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Updated: June 14, 2025
An electric shock could not have been more effective. The poor boy sprang up with a loud cry, and for a few seconds gazed at the berserks in bewilderment.
Yet, feeling that his youth might be against him, he had chosen that all his ship companions should be as near as possible to his own age. He had a score or so of bearded berserks on each of his ships men who feared neither fire nor steel, but who gloried in warfare, and loved nothing better than to be in the midst of a great battle.
War horns were sounded, arrows of challenge were fired over the opposing fleets, the berserks on either side clashed their arms and bit the rims of their shields, working themselves into a wild war fury. Then the fleets closed in upon each other amid a storm of arrows, and the grim battle began.
The berserks seem to have been a description of athletes, who were in the habit of stimulating their nervous energies by the use of some intoxicating drug, which rendered them capable of feats of extraordinary strength and daring. The Berserker gang must have been something very like the Malay custom of running a muck.
Along the banks of the Oxeraa no longer glisten the tents and booths of the assembled lieges; no longer stalwart berserks guard the narrow entrance to the Althing; ravens alone sit on the sacred Logberg; and the floor of the old Icelandic House of Commons is ignominiously cropped by the sheep of the parson.
They assembled a great fleet of warships and met the conqueror in the Hafrsfjord. In the sea fight that followed many of Harald's bravest men were slain; spears and stones fell about them on every side; the air was filled with the flying arrows as with winter hail. But the king's berserks at length took on their fury and won for their master the greatest battle that has ever been fought in Norway.
Urging his rowers to their fullest speed, Erik bore down with his ships upon the extreme of King Olaf's right wing. The heavy, iron bound bow of the Ram crashed into the broadside of Olaf's outermost longship, whose timber creaked and groaned under the impact. Vikings and berserks leapt down upon her decks, and now Norseman met Norseman in a terrible, deadly combat.
In the morning, directly the day broke, all the men of the island were called together to go forth and search for the two berserks who had escaped.
Grettir noticed that they were rather fuddled, and asked whether they did not think it was time to go to bed. Thorir said: "So it is; but I have to fulfil my promise to the mistress." Grettir then went out and called out loud: "Go to bed, women! Such is the will of Thorir the bondi." The women execrated him and could be heard howling like wolves. The berserks then left the room.
So when Erik saw that King Olaf was gaining the upper hand of him he got his berserks to take down the oars and to fling them over the Serpent's nearer gunwale, together with all logs of wood, spars, ballast stones, and other weighty things that could be found. And as the weight increased so did the Serpent lean over, until at last her bulwarks were almost on a level with those of the Iron Ram.
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