Article ID: CBB816628342

Wearing the wolf skin: psychiatry and the phenomenon of the berserker in medieval Scandinavia (2021)

unapi

This paper examines the berserker, a frenzied warrior attested to in both the written and material sources of medieval Scandinavia, and elucidates the characteristics that define him. It critiques explanations for the phenomenon offered in the existing historiography and whether this can be explained as a psychiatric diagnosis. It concludes that the berserker cannot be simply defined as a culturally bound or other psychiatric syndrome, or accounted for by psychogenic drugs alone. Instead, it proposes that berserk frenzy constituted a transitory dissociative state shared among a small warband steeped in religious/spiritual ideology. In entering this state, the psyche of the berserker was reconstituted in an almost archetypal pattern. Further research is required into this phenomenon in other contexts, including modern conflicts.

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Authors & Contributors
Picozzi, Mario
Papparella, Franca C.
Mächler, Alejandro Quintero
Hu, Qing
Jinee Lokaneeta
Fan, Tingwei
Concepts
Medicine and religion
Rituals
Psychiatry
Violence
Medicine and culture
Medicine and the military; medicine in war
Time Periods
19th century
16th century
20th century
Early modern
Medieval
Ancient
Places
Italy
China
Japan
India
Great Britain
Calabria
Institutions
Tavistock Clinic
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