town (where the victim would be fed sausages, cake, and white wine). The event finished with the "bear" being shaved and "killed". There is also a similar festival in the town of Sant Llorenç de Cerdans : Festa de l'ós de Sant Llorenç de Cerdans  [ ca ] . These three well-known festivals take place in towns located in Vallespir , and are known as «Festes de l'os al Vallespir» or «El dia de l'os/dels ossos»  [ fr ; ca ] . Andorra , in an entirely different Pyrenean valley, has some festivals dedicated to

10880-451: The clan. A bear was captured and raised in a corral for several years by local women, who treated the bear like a child. The bear is considered a sacred earthly manifestation of Nivkh ancestors and the gods in bear form. During the Festival, the bear is dressed in a specially made ceremonial costume and offered a banquet to take back to the realm of gods to show benevolence upon the clans. After

11016-411: The cluster */Crʀ/ cannot be realized as /Crː/ , nor as */Crʀ/ , nor as */Cʀː/ . The same shortening as in vetr also occurs in lax = laks ('salmon') (as opposed to * lakss , * laksʀ ), botn ('bottom') (as opposed to * botnn , * botnʀ ), and jarl (as opposed to * jarll , * jarlʀ ). Furthermore, wherever the cluster */rʀ/

11152-596: The dating of the site and is interpreted as ritual. While these findings have been taken to indicate an ancient bear-cult, other interpretations of remains have led others to conclude that the bear bones' presence in these contexts are a natural phenomenon. Ina Wunn, based on the information archaeologists have about early hominins , contends that if Neandertals did worship bears there would be evidence of it in their settlements and camps. However, most bear remains have been found in caves. Many archaeologists now theorise that, since most bear species hibernate in caves during

11288-449: The diphthongs remained. Old Norse has six plosive phonemes, /p/ being rare word-initially and /d/ and /b/ pronounced as voiced fricative allophones between vowels except in compound words (e.g. veðrabati ), already in the Proto-Germanic language (e.g. * b *[β] > [v] between vowels). The /ɡ/ phoneme was pronounced as [ɡ] after an /n/ or another /ɡ/ and as [k] before /s/ and /t/ . Some accounts have it

11424-424: The edges of his shield; he kept gulping down fiery coals; he snatched live embers in his mouth and let them pass down into his entrails; he rushed through the perils of crackling fires; and at last, when he had raved through every sort of madness, he turned his sword with raging hand against the hearts of six of his champions. It is doubtful whether this madness came from thirst for battle or natural ferocity. Then with

11560-409: The encampment. Once the bear becomes too large to be kept inside a cage with the family pets, it would be transferred to a special hut until it reached sexual maturity, or was considered ready to be sacrificed — the standards for this decision, however, vary region by region, and, even within regions, culture by culture. To prepare the bear for its sacrifice to the masters of the taiga, the people of

11696-453: The enduring importance of bear worship as a cultural cornerstone. Some scholars argue that bear worship not only holds significant cultural and spiritual value but also played a foundational role in shaping subsequent religious practices among Siberian peoples. They suggest that the reverence for bears served as a precursor or perhaps even a catalyst for the development of more formalized rituals centered around reindeer. This hypothesis implies

11832-456: The environment. The bear is sacrificed with an injury to its heart, after which the people at the ceremony follow a ritual of skinning the animal, cooking it, and feasting on the bear meat. As a celebration following the sacrifice, many activities can take place. Children put on plays, women play musical instruments, and specific dances, myths, and songs are performed as part of the bear ceremony. Some scholarly records additionally indicate that

11968-470: The form of the bearskin caps worn by the guards of the Danish monarchs. In battle, the berserkers were subject to fits of frenzy. They would howl like wild beasts, foam at the mouth, and gnaw the rims of their shields. According to belief, during these fits, they were immune to steel and fire, and made great havoc in the ranks of the enemy. When this fever abated, they were weak and tame. Accounts can be found in

12104-496: The foundation for the modern extractive economy of the Russian Federation, which is based on oil and gas extraction, and previously, the politico-economic ideology of the Soviet Union. Although each culture has different myths associated with the origins of the practice. The Khanty, for example, believe that the bear represents some form of ancestral kinship with the indigenous peoples. Dudeck observes that: “The relationship between

12240-422: The gods on Earth, the world of man, appeared in the form of animals. The gods had the capability of taking human form but only in their home, the country of the gods, which is outside the world of man. To return a god to his country, the people would sacrifice and eat the animal sending the god's spirit away with civility. The ritual was called Omante and usually involved a deer or adult bear. Omante occurred when

12376-532: The ideological place of nature as a force to be conquered according to Soviet ideology, and the complex and negotiated social relationship with the environment reflected in Indigenous rituals, should not have gone unnoticed (even if people like Steinitz might have ignored this). On a practical level feasting was blamed for distracting workers in the newly created state-controlled enterprises from disciplined work (Slezkine 1994).” Indigenous Siberian populations have had

12512-439: The inhabitants. Due to longstanding and deeply rooted custom, these inhabitants must then hunt and kill the trespassing bears. As a result, attacked inhabitants sometimes illegally practice acts of bear hunting due to the legal framework underlying this act within the borders of the Russian Federation. One member of the Khanty indigenous Siberian group remarks: “We protest the destruction of the natural environment in our area, which

12648-556: The kinsman's death. The Bear Festival was suppressed in the Soviet period ; since then the festival has had a modest revival, albeit as a cultural rather than a religious ceremony. The Ainu people , who live on select islands in the Japanese archipelago, call the bear “ kamuy ” in the Ainu language , which translates to mean "god". Many other animals are considered to be gods in the Ainu culture, but

12784-399: The long vowels with an acute accent. In medieval manuscripts, it is often unmarked but sometimes marked with an accent or through gemination . Old Norse had nasalized versions of all ten vowel places. These occurred as allophones of the vowels before nasal consonants and in places where a nasal had followed it in an older form of the word, before it was absorbed into a neighboring sound. If

12920-412: The men would wrestle one another in a show of strength in order to make the soon-to-be-sacrificed bear happy. Other means of entertaining the bear also include dog races and games. The purpose of amusing the bear is to ensure that the bear’s sendoff is pleasant, guaranteeing good fortune from the spirits following the bear’s later sacrifice. In some societies, the bear is then taken from home to home of

13056-544: The mid- to late 14th century, ending the language phase known as Old Norse. These dates, however, are not absolute, since written Old Norse is found well into the 15th century. Old Norse was divided into three dialects : Old West Norse (Old West Nordic, often referred to as Old Norse ), Old East Norse (Old East Nordic), and Old Gutnish . Old West Norse and Old East Norse formed a dialect continuum , with no clear geographical boundary between them. Old East Norse traits were found in eastern Norway , although Old Norwegian

13192-662: The most conservative language, such that in present-day Iceland, schoolchildren are able to read the 12th-century Icelandic sagas in the original language (in editions with normalised spelling). Old Icelandic was very close to Old Norwegian , and together they formed Old West Norse , which was also spoken in Norse settlements in Greenland , the Faroes , Ireland , Scotland , the Isle of Man , northwest England, and in Normandy . Old East Norse

13328-477: The most notable indigenous peoples who practice bear worship include the following: Bear ceremonialism in Siberia is characterized by a diversity of traditions unique to each indigenous population. Yet, amidst this diversity, certain common practices define the essence of bear worship across these communities. Central to these practices is the recognition of bear ceremonialism as a sacred undertaking, demanding adherence to established protocols and etiquette that honor

13464-430: The most worshipped animals of Ancient Slavs. During pagan times, it was associated with the god Volos , the patron of domestic animals. Eastern Slavic folklore describes the bear as a totem personifying a male: father, husband, or a fiancé. Legends about turnskin bears appeared, it was believed that humans could be turned into bears for misbehavior. Bear worship is a deeply rooted aspect of indigenous communities across

13600-503: The nasal was absorbed by a stressed vowel, it would also lengthen the vowel. This nasalization also occurred in the other Germanic languages, but were not retained long. They were noted in the First Grammatical Treatise , and otherwise might have remained unknown. The First Grammarian marked these with a dot above the letter. This notation did not catch on, and would soon be obsolete. Nasal and oral vowels probably merged around

13736-501: The northern hemisphere, encompassing spiritual, cultural, and social dimensions. While specific traditions, rituals, and terminologies vary among different indigenous groups, the reverence for bears is a prevalent practice, particularly in Siberia. This spiritual engagement, often termed as "bear ceremony," "bear festival," or "bear dance," reflects a shared connection to the natural world and the significance of bears within these societies. Across vast regions, this communal effort underscores

13872-510: The olden days before that, the festival that at Prats de Molló involved elaborate staging, much like the version in Arles . The Arles version ( Festa de l'os d'Arles  [ fr ; ca ] ) involves a female character named Rosetta (Roseta) who gets abducted by the "bear". Rosetta was traditionally played by a man or a boy dressed up as a girl. The "bear" would bring the Rosetta to a hut raised on

14008-641: The other North Germanic languages. Faroese retains many similarities but is influenced by Danish, Norwegian, and Gaelic ( Scottish and/or Irish ). Although Swedish, Danish and Norwegian have diverged the most, they still retain considerable mutual intelligibility . Speakers of modern Swedish, Norwegian and Danish can mostly understand each other without studying their neighboring languages, particularly if speaking slowly. The languages are also sufficiently similar in writing that they can mostly be understood across borders. This could be because these languages have been mutually affected by each other, as well as having

14144-411: The other hand, interpreted the meaning as "bare-shirt", that is to say that the warriors went into battle without armour , but that view has largely been abandoned due to contradicting and lack of supporting evidence. It is proposed by some authors that the northern warrior tradition originated from hunting magic. Three main animal cults appear to have developed: the cult of the bear , the wolf , and

14280-399: The people sacrificed an adult bear, but when they caught a bear cub, they performed a different ritual which is called Iomante, in the Ainu language, or Kumamatsuri in Japanese. Kumamatsuri translates to "bear festival," and Iomante means "sending off." The event of Kumamatsuri began with the capture of a young bear cub. As if he were a child given by the gods, the cub was fed human food from

14416-445: The practice with different spiritual, cultural, and social implications across various regions. As a pagan practice, tsarist Christianizing efforts often sought to suppress bear ceremonialism in Siberia due to it undermining Russian Orthodox hegemony at the time. Until the early eighteenth century, the Russian tsardom did not necessarily seek to propagate Christian Orthodoxy among indigenous Siberian populations. Native Siberian paganism

14552-432: The realm of worship, shaping broader cultural attitudes towards these majestic creatures. This principle reflects a profound understanding of the interconnectedness of all living beings and emphasizes the importance of maintaining balance and respect within the natural world. The traditional ceremony begins a few years before the sacrifice of the bear itself. The bear ceremony starts with a capture, whereby male hunters enter

14688-431: The remaining band of his champions he attacked Halfdan, who crushed him with a hammer of wondrous size, so that he lost both victory and life; paying the penalty both to Halfdan, whom he had challenged, and to the kings whose offspring he had violently ravished... Similarly, Hrolf Kraki 's champions refuse to retreat "from fire or iron". Another frequent motif refers to berserkers blunting their enemy's blades with spells or

14824-536: The root vowel, ǫ , is short. The clusters */Clʀ, Csʀ, Cnʀ, Crʀ/ cannot yield */Clː, Csː, Cnː, Crː/ respectively, instead /Cl, Cs, Cn, Cr/ . The effect of this shortening can result in the lack of distinction between some forms of the noun. In the case of vetr ('winter'), the nominative and accusative singular and plural forms are identical. The nominative singular and nominative and accusative plural would otherwise have been OWN * vetrr , OEN * wintrʀ . These forms are impossible because

14960-745: The sagas, Berserkers can be narrowed down to four different types. The King's Berserkr, the Hall-Challenging Berserkr , the Hólmgangumaðr , and the Viking Berserkr . Later, by Christian interpreters, the berserker was viewed as a "heathen devil". The earliest surviving reference to the term "berserker" is in Haraldskvæði , a skaldic poem composed by Thórbiörn Hornklofi in the late 9th century in honor of King Harald Fairhair , as ulfheðnar ("men clad in wolf skins"). This translation from

15096-513: The sagas. To "go berserk" was to " hamask ", which translates as "change form", in this case, as with the sense "enter a state of wild fury". Some scholars have interpreted those who could transform as a berserker as " hamrammr " or "shapestrong" – literally able to shapeshift into a bear's form. For example, the band of men who go with Skallagrim in Egil's Saga to see King Harald about his brother Thorolf's murder are described as "the hardest of men, with

15232-441: The same language, dǫnsk tunga ("Danish tongue"; speakers of Old East Norse would have said dansk tunga ). Another term was norrœnt mál ("northern speech"). Today Old Norse has developed into the modern North Germanic languages Icelandic , Faroese , Norwegian , Danish , Swedish , and other North Germanic varieties of which Norwegian, Danish and Swedish retain considerable mutual intelligibility . Icelandic remains

15368-467: The sex of the bear. In most cultures, female bears are raised for a shorter amount of time compared to the male bears that are captured by the indigenous peoples. (A note on the duration of raising the bear cub: As mentioned before, the duration by which villages would choose to raise the bear cub also varies culture by culture. For example, the Gvasyugi choose to raise the bear for one to two years. Similarly,

15504-689: The she-bear, known collectively as Festes de l'ossa  [ ca ] . These include the Ball de l'ossa  [ ca ] ('she-bear's dance') in Encamp , and Última ossa  [ ca ] ('the last she-bear') in Ordino . There is also a bear related festival in the Valencian town of La Mata , named Festa de l'Onso de la Mata  [ ca ] . According to legend, Ungnyeo ( Korean :  웅녀 ; Hanja :  熊女 , literally 'bear woman')

15640-449: The significance of the bear, the focal point of the ceremony. Indigenous peoples observe meticulous rules governing their interactions with bears, ensuring that reverence and respect permeate every aspect of the ritual. This adherence to tradition underscores the deep-seated cultural and spiritual importance attributed to bear worship in Siberia, serving as a unifying thread across disparate indigenous groups. In indigenous Siberian cultures,

15776-630: The skins of wolves called ulfheðnar ("wolf-skin-ers" or possibly "wolf-heathens"; singular ulfheðinn ), are mentioned in the Vatnsdæla saga , the Haraldskvæði and the Grettis saga and are consistently referred to in the sagas as a group of berserkers, always presented as the elite following of the first Norwegian king Harald Fairhair . They were said to wear the pelt of a wolf over their chainmail when they entered battle. Unlike berserkers, direct references to ulfheðnar are scant. Egil's Saga features

15912-615: The slain. The Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241) wrote the following description of berserkers in his Ynglinga saga : His ( Odin 's) men rushed forwards without armour, were as mad as dogs or wolves, bit their shields, and were strong as bears or wild oxen, and killed people at a blow, but neither fire nor iron told upon them. This was called Berserkergang . King Harald Fairhair's use of berserkers as " shock troops " broadened his sphere of influence. Other Scandinavian kings used berserkers as part of their army of hirdmen and sometimes ranked them as equivalent to

16048-497: The umlaut allophones . Some /y/ , /yː/ , /ø/ , /øː/ , /ɛ/ , /ɛː/ , /øy/ , and all /ɛi/ were obtained by i-umlaut from /u/ , /uː/ , /o/ , /oː/ , /a/ , /aː/ , /au/ , and /ai/ respectively. Others were formed via ʀ-umlaut from /u/ , /uː/ , /a/ , /aː/ , and /au/ . Some /y/ , /yː/ , /ø/ , /øː/ , and all /ɔ/ , /ɔː/ were obtained by u-umlaut from /i/ , /iː/ , /e/ , /eː/ , and /a/ , /aː/ respectively. See Old Icelandic for information on /ɔː/ . /œ/

16184-482: The verb skína ('to shine') had present tense third person skínn (rather than * skínr , * skínʀ ); while kala ('to cool down') had present tense third person kell (rather than * kelr , * kelʀ ). The rule is not absolute, with certain counter-examples such as vinr ('friend'), which has the synonym vin , yet retains the unabsorbed version, and jǫtunn (' giant '), where assimilation takes place even though

16320-401: The village in order to say final goodbyes before the bear is guided to a location in the forest that is not too far away from the encampment (generally the location of the sacrifice is situated within a mile of the village encampment itself). During the sacrifice, it is crucial that the bear is shown respect. Some means of disrespecting the bear would include, for example, being barefoot or using

16456-441: The village may take different approaches depending on the culture. Importantly, bear ceremonialism is one of the few practices in indigenous cultures in Siberia that discourage and subvert the central role that shamans generally play in pagan societies in the northern hemisphere. This is particularly noted in bear ceremonialism practiced in the Amur region. Regarded as spiritual mediators between humans and spirits in Siberian cultures,

16592-474: The village, as the practice is a means of ensuring future success in hunting. After sacrificing the bear in the forest, each male hunter in the Ul’chi culture must touch the skin of the dead animal in order to obtain the taiga’s blessing for a fruitful hunting season. In 1925–1927, Nadezhda Petrovna Dyrenkova made field observations of bear worship among the Altai , Tubalar (Tuba-Kiji), Telengit , and Shortsi of

16728-528: The winter, the presence of bear remains is not unusual in this context Bears which lived inside these caves perished from natural causes such as illness or starvation. Wunn argues that the placement of these remains is due to natural, post-deposition events such as wind, sediment, or water. Therefore, the assortment of bear remains in caves did not result from human activities Certain archaeologists, such as Emil Bächler, continue to use their excavations to support that an ancient bear cult did exist. Bears were

16864-687: The word jǫfurr , which originally meant "wild boar", is used metaphorically for "a prince, monarch or warrior", which probably stems from the custom of wearing boar's heads as helmets or boar crested helmets in battle. Swine played a central role in Germanic paganism , featuring in both mythology and religious practice, particularly in association with the Vanir , Freyr and Freyja . It has been proposed that similar to berserkers, warriors could ritually transform into boars so as to gain strength, bravery and protection in battle. It has been theorised that this process

17000-503: Was a bear who turned into a woman, and gave birth to Dangun , the founder of the first Korean kingdom, Gojoseon . Bears were revered as motherly figures and symbolized patience. The bear festival is a religious festival celebrated by the indigenous Nivkh in the Russian Far East . A Nivkh shaman ( чам , ch'am ) would preside over the Bear Festival, which was celebrated in the winter between January and February, depending on

17136-404: Was a moderately inflected language with high levels of nominal and verbal inflection. Most of the fused morphemes are retained in modern Icelandic, especially in regard to noun case declensions, whereas modern Norwegian in comparison has moved towards more analytical word structures. Old Norse had three grammatical genders – masculine, feminine, and neuter. Adjectives or pronouns referring to

17272-400: Was also influenced by Norse. Through Norman, to a smaller extent, so was modern French. Written modern Icelandic derives from the Old Norse phonemic writing system. Contemporary Icelandic-speakers can read Old Norse, which varies slightly in spelling as well as semantics and word order. However, pronunciation, particularly of the vowel phonemes, has changed at least as much in Icelandic as in

17408-457: Was antithetical to the ideal of Marxist-Leninist atheism adopted as the official attitude toward religion and spiritualism more widely in the Soviet Union. Bear worship, and paganism more generally, was also perceived as a threat to Marxist-Leninist ideology with regards to humans’ relationship with their surrounding natural environment. According to Stephen Dudeck, an anthropologist specializing in indigenous Siberian cultures, “The opposition between

17544-421: 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

17680-571: Was heavily influenced by the East dialect, and is today more similar to East Scandinavian (Danish and Swedish) than to Icelandic and Faroese. The descendants of the Old East Norse dialect are the East Scandinavian languages of Danish and Swedish . Among these, the grammar of Icelandic and Faroese have changed the least from Old Norse in the last thousand years, though their pronunciations both have changed considerably from Old Norse. With Danish rule of

17816-427: Was linked to the wearing of boar helmets as a ritual costume. Berserkers appear prominently in a multitude of other sagas and poems . Many earlier sagas portrayed berserkers as bodyguards, elite soldiers, and champions of kings. This image would change as time passed and sagas would begin to describe berserkers as boasters rather than heroes, and as ravenous men who loot , plunder, and kill indiscriminately. Within

17952-465: Was not perceived as a faith altogether up until this spiritual worldview began to be perceived as a threat to the legitimacy of the Russian Orthodox Church. Similarly, Soviet control of the Russian state also led to repressive attitudes toward bear worship among indigenous Siberian peoples. Although religion was tolerated in theory, the socialist state sought to limit paganism as this practice

18088-535: Was obtained through a simultaneous u- and i-umlaut of /a/ . It appears in words like gøra ( gjǫra , geyra ), from Proto-Germanic *garwijaną , and commonly in verbs with a velar consonant before the suffix like søkkva < *sankwijaną . OEN often preserves the original value of the vowel directly preceding runic ʀ while OWN receives ʀ-umlaut. Compare runic OEN glaʀ, haʀi, hrauʀ with OWN gler, heri (later héri ), hrøyrr/hreyrr ("glass", "hare", "pile of rocks"). U-umlaut

18224-518: Was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlements and chronologically coincides with the Viking Age , the Christianization of Scandinavia , and the consolidation of Scandinavian kingdoms from about the 8th to the 15th centuries. The Proto-Norse language developed into Old Norse by the 8th century, and Old Norse began to develop into the modern North Germanic languages in

18360-734: Was spoken in Denmark, Sweden, Kievan Rus' , eastern England, and Danish settlements in Normandy. The Old Gutnish dialect was spoken in Gotland and in various settlements in the East. In the 11th century, Old Norse was the most widely spoken European language , ranging from Vinland in the West to the Volga River in the East. In Kievan Rus' , it survived the longest in Veliky Novgorod , probably lasting into

18496-453: Was used partitively and in compounds and kennings (e.g., Urðarbrunnr , the well of Urðr; Lokasenna , the gibing of Loki). There were several classes of nouns within each gender. The following is an example of the "strong" inflectional paradigms : Bear cult In an article in Enzyklopädie des Märchens , American folklorist Donald J. Ward noted that a story about

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