Berserkrgang

Or, hypnotism et al part 2.

It is strange to think that being a berserker was banned in Norway from 1015AD, while in Iceland around the same time berserkers were described as outlaws. That era was way before our modern sensibilities, yet in 2025 we interact with the concept of the berserker and “going berserk” as though it is still possible. Yet very little academic research has been done into the psychology of the berserker, although plenty of mythological and cultural resources exist, for berserkers were written about at the time they began to fade from Norse cultures. These days, most people would find it impossible to place themselves into the mindset necessary to imagine how such things could happen. Early Medieval cultures (in essence, up to the 11^th century) believed in so much that we don’t: the presence of deities, the presence of Faery folk, spirits, miracles, godlike powers and Valhalla. Only modern people on the fringes of traditional religion have access to such imaginary fancies, and then only shadows of the original. The original berserker was utterly terrifying and dangerous to all, including his own family and kin.

That the berserk state – technically berserkrgang – was banned over a thousand years ago is an indication of how people thought of it even then, when war, battle, death and chaos were commonplace, and indeed, as in Viking cultures, deemed honourable courses for men who wanted fame and fortune. Men and battle went hand in hand. The masculine ethos partnered war. The berserker was an outlying extreme of that cultural norm.

Most authorities think the word comes from “bear shirt,” referring to the cultural identity made between the berserker and the totem animal the bear. (This identity was the origin of Beorn the “skin-changer” in Tolkien’s The Hobbit.) Some Vikings doubtless made more than others of that identity in terms of what they believed was happening. There was also a wolf equivalent, and some academics think a boar one too.

This Substack is a companion piece to last week’s, where I wrote: … consciousness is a user-generated experience based on the simultaneous operation of the sensory and perceptual pathways, which makes us believe we’re interacting with the real world when in fact we’re utilising our mental model. In various kinds of hypnotism the sensory pathway is diminished, so that consciousness’ normal mode of operation, in which it compares reality with its mental model dozens of times a second, focusing on what has changed, is altered. This alteration allows the perceptual pathway – the subject’s belief system – to dominate, with the proviso that it is susceptible to suggestion because of the lack of feedback or change emanating from the real world. It’s a bit like taking a person from solid ground to the middle of the ocean – foundations lost, no way of orienting yourself.

But this sounds like the known details of the berserkrgang state. A warrior begins to inculcate berserkrgang in himself by undertaking various rituals and actions, most of them rhythmic and repeated, such as stamping and vocalising. Some reports speak of the warrior biting the edge of his wooden shield. Yet the former actions sound very much like all the known variations of the human trance state, explored over tens of thousands of years by human beings across the world. The human trance state is an Altered State of Consciousness (ASC), in which sensory experience is limited, much like the hypnotic state. It is well documented that human beings can hypnotise themselves through such rituals, and the effect is regarded as a desirable spiritual outcome by many cultures. For the berserker, using natural human proclivities and abilities, and taking advantage of the operation of the brain, exactly the same applied. Berserkrgang was an ASC, a state of self-hypnosis, achieved in ways known to human beings since they evolved in Africa, and exploited by all prehistoric and many historic cultures. The Norse, a culture reliant for most of their existence on oral techniques such as myths, would certainly have known what strange states their minds could go into. It was from that deep reservoir of cultural psychological understanding that the berserkers emerged.

When a berserker achieved the berserkrgang state, he began a killing spree which did not distinguish between enemy and friend. Anybody in his vicinity could be killed. It was mostly for that reason that Norse communities began banning the practice. Existing in his ASC in which the realities of the world, acquired via his senses, were not checked and compared as in normal consciousness, he followed his own unique path, annihilating the enemy, but killing also anybody who might be in his way. Although he could hear and he could see, from his own perspective every individual nearby had to be attacked regardless of who they were. This was the basic fury state in which he lived for a brief while – his suddenly acquired new belief system, suggested to himself via self-hypnotic rituals, and through the moral principles of the hyper-masculine culture in which he lived. It was neither an “animal state” nor an expression of anger. It was the acquisition of an extreme belief system through the same techniques that allow hypnotism, self-hypnotism, trance and blindsight, in which the conscious mind’s perceptual system dominates the sensory system.

Battle is an extreme experience. To overcome terror and do what he was expected or told to do, the Viking warrior had to negotiate some difficult personal obstacles, one of which was his own fear. States similar to berserkrgang are known to those who study modern soldiers with PTSD. It is also documented that in certain situations of extreme danger, some people can call upon almost godlike resources – strength especially – for brief periods of time. These are situations where the extremity of what they face causes the individual briefly to go into a self-hypnotic state in which they can believe the unbelievable and, most often just for a matter of seconds, can rescue themselves or their kin, can lift huge weights, or perform other apparently miraculous tasks.

Such states are equivalent to those which elsewhere are named the placebo effect, in which a strongly held belief can alter physical reality when it comes to the body. All of us live inside our mental world, after all, checking reality to see how it accords with our mental model, which always takes primacy: consciousness is a user-generated experience based on the simultaneous operation of the sensory and perceptual pathways, which makes us believe we’re interacting with the real world when in fact we’re utilising our mental model. Sometimes, as in the cases described above, conditions allow the human mental model to take hold of the physical body and create remarkable instances of mind over matter. This – as with berserkers, whose state was brief, and who experienced days of lassitude afterwards – can never be a permanent change, but often it is enough for some extraordinary task to be achieved. The berserker state was one such. Some aspects of the state match those displayed by Hindu fakirs, who use similar mind over matter techniques.

It is tempting to look at people in crowds these days, for example on a railway platform as I have myself been doing recently, and wonder if they – their attention fixed on their smartphones as though it was the hypnotist’s swinging coin, their minds temporarily isolated from reality in a near-hypnotic state – are the modern equivalent of the ASC of trance. There are such similarities: their reduced awareness of the outside world, their suggestibility, which is enhanced by the mode of operation of digital media and the typical smartphone, their inability to step back and check reality. The callous, self-regarding leaders of this tech revolution I think are perfectly aware of the mental states their products are generating in their millions of customers. If it is free online, you are the product. Remember that? It’s the core fact of the online attention economy. That product is the hypnotised human mind.