BERSERKERS. The Old Norse term berserkr was used to identify certain fierce warriors with animal characteristics. According to Old Norse literature, particularly the later sagas, berserkers howled like animals in battle and bit their shields. They felt no blows and had unnatural or supernatural strength, which gave way to languor after battle. The earliest attestation of the term, however, which occurs in the poem Haraldskvæði (attributed to two different poets), presents berserks as the shock troops of King Harald Fairhair at the Battle of Hafrsfjörðr (end of ninth century):

8. They [the warships] were laden with men and with white shields with western spears and Welsh [French] swords: berserks wailed, battle had begun for them, ulfheðnar ["wolf skins"] howled, irons shook. 20. About the gear [service?] of berserks I want to ask, tasters of carrion-sea [blood], how it is for the ones who go into the...