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87-518: Gísla saga survives in thirty-three manuscripts and fragments from the Middle Ages down to the twentieth century. It is generally thought to have been composed in written form in the first half of the thirteenth century, but the earliest manuscript, the fragment Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, AM 445 c I 4to, is from around 1400 and the earliest extensive text in AM 556a 4to, from the later fifteenth. The saga

174-465: 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 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

261-402: A compound affection of joy and hate, when we rejoice at other men's mischief, and are grieved at their prosperity; pride , self-love , emulation, envy, shame , [etc.], of which elsewhere. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer mentioned schadenfreude as the most evil sin of human feeling, famously saying "To feel envy is human, to savor schadenfreude is diabolic." The song "Schadenfreude" in

348-436: A division of their assets. Thorkel will relinquish the land and farm, but will claim movable assets, including the broken heirloom sword Grásiða. Thorkel and Thorgrim have the sword reforged as a spear, with the assistance of a black magician and blacksmith named Thorgrim Nef (Nose, or Bottlenose). Thorkel now in league with Thorgrim discuss various things, perhaps even planning Vestein's murder. Vestein returns from abroad and

435-405: A friend without ill intent about having defeated him in a game), and that it describes an action rather than a state of mind (one typically gloats to the subject of the misfortune or to a third party). Also, unlike schadenfreude, where the focus is on another's misfortune, gloating often brings to mind inappropriately celebrating or bragging about one's own good fortune without any particular focus on

522-399: 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

609-400: 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

696-400: 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

783-461: A man seducing their elder sister Thordis. Gisli kills Bard, and Thorkel incites the dead man's relative Skeggi the Dueller (Hólmgang-Skeggi) to take revenge and stand as suitor for Thordis. The dueller challenges Kolbjorn who has become Thordis's new preferred suitor, but Gisli fights the duel instead and prevails over Skeggi who has a ringing sword named Gunnlogi (Battle-flame). Even though Gisli spared

870-426: A mysterious woman pouring blood on him continue to plague him, and eventually he is not able to run from his problems or the people who are hunting him. After Gisli is discovered, Aud and their foster-daughter Gudrid fight side-by-side with Gisli until he is killed in a final, strenuous battle. Even after Gisli is dead, he is still honoured and respected for being a loyal and honest man. The saga notes that his final blow

957-488: A negative relationship with the frequency and intensity of schadenfreude experienced by an individual; individuals with lower self-esteem tend to experience schadenfreude more frequently and intensely. It is hypothesized that this inverse relationship is mediated through the human psychological inclination to define and protect their self- and in-group - identity or self-conception. Specifically, for someone with high self-esteem, seeing another person fail may still bring them

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1044-446: A pact of blood brotherhood ( Fóstbræðralag , "foster brotherhood"). However, Thorgrim has a change of heart and the pact is not completed. From this moment on the characters’ actions seem to be largely controlled by fate as they head down a tragic path. A chain of dreadful events is set into motion when Thorkel is eavesdropping and overhears his wife Asgerd and Gisli's wife Aud talking about their past loves. Thorkel learns that his wife

1131-462: A pilgrimage to Rome, never to return to Iceland. Gísla saga is a classic outlaw saga that is centered on the internal struggles of Gisli. As Gisli's fate unfolds, he experiences conflicting passions of love, hate, and complex emotional bonds. Differing from the typical family saga , it uses the common theme of vengeance to divide loyalties within family instead of strengthening familial bonds. More than most sagas, Gísla saga makes use of motifs from

1218-486: 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"

1305-515: A scene indicative of a relationship between berserkgang ... and the god Odin". In Norse poetry, 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

1392-478: A shared or reciprocal form of pleasure. The pseudo-German coinage freudenfreude is occasionally used in English. The Hebrew slang term firgun refers to happiness at another's accomplishment. Displeasure at another's happiness is involved in envy , and perhaps in jealousy . The pseudo-German coinage "freudenschade" similarly means sorrow at another's success. The correct form would be Freudenschaden , since

1479-435: A small (but effectively negligible) surge of confidence because the observer's high self-esteem significantly lowers the threat they believe the visibly-failing human poses to their status or identity. Since this confident individual perceives that, regardless of circumstances, the successes and failures of the other person will have little impact on their own status or well-being, they have very little emotional investment in how

1566-412: A triad of terms, in which epikhairekakia stands as the opposite of phthonos (φθόνος), and nemesis (νέμεσις) occupies the mean. Nemesis is "a painful response to another's undeserved good fortune", while phthonos is a painful response to any good fortune of another, deserved or not. The epikhairekakos (ἐπιχαιρέκακος) person takes pleasure in another's ill fortune. Lucretius characterises

1653-436: 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

1740-489: A woman named Asgerd; and Thordis marries Thorgrim Thorsteinsson the Godi. They live as neighbors, the brothers at Hol, and Thorgrim at Saebol. While attending a thing (an assembly), the hero's close-knit group learns that a wise man named Gest has predicted discord among them (the "Haukdal men") in three years. To forestall this, Gisli, Thorkel, Thorgrim (brother-in-law to both), and Vestein (Gisli's brothers-in-law) decide to enter

1827-400: Is sympathy , pity , or compassion . Sadism gives pleasure through the infliction of pain, whereas schadenfreude is pleasure on observing misfortune and in particular, the fact that the other somehow deserved the misfortune. The word schadenfreude had been blended with other words to form neologisms as early as 1993, when Lincoln Caplan, in his book Skadden: Power, Money, and

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1914-455: 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 the other hand, interpreted the meaning as "bare-shirt", that is to say that

2001-402: Is because he was lazily warming himself at the house while everyone else was laboring hard during the busiest time at the farm. The longer version explicitly calls Thorkel lazy, and adds he is a dandy preoccupied more with fashionable attire than labor. Gísla saga served as inspiration for both Maurice Hewlett 's novel The Outlaw (1919) and Kári Gíslason's The Sorrow Stone (2022). The saga

2088-408: Is called 'going berserk'." The helm-plate press from Torslunda depicts 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

2175-485: Is convinced he knows the murderer. Gisli will later kill Thorgrim, but there are some psychological developments in the wake of Vestein's death. Gisli sent his foster daughter Gudrid (Geirmund's sister) to Saebol to see what was happening, and discovered that Thorgrim, Thorkel and the rest are fully armed, prepared for a fight. Thorkel commented on Vesteinn's death that there was a time when that would have been "regarded as news indeed". Thorkel also insisted on knowing if Aud

2262-551: Is correlated with envy in subjects. Strong feelings of envy activated physical pain nodes in the brain's dorsal anterior cingulate cortex; the brain's reward centers, such as the ventral striatum, were activated by news that other people who were envied had suffered misfortune. The magnitude of the brain's schadenfreude response could even be predicted from the strength of the previous envy response. A study conducted in 2009 provides evidence for people's capacity to feel schadenfreude in response to negative events in politics. The study

2349-445: Is definitely the culprit in the longer version. In order to avenge the death of Vestein, a man to whom he is bound, Gisli murders Thorgrim and escapes into the night without being discovered. However, Thordis, Gisli’s widowed sister, suspects that Gisli must have murdered her husband, and tells her new husband, Thorgrim's brother Bork. Bork is persuaded to pursue a lawsuit of outlawry, rather than attempt to kill Gisli at once. Once Gisli

2436-419: Is done. Gisli says that it is just as well that he has not met nor will ever meet the lads. The lads' fates are mentioned on the last page of the saga. Aud, Gisli’s wife, remains loyal throughout the saga and refuses to divulge the location of her husband, even when Eyjolf offers her three hundred silver pieces, help in remarriage and reminds her of her current hard life at Geirthjofsfjordhur. Gisli's dreams of

2523-549: Is generally thought to exist in three main versions originating in the Middle Ages: The longer version differs from the shorter mainly in having a profoundly different (and longer) version of the opening sequence of the saga's narrative, set in Norway. The parts set in Iceland are substantially similar. There is a consensus that the written archetype of Gísla saga was composed in the thirteenth century, with voices tending towards

2610-449: Is griefstricken, posing the question twice to Gisli; this has been analyzed as petty bit of schadenfreude on Thorkel's part. Thorgrim on the other hand said in the girl Gudrid's presence that respect must be paid to Vestein's death, and in fact played the role of placing the "Hel-shoes" ( helskór ) onto Vestein's body to prepare it for interment in the burial mound. However, during the subsequent ball-games ( knattleikr ) in which he

2697-430: 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

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2784-483: Is outlawed he constantly runs from a group of men who wish to find and murder him, led by Bork. This task proves to be more difficult than perceived, as they are unable to locate Gisli in his various hiding places. While Gisli is on the run, Vestein's two sons decide to seek their own vengeance for their father's murder. The two boys murder Thorkel. Both Bork and Gisli wish to avenge the death, but others, relatives of Vestein such as Gisli's wife Aud, discourage it and nothing

2871-462: 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

2958-437: Is reported to be heading for Gisli's home. Gisli sends his farmhands to warn Vestein away, entrusting his messengers with a special coin he crafted as a token of dire danger. But Vestein refuses to heed the warning. Along the way Vestein meets more people who tell him to be on guard. At Saebol (Thorgrim and Thorkel's farm), the boy Geirmund tells him not to tarry and go straight to Gisli (this boy lived with Gisli and Thorkel, until

3045-617: Is similar to "begrudgery", the resentment or envy of the success of a peer. If someone were to feel joy by the victim's fall from grace, they would be experiencing schadenfreude. Roman holiday is a metaphor from Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage , where a gladiator in ancient Rome expects to be "butchered to make a Roman holiday" while the audience would take pleasure from watching his suffering. The term suggests debauchery and disorder in addition to sadistic enjoyment. Morose delectation ( Latin : delectatio morosa ), meaning "the habit of dwelling with enjoyment on evil thoughts",

3132-540: 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 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

3219-560: 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

3306-469: The Eddaic poems , in particular by referring to Guðrún Gjúkadóttir to represent old ways of vengeance and family honor. In contrast to the heroic Gisli is his elder brother Thorkel, one of whose major flaws is pointed out to be that of laziness. When the brothers divide their property Thorkel concedes that he is making Gisli perform all the work of running the farm., and when Thorkel eavesdrops on his wife, this

3393-515: The Rhine . There are warriors depicted as barefoot, bare-chested, bearing weapons and helmets that are associated with 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

3480-706: 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 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

3567-567: 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, 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

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3654-553: 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

3741-551: 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

3828-578: 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

3915-502: The LORD see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him." (Proverbs 24:17–18, King James Version ). In East Asia , the emotion of feeling joy from seeing the hardship of others was described as early as late 4th century BCE. The phrase Xing zai le huo ( Chinese : 幸災樂禍 ) first appeared separately as xing zai ( 幸災 ), meaning the feeling of joy from seeing the hardship of others, and le huo ( 樂禍 ), meaning

4002-447: The Pain of Others , published in 2003, is a study of the issue of how the pain and misfortune of some people affects others, namely whether war photography and war paintings may be helpful as anti-war tools, or whether they only serve some sense of schadenfreude in some viewers. Philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno defined schadenfreude as "... largely unanticipated delight in

4089-575: The Rise of a Legal Empire , used the word Skaddenfreude to describe the delight that competitors of Skadden Arps took in its troubles of the early 1990s. Others include spitzenfreude , coined by The Economist to refer to the fall of Eliot Spitzer , and Schadenford , coined by Toronto Life in regard to Canadian politician Rob Ford . The Biblical Book of Proverbs mentions an emotion similar to schadenfreude: "Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: Lest

4176-555: The St. Gallus Church in the Gutenstein district of the city of Sigmaringen , Germany. One of the graves contained, among other things, 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

4263-438: The adversity of a neighbour" as one of the "daughters of envy... which follows anger" in his Dialogue on Miracles . During the seventeenth century , Robert Burton wrote: Out of these two [the concupiscible and irascible powers] arise those mixed affections and passions of anger , which is a desire of revenge ; hatred, which is inveterate anger; zeal, which is offended with him who hurts that he loves; and ἐπιχαιρεκακία ,

4350-490: 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 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

4437-483: 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 . Schadenfreude Schadenfreude ( / ˈ ʃ ɑː d ən f r ɔɪ d ə / ; German: [ˈʃaːdn̩ˌfʁɔʏ̯də] ; lit. Tooltip literal translation "harm-joy") is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing

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4524-487: 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

4611-487: 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

4698-416: The brain's empathy center of subjects would show more stimulation when those seen as "good" got an electric shock, than would occur if the shock was given to someone the subject had reason to consider "bad". This was indeed the case, but for male subjects, the brain's pleasure centers also lit up when someone got a shock that the male thought was "well-deserved". Brain-scanning studies show that schadenfreude

4785-407: The brothers split their assets). The boy refuses to admit seeing Vestein. While lodging at the home of Gisli and Aud, Vestein is discovered stabbed to death by a spear. The saga states that the custom obligated the person who extracted the murder weapon to carry out vengeance, and Gisli takes the spear (Grásiða). No witness saw the murderer, but Gisli has been haunted by dreams for several nights, and

4872-480: The concept in English. Epicaricacy is a seldom-used direct equivalent, borrowed from Greek epichairekakia (ἐπιχαιρεκακία, first attested in Aristotle ) from ἐπί epi 'upon', χαρά chara 'joy', and κακόν kakon 'evil'. Tall poppy syndrome is a cultural phenomenon where people of high status are resented, attacked, cut down, or criticized because they have been classified as better than their peers. This

4959-709: The context of sports, specifically an international football (soccer) competition. The study focused on the German and Dutch football teams and their fans. The results of this study indicated that the emotion of schadenfreude is very sensitive to circumstances that make it more or less legitimate to feel such malicious pleasure toward a sports rival. A 2011 study by Cikara and colleagues using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) examined schadenfreude among Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees fans, and found that fans showed increased activation in brain areas correlated with self-reported pleasure ( ventral striatum ) when observing

5046-561: The dueller's life, the dueller's sons forcibly recruit Kolbjorn, and the band sets fire to the hero's family house. Thorbjorn earns his nickname Súr ("Whey", "Soursop") by dousing fire using the whey in the stables. Gisli and Thorkel retaliate by exterminating the perpetrators. Around 952, the hero's family leave Norway and move to the Westfjords of Iceland. The siblings marry: Gisli marries Aud, sister of Vestein Vesteinsson; Thorkel marries

5133-424: 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

5220-526: The emotion in an extended simile in De rerum natura : Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem , "It is pleasant to watch from the land the great struggle of someone else in a sea rendered great by turbulent winds." The abbreviated Latin tag suave mare magno recalled the passage to generations familiar with the Latin classics. Caesarius of Heisterbach regards "delight in

5307-586: The happiness derived from the unfortunate situation of others, in the ancient Chinese text Zuo zhuan ( 左傳 ). The chengyu xing zai le huo ( 幸災樂禍 ) is still used among Chinese speakers. In Japanese, the saying hito no fukō wa mitsu no aji ( 人の不幸は蜜の味 , lit.   ' another's misfortune is sweet as honey ' ) exemplifies schadenfreude . In the Nicomachean Ethics , Aristotle used epikhairekakia (ἐπιχαιρεκακία in Greek) as part of

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5394-599: 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 the skins of wolves called ulfheðnar ("wolf-skin-ers" or possibly "wolf-heathens"; singular ulfheðinn ), are mentioned in

5481-412: The middle of the century, and most commentators preferring 1225×50. However, there is little hard evidence to support this. In the opening chapter set in Norway, Gisli Thorkelsson is an uncle and namesake of the saga's title character. This Gisli avenges his elder brother Ari, defeating a berserker with a sword of assured victory named Grásiða (Grey-blade, Grey-flank, Graysteel). But he refuses to return

5568-520: The misfortune of others. Permutations of the concept of pleasure at another's unhappiness are: pleasure at another's happiness, displeasure at another's happiness, and displeasure at another's unhappiness. Words for these concepts are sometimes cited as antonyms to schadenfreude, as each is the opposite in some way. There is no common English term for pleasure at another's happiness (i.e.; vicarious joy), though terms like 'celebrate', 'cheer', 'congratulate', 'applaud', 'rejoice' or 'kudos' often describe

5655-514: 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 ), 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

5742-451: 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 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

5829-687: The musical Avenue Q , is a comedic exploration of the general public's relationship with the emotion. Rabbi Harold S. Kushner in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People describes schadenfreude as a universal, even wholesome reaction that cannot be helped. "There is a German psychological term, Schadenfreude , which refers to the embarrassing reaction of relief we feel when something bad happens to someone else instead of to us." He gives examples and writes, "[People] don't wish their friends ill, but they can't help feeling an embarrassing spasm of gratitude that [the bad thing] happened to someone else and not to them." Susan Sontag 's book Regarding

5916-630: The other person fares, be it positive or negative. Conversely, for someone with low self-esteem, someone who is more successful poses a threat to their sense of self, and seeing this person fall can be a source of comfort because they perceive a relative improvement in their internal or in-group standing. Schadenfreude has equivalents in many other languages (such as: in Dutch leedvermaak , Swedish skadeglädje , Danish skadefro , and Slovak škodoradosť ) but no commonly-used precise English single-word equivalent. There are other ways to express

6003-482: The pseudo-German coinage incorrectly assumes the n in Schadenfreude to be an interfix and the adjective schade ("unfortunate") a noun. Displeasure at another's good fortune is Gluckschmerz , a pseudo-German word coined in 1985 as a joke by the pseudonymous Wanda Tinasky ; the correct German form would be Glücksschmerz . It has since been used in academic contexts. Displeasure at another's unhappiness

6090-432: 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

6177-517: The rival team experience a negative outcome (e.g., a strikeout ). By contrast, fans exhibited increased activation in the anterior cingulate and insula when viewing their own team experience a negative outcome. A 2006 experiment about "justice served" suggests that men, but not women, enjoy seeing "bad people" suffer. The study was designed to measure empathy by watching which brain centers are stimulated when subjects observed via fMRI see someone experiencing physical pain . Researchers expected that

6264-694: 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

6351-596: 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 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

6438-618: 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

6525-517: The spring of 1870, four Vendel era cast-bronze dies, the Torslunda plates , were found by Erik Gustaf Pettersson and Anders Petter Nilsson in 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

6612-645: The suffering of another, which is cognized as trivial and/or appropriate." Schadenfreude is steadily becoming a more popular word according to Google. A New York Times article in 2002 cited a number of scientific studies of schadenfreude, which it defined as "delighting in others' misfortune". Many such studies are based on social comparison theory , the idea that when people around us have bad luck, we look better to ourselves. Other researchers have found that people with low self-esteem are more likely to feel schadenfreude than are those who have high self-esteem. A 2003 study examined intergroup schadenfreude within

6699-451: The sword borrowed from his wife's thrall Kol, and the ensuing squabble results in the death of both men and a broken sword. The thrall lays a curse against the family on this sword in the longer version. The estate at Surnadal then passes from (Ari and Gisli Thorkelsson) to Thorbjorn Thorkelsson Sur, whose son Gisli Sursson is the title hero. Gisli and his elder brother Thorkel develop a strained relationship over whether to support Bard,

6786-472: The troubles, failures, pain, suffering, or humiliation of another. It is a borrowed word from German; the English word for it is epicaricacy , which originated in the 18th century. Schadenfreude has been detected in children as young as 24 months and may be an important social emotion establishing " inequity aversion ". Schadenfreude is a term borrowed from German . It is a compound of Schaden ("damage/harm") and Freude ("joy"). The German word

6873-637: 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 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

6960-453: Was actually fond of Vestein before she married. Gisli too learns from his wife that she had been fond of Thorgrim the Godi prior to marriage. Thorkel reacts to the news more badly than Gisli, and first lashes out at his wife by refusing to let her sleep in the same bed as him, which is immediately quashed by her who threatens him with divorce. Thorkel then decides he must part company with his brother, and take up farming with Thorgrim, demanding

7047-453: Was also adapted to film by Ágúst Guðmundsson in his Útlaginn (1981). 65°52′37″N 23°38′09″W  /  65.876829°N 23.635798°W  / 65.876829; -23.635798 Berserker 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

7134-457: Was bested by Gisli, he leered towards Vestein's mound and recited in verse that the sound of spear biting into the man caused him no anguish, which has been construed to be Thorgrim gloating over Vestein's death and taunting Gisli to take revenge if he dares. Despite these innuendoes, it has been commented that shorter version of the saga does not make absolutely clear if Thorgrim had been the one who actually stabbed Vestein to death, even though he

7221-421: 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

7308-492: Was considered by the medieval church to be a sin. French writer Pierre Klossowski maintained that the appeal of sadism is morose delectation. "Gloating" is an English word of similar meaning, where " gloat " means "to observe or think about something with triumphant and often malicious satisfaction, gratification, or delight" (e.g., to gloat over an enemy's misfortune). Gloating is different from schadenfreude in that it does not necessarily require malice (one may gloat to

7395-509: Was designed to determine whether or not there was a possibility that events containing objective misfortunes might produce schadenfreude. It was reported in the study that the likelihood of experiencing feelings of schadenfreude depends upon whether an individual's own party or the opposing party is suffering harm. This study suggests that the domain of politics is prime territory for feelings of schadenfreude, especially for those who identify strongly with their political party. In 2014, research in

7482-649: Was first mentioned in English texts in 1852 and 1867, and first used in English running text in 1895. In German, it was first attested in the 1740s. The earliest seems to be Christoph Starke, "Synopsis bibliothecae exegeticae in Vetus Testamentum," Leipzig, 1750. Although common nouns normally are not capitalized in English, schadenfreude sometimes is, following the German convention . Researchers have found that there are three driving forces behind schadenfreude – aggression , rivalry , and justice . Self-esteem has

7569-465: Was just as strong as his first. Once Gisli faces his death, Thordis experiences remorse for his murder and stabs Eyjolf in the leg. After Bork wrenches the sword out of her hand and attempts to calm the group, Thordis declares herself divorced from Bork and leaves the house. Aud, Vestein's sons, and three others leave Iceland. Aud converts to the Christian faith and with Gunhillda, the widow of Vestein, takes

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