The Berserker Defense

This is why the Vikings are my favorite football team.

Some players allegedly rented a boat on a lake in Minnesota, took some booze and women with them, then, somewhat surprisingly, experienced drunkennesss and sexual activity. The crew of the boat was so upset they weren't getting any that they turned back two hours early and notified authorities.

Here's what was reported to the authorities:

"The crew members told Hennepin County sheriff's deputies they had to step over and around players and naked women engaged in sex acts...There was lap dancing with a fair amount of cash floating around the floor with the dancers, leading quickly into sexual acts in a nature so explicit imagination wasn't necessary," Doyle said.

And here are some of the responses from the satisfied players:

"They're killing my name," Smoot said as he walked to his car in the parking lot.

Dude, your name is Smoot.

"That's crazy. Sex? Come on," said Moore, the team's leading rusher with 187 yards.

Yeah, sex is pretty crazy man. Who the heck does that anyhow?

Maybe they aren't Vikings after all, but Berserkers. The two are often confused by the uneducated. If they are indeed berserkers, there is a reason for this crazy behavior:

Theories to explain berserker behavior

One explanation behind beserker rage, suggested by botanists, is that in Scandinavia, one of the main spices in alcoholic beverages was the plant bog myrtle (Myrica gale syn: Gale palustris). The drawback is that it increases the hangover headache afterwards. Drinking alcoholic beverages spiced with bog myrtle the night before going to battle, might have resulted in unusually aggressive behavior.

Those who believe in the existence of spirit possession favor a theory that the berserk rage was brought on by possession by an animal spirit of either a bear or a wolf. According to this theory, berserkers were those who had cultivated an ability to allow the spirit of a bear or wolf to take over their body during a fight. This is seen as a somewhat peculiar application of animal totemism.

Proponents of the drug theory favor ergotism or the use of the fly agaric mushroom. Drunken rage would do as well. It is also possible that berserkers worked themselves into their frenzy through purely psychological processes, i.e., frenzied rituals and dances. According to Saxo Grammaticus they also drank bear or wolf blood.

A UK television programme in 2004 tested the possible use of fly agaric and alcohol by training a healthy volunteer in the use of Viking weapons, then evaluating his performance under the influence of fly agaric or alcohol compared to no influence. It was obvious that use of fly agaric or alcohol severely reduced his fighting ability, and the tentative conclusion drawn was that berserk state was achieved psychologically; otherwise berserkers would have been too easy to kill. On the other hand, the Zulu impi are said to have made use of snuff containing cannabis and/or mushroom-derived psychoactives to enhance their performance in battle.

You've gotta love British scientific methods.

Going berserk – berserksgangr or berserkergang – could also happen in a middle of daily work. It began with shivering, chattering of the teeth, and a chill in the body. The face swelled and changed its color. Next came great rage, howling, and indiscriminate brawling. When the rage quelled, the berserker was exhausted and dull of mind for up to several days. According to sagas, many enemies of berserkers exploited this stage to get rid of them.

I have experienced this.

U.S. professor Jesse L. Byock claims (in Scientific American, 1995) that berserker rage could have been a symptom of Paget's disease. Uncontrolled skull bone growth could have caused painful pressure in the head. He mentions the unattractive and large head of Egill Skallagrímsson in Egilssaga. Other possibilities are mild epilepsy, rabies, and hysteria.

Hmmm...Thick skulls and insanity?

Today the word "berserker" applies to anyone who fights with reckless abandon and disregard to even his own life, i.e., "goes berserk".

Yes, I am that geeky.