Going Berserk:
The Rage of the Bear-Shirted Warriors
The countdown to England v Norway. ⚔️
World Cup quarter final in Miami 2026.
Two old seafaring nations going to war.
We gave the world the Royal Navy.
They gave the world the Vikings.
Norway beat us to one thing a thousand years ago.
The word for exactly how I'll react if we lose on penalties.
Berserk.
⚓️
Meet the berserkr.
Norse warriors who went into battle in a trance.
No armour. Howling, foaming, biting the rims of their shields.
No pain, no fear, no mercy.
The name most likely means "bear-shirt".
Men who threw off their mail and fought in animal skin.
Believing they carried the strength of the beast.
Others read it as "bare-shirt", stripped to the waist.
The sagas still argue about it… and I wasn’t prepared to go topless.
The original berserk was never a tactic.
It was a state.
Once the red mist came down, friend and foe looked the same. Useful in a raid. Less useful on the walk home.
Somewhere down the centuries, the word climbed off the longship and into everyday speech.
A word for a warrior's frenzy became a word for anyone who loses the plot.
🫡 Angle Recruitment, Maritime Talent Experts.
😉 Finding the people worth fighting for.
Fun Facts
⚓️ Those horns on my helmet? Pure fantasy.
Vikings never wore them. The horned look was invented in 1876 by a costume designer for a Wagner opera, and we've been getting it wrong ever since. Feels a shame to give them up though.
⚓️ Berserkers weren't the only ones.
Their cousins, the úlfheðnar, fought in wolf skins instead of bear. Bear-shirts and wolf-coats, howling into battle together.
⚓️ Look closely at the Lewis Chessmen...
The famous 12th century Viking chess set, and the rooks are berserkers biting the tops of their shields. Even the board game had them losing it.
⚓️ Going berserk was eventually outlawed.
Medieval Iceland and Norway both banned it, punishable by exile. Turns out even the Vikings decided it was a bit much.
⚓️ The word then vanished for 600 years...
Until Walter Scott dusted it off in his 1822 novel The Pirate. Now it's used daily by people who've never lifted an axe.
Maritime Origins is a weekly storytelling series exploring the sea-born origins of phrases we still use on land, along with the lesser-known stories, legends and characters that shaped maritime culture.
Created by Jason Nangle, founder of Angle Recruitment, a global maritime recruitment and executive search firm.
New episode every Tuesday on LinkedIn. Also on Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.
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Why do we say 'dead as a dodo'? It started as a sailor's insult, fool or fat arse, but the bird wasn't stupid at all. It simply trusted the wrong ships in 1598.
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