BEAR-SHIRTS AND
WOLF-COATS: ODIN’S SACRED WARRIORS AS SOLAR AND LUNAR FRATERNITIES?
Part
I: The Bear and the Sun
For
those who are looking for a good recent study of shapeshifting in Norse literature,
and its concomitant the berserksgangr, I would kindly refer you to the
following two papers:
Stephan
Grundy, "Shapeshifting and Berserkergang", in Translation, Transformation,
and Transubstantiation, ed. Carol Poster and Richard Utz (Evanston: IL: Northwestern
University Press, 1998), pp. 104–22.
Davidson,
Hilda R. E. "Shape-Changing in Old Norse Sagas." In Animals in
Folklore, Ed. Joshua R. Porter and William M. S. Russell. Cambridge: Brewer; Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield,
1978, pp. 126–42.
My
only caveat to these excellent articles would that they place an over-reliance
on a somewhat arbitrary division of the shapeshifting process into two general
types. Here, quoting from Grundy:
“…the
changing of the body and the changing of the disembodied spirit (or spiritual
manifestation of the human in the form of an animal).”
The
actual physical transformation into animal form is a folkloric motif and can be
discounted. The confusion over a man who
dressed like and acted like an animal, with convincing ferocity and brutality,
and the actual animal itself would have been an easy one to make, especially by
battle opponents of berserkers or ‘Bear-shirts’ (I adopt this reading of
berserkr rather than the one that proposes a meaning of ‘bare-shirt’) and ulfhednar
or ‘Wolf-coats’. While I’m in no sense
touting the historical accuracy of the Hollywood
movie “The Thirteenth Warrior”, the filmmaker did an admirable job of showing
how warriors dressed as bears – especially if they attacked at night – could be
mistaken for real bears.
What
we must see in the supposed physical transformation is instead two
complementing factors: 1) a warrior is ‘armored’ and/or ritually dressed to
resemble a bear and 2) his in-dwelling bear-like spirit is brought to the surface
of his consciousness – or replaces his consciousness - and is unleashed to
operate martially through his own human body.
Various
means have been sought to explain how the ‘berserker rage’ was engendered. The most common explanations so far tendered
have to do with the ingestion of hallucinogenic compounds and/or alcohol. The sagas do not support such theories and,
indeed, we have several well-drawn characters who simply have a natural
“berserker personality”, if you will. A person exhibiting such a personality
could go into a fit of rage and inflict horrific acts of violence against the
causal agent or even the redirected or misdirected focus of that rage.
The
problem with hallucinogens and excessive alcohol consumption is that
individuals “drugged” in such a manner are not effective fighters. We do know that certain modern drugs (PCP or
‘Angel’s Dust’ and the newer “Bath Salts”) can create psychotic and manic
states that include instances of apparent extraordinary strength and
imperviousness to injury or wounds.
However, once again the saga evidence does not allow us to view the
troupes of berserkers or ulfhednar serving kings as being unable to distinguish
friend from foe because they were under the influence of psychotropic
substances. Bear-shirts and Wolf-coats
did not flail about uncontrollably.
Their bestial might was DIRECTED at a foe in a calculated way and was
part of the battle tactics of a Norse army.
Frequently they were put in the van of the host or at the prow of the
ship as “shock troops”. None of this
suggests that the “animal warriors” were so deranged as to be as much a
hindrance to those whose side they were on as they were a threat to their
enemies.
I
tend to think that we are dealing solely with an unqiue kind of religious fanaticism
in the berserker/ulfhednar complex and see no reason to provide any additional
impulse for their behavior.
In
my opinion, there is one critical aspect of the Bear-shirt and Wolf-coat
warrior fraternities that has been overlooked, and this component lies at the
heart of the RELIGIOUS nature of these elite military units:
“…
berserkers appear in the bodyguards of kings, often in groups or small units
containing a specified number of troops, USUALLY TWELVE.” [emphasis mine,
quoting from Neil S. Price’s THE VIKING WAY: RELIGION AND WAR IN LATE IRON AGE SCANDINAVIA, 2002, p. 367]
Although
various scholars have echoed the observation that berserkers are mostly found
in groups of twelve in the literature, to my knowledge no one has seem fit to
answer a fairly obvious question. Why
twelve?
Twelve
as a sacred number has very important connotations. It is the preeminent solar number, as there
are 12 solar months to the year and 12 zodiac signs in the same sacred calendar. This being so, again why twelve berserkers?
The
answer to this question may be embedded in earlier shamanistic beliefs of
various circumpolar cultures. Shamanism
has been discussed in detail in so far as it relates to Norse accounts of the
sending forth of one’s spirit in the form of animals – including those of bears
(as is in the tale of Bodvar Bjarki). What has not been brought into this
discussion is the solar symbolism of the bear itself.
Our
most valuable resource for the bear’s connection with the sun in circumpolar
tradition may well be the late Nikolai Konakov’s “Rationality and Mythological
Foundations of Calendar Symbols of the Ancient Komi” (found in SHAMANISM AND
NORTHERN ECOLOGY, ed. by Juha Pentikainen, 1996). I will here quote rather extensively from
Konakov’s study:
“The discovery in the Komi region of a unique
picture of an ancient trade calendar and its subsequent study, have extended
and deepened our understanding of the level of natural science and the
worldview of the Uralic population.
Decipherment
of the pictures in the calendar shows it to be a solar calendar. The year began with the vernal equinox and
was divided into periods (months) in accordance with the annual biological
rhythms of animals hunted for trade.
These periods were denoted by nine symbols of various animals: bear,
reindeer, ermine, wolverine, elk, otter, fox, squirrel, and marten…
The
calendar depicts two solar phases (the vernal and autumnal equinoxes) by means
of solar animals. The symbols for these
periods (bear and elk) covered by the phases were in opposition to one another,
representing a binary code…
The
use of he bear as the zoomorphic symbol of spring or (in the bipartite
structure of the year) the spring-summer period is very archaic and
universal. It exists in the calendric rituals
of many peoples: Russia,
Austrian, Swiss, Polish, etc. The
emergence of the bear from its den announced the end of winter and the
beginning of spring in Byelorussia,
Italy,
Rumania
and France…
The
elk is a zoomorphic symbol of the autumn or autumn-winter period in the ancient
trade calendar. The elk and the bear are
widely used as the symbols of calendar opposition in the mythology of the
Siberian peoples…
The
bear is the active element in this zoomorphic code (day, spring, male power,
destructive tendency), while a female, hoofed animal is the passive element
(night, autumn, the female reproduction element, the concept of sacrifice)…
From
the solar symbols of the elk (deer) nd the bear, typical of the North Eurasian
peoples, it is but a short distance to the concept of bear = east = spring to
the left and elk (deer) = west = autumn to the right…
The
image of a bear embodies broad monozoomorphic symbolism in the solar calendar:
each of its limbs represents one of the four seasons…
In
zoomorphic symbolism, the calendar opposition of two equal yet contrasting
seasons is clearly reflected in the species of animal: the beast of pretty in
opposition to a herbivorous animal…”
To
make this a bit clearer, one can compare the bear, who remains in the earth for
the winter, with the winter sun at high latitudes, which for weeks at a time
does not rise above the horizon. In
other words, mythologically speaking, the bear = the sun.
If
the solar symbolism attending the bear was as pervasive in circumpolar cultures
as Konakov claims, we might assume that it was also present in the Sami of
northern Sweden,
who practiced their own version of the Bear Cult. The Sami shaman’s drum, itself a cosmogram,
had as its central design the symbol for the sun (or sun goddess Beaivi), and
one of the most common animals portrayed on the head of the drum with the sun
is the bear (see, for example,
http://www.utexas.edu/courses/sami/diehtu/siida/religion/bearjw.htm and
http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol47/joy.pdf ).
Professor
Juha Pentikainen at the University
of Helsinki has told me:
"There
is a lot of information on the bear as solar symbol both in epic (e.g. Sami
epic on the Daughter and Son of Sun) by Anders Fjellner and rock art
(Okladnikov, etc.)."
Professor
Neil S. Price has shown in his book THE VIKING WAY that Sami traditions seem to
be paralleled by many Norse beliefs and burial customs and may, in fact, have
exerted a profound influence on the development of Viking religious views. For
the most recent study of the Bear Cult, see “The bear cult among the different
ethnic groups of Russia (sacred Russian bear)”,
pp. 278-290, by Robert E. F.
Smith in Sacred Species and Sites: Advances in Biocultural Conservation, ed. by
Gloria Pungetti, Gonzalo Oviedo and Della Hooke, Cambridge University Press,
2012.
Part
II: The Wolf and the Moon
The
ulfhednar of Odin are not nearly so difficult to associate with a major
heavenly body. Norse sources make it
plain that Odin himself possessed two wolves, Geri (the ‘Greedy One’) and Freki
(the ‘Ravenous One’ according to Simek, derived from Proto-Germanic *frekaz,
but merely ‘Wolf’ elsewhere). Freki is
used as a descriptor for Garm in Voluspa 43, and for either the same hound or
the bound Fenrir in Voluspa 48. In some
of the Finno-Ugric langauges, the wolf is ‘the dog of God’, and in Estonian
tradition the animal is under the special protection of Ukko the
sky-father.
Fenrir,
whose name may contain the word for fen or swamp (cf. the Mansi and Khanty designation
for the wolf as ‘the one who lives in the swamp’), meaning ‘Marsh-dweller’ or
the like, is indisputably a lunar beast.
We know this because he bites off Tyr the Sky-Father’s solar hand. A
lunar nature for the wolf is in keeping with the animal’s noctural habits. The Garm of the Eddas is also known as
Managarm, not so much ‘Mani’s or Moon’s Garm’ as ‘Moon-Garm’. According to
Snorri Sturluson, Managarm will swallow the sun at Ragnarok. Another name for this sun-devouring moon-wolf
is Skoll.
The
only wolf in the Eddas who would not seem to fit the lunar pattern is Skoll’s
companion, Hati. He is said to be
pursuing the moon. Scholars (see Simek
again) have sought to associate the phenomenon known as the parhelion, called a
“sun wolf” in Scandinavian languages and merely “sun-dog” here in the United States,
with these devouring monsters. However,
the wolf is NOT a daytime animal, nor is its connection with the sun a
reasonable conjecture. Sun and moon
bows, no matter how bright, cannot be viewed as “consumers” of the sun or
moon. No, the lunar nature of the wolf
remains paramount and in the case of Hati, who will swallow the moon, I would
consider him to be a manifestation of a strictly lunar eclipse and thus
symbolic of the earth’s black shadow.
It
may or may not be a coincidence that sometimes in the Norse literature we find
not twelve berserkers, but thirteen.
This may in some contexts be explained as a parallel to Christ and his
Twelve Apostles or similar groupings where the chief sun god and his twelve constituent
monthly or zodiacal “selves” are separately designated. But if the warrior group in question are not
Bear-shirts and are instead Wolf-coats, then the number thirteen may well
represent the thirteen months of the lunar year, as opposed to the twelve
months of the solar one.
Icelandic
sources give the famous Viking Arngrim 12 berserker sons, but in the history of
Saxo Grammaticus the number is reduced to 9.
We find 9 brothers, sons of Volsung, consumed in the course of nine
nights by a female werewolf in Volsunga Saga.
Nine is consistently employed as the number deemed sacred to the
moon.
Both
lunar and solar groups of warriors were naturally sacred to the sky-father
Odin, whose very eyes are the sun and moon.
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