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So as we have seen that Odin means "rage/fury" and that is connected to a sexual ecstatic way of fighting - something you can call orgastic; it is very interesting to look at other Indo-European people to see if there are traces of a similar kind of thinking before these people became "civilized".

In Greek "orgé" means "anger/wrath/passion". It comes from the verb oragō that means "to swell".
Guess where "òrgasmós" (Orgasm) comes from! From orgáō (sexually aroused) that interestingly comes from the verb oragō "to swell".
So clearly a linguistic link between wrath and sexual arousal in Greek.
Rage and sexual arousal are both linked as the same kind of "swelling". One wonders where such swelling occurred in both instances.........

Battle as orgasm is probably something that even modern Christian soldiers experience, but keep for themselves as something shameful as a very strong taboo. Its not really something you start to tell your family, friends and in bars and can expect to find praise and having the women swoon over you in a Christian society.
For the Vikings it was something to brag about - you had proven on the battlefield that you were a real man when you started to lust instead of feeling fear. It was a clearly very different world view from the modern one; but it made for really effective fighters.
If you as a Christian soldier felt "fucked" when being attacked by Vikings, it was really the whole "point" of it all. The vikings would have the psychological edge of lusting for it while causing fear in the enemy.
Niels Just Rasmussen wrote:
So as we have seen that Odin means "rage/fury" and that is connected to a sexual ecstatic way of fighting - something you can call orgastic; it is very interesting to look at other Indo-European people to see if there are traces of a similar kind of thinking before these people became "civilized".

In Greek "orgé" means "anger/wrath/passion". It comes from the verb oragō that means "to swell".
Guess where "òrgasmós" (Orgasm) comes from! From orgáō (sexually aroused) that interestingly comes from the verb oragō "to swell".
So clearly a linguistic link between wrath and sexual arousal in Greek.
Rage and sexual arousal are both linked as the same kind of "swelling". One wonders where such swelling occurred in both instances.........

Battle as orgasm is probably something that even modern Christian soldiers experience, but keep for themselves as something shameful as a very strong taboo. Its not really something you start to tell your family, friends and in bars and can expect to find praise and having the women swoon over you in a Christian society.
For the Vikings it was something to brag about - you had proven on the battlefield that you were a real man when you started to lust instead of feeling fear. It was a clearly very different world view from the modern one; but it made for really effective fighters.
If you as a Christian soldier felt "fucked" when being attacked by Vikings, it was really the whole "point" of it all. The vikings would have the psychological edge of lusting for it while causing fear in the enemy.


I like your line of thinking but I am not sure if it completely goes along with medieval thinking.

Betrand de Born: Be’m plai lo gais temps de pascor

Quote:
Well do I love the cheerful spring,

which brings the leaves and flowers;

and I also love to hear the merriment of the birds,

who send their song ringing through the woods;

and I am glad to see tents and pavilions

pitched in the meadows.

Great is my joy when I see knights and armored horses

ranged on the battlefield.



And I like to see the foragers

send the people and the cattle fleeing before them

and it pleases me when I see many soldiers

come running after them;

and it warms my heart to see strong castles besieged,

the palisades smashed and broken down,

and to see the army on the river-bank

protected on all sides by ditches,

and strong, tight-made palisades.



And I am well pleased by a lord

when he is the first to attack,

on horseback, armored, fearless:

thus does he inspire his men

with boldness, and worthy courage.

And when the battle is joined

each man must be ready

to follow him with joy:

for no man is held to be worthy

until he has taken and given many blows.

Maces and swords, colorful helms,

shields riven and cast aside:

these shall we see at the start of the battle,

and also many vassals struck down,

the horses of the dead and wounded running wild.

And when he enters the combat,

let every man of good lineage

think of nothing but splitting heads and hacking arms;

for it is better to die than to live in defeat.



I tell you, I find no such savor

in eating or drinking or sleeping

as when I hear the cries of “attack!”

from both sides, and the noise

of riderless horses in the shadows;

and I hear screams of “Help! Help!”

and I see great and small alike

falling into the grassy ditches

and the dead

with splintered lances, bedecked with pennons

through their sides.



Love wants a chivalrous lover

skilled at arms and generous in serving

who speaks well and gives greatly,

who knows what he should do and say,

in or out of his hall,

as befits his power.

He should be full of hospitality, courtesy, and good cheer.

A lady who lies with such a lover as that

is clean of all her sins.


Best of both words really isn't it? You get to fight, violate and kill and any adultery committed afterwards isn't sinful.

And Jean de Bieul nearly 250 years later

Quote:
You love your comrade so much in war. When you see your quarrel is just and your blood is fighting well, tears rise to your eyes. A great sweet feeling of love and pity fills your heart on seeing your friend so valiantly exposing his body to execute and accomplish the command of our Creator. And then you prepare to go and live or die with him and for love not to abandon him. And out of that there arises such delectation, that he who has not tasted it is not fit to say what a delight is. Do you think that a man who does that fears death? Not at all: for he feels strengthened, he is so elated he does not know where he is. Truly he is afraid of nothing.
Pieter B. wrote:
Niels Just Rasmussen wrote:
So as we have seen that Odin means "rage/fury" and that is connected to a sexual ecstatic way of fighting - something you can call orgastic; it is very interesting to look at other Indo-European people to see if there are traces of a similar kind of thinking before these people became "civilized".

In Greek "orgé" means "anger/wrath/passion". It comes from the verb oragō that means "to swell".
Guess where "òrgasmós" (Orgasm) comes from! From orgáō (sexually aroused) that interestingly comes from the verb oragō "to swell".
So clearly a linguistic link between wrath and sexual arousal in Greek.
Rage and sexual arousal are both linked as the same kind of "swelling". One wonders where such swelling occurred in both instances.........

Battle as orgasm is probably something that even modern Christian soldiers experience, but keep for themselves as something shameful as a very strong taboo. Its not really something you start to tell your family, friends and in bars and can expect to find praise and having the women swoon over you in a Christian society.
For the Vikings it was something to brag about - you had proven on the battlefield that you were a real man when you started to lust instead of feeling fear. It was a clearly very different world view from the modern one; but it made for really effective fighters.
If you as a Christian soldier felt "fucked" when being attacked by Vikings, it was really the whole "point" of it all. The vikings would have the psychological edge of lusting for it while causing fear in the enemy.


I like your line of thinking but I am not sure if it completely goes along with medieval thinking.

Betrand de Born: Be’m plai lo gais temps de pascor

Quote:
Well do I love the cheerful spring,

which brings the leaves and flowers;

and I also love to hear the merriment of the birds,

who send their song ringing through the woods;

and I am glad to see tents and pavilions

pitched in the meadows.

Great is my joy when I see knights and armored horses

ranged on the battlefield.



And I like to see the foragers

send the people and the cattle fleeing before them

and it pleases me when I see many soldiers

come running after them;

and it warms my heart to see strong castles besieged,

the palisades smashed and broken down,

and to see the army on the river-bank

protected on all sides by ditches,

and strong, tight-made palisades.



And I am well pleased by a lord

when he is the first to attack,

on horseback, armored, fearless:

thus does he inspire his men

with boldness, and worthy courage.

And when the battle is joined

each man must be ready

to follow him with joy:

for no man is held to be worthy

until he has taken and given many blows.

Maces and swords, colorful helms,

shields riven and cast aside:

these shall we see at the start of the battle,

and also many vassals struck down,

the horses of the dead and wounded running wild.

And when he enters the combat,

let every man of good lineage

think of nothing but splitting heads and hacking arms;

for it is better to die than to live in defeat.



I tell you, I find no such savor

in eating or drinking or sleeping

as when I hear the cries of “attack!”

from both sides, and the noise

of riderless horses in the shadows;

and I hear screams of “Help! Help!”

and I see great and small alike

falling into the grassy ditches

and the dead

with splintered lances, bedecked with pennons

through their sides.



Love wants a chivalrous lover

skilled at arms and generous in serving

who speaks well and gives greatly,

who knows what he should do and say,

in or out of his hall,

as befits his power.

He should be full of hospitality, courtesy, and good cheer.

A lady who lies with such a lover as that

is clean of all her sins.


Best of both words really isn't it? You get to fight, violate and kill and any adultery committed afterwards isn't sinful.

And Jean de Bieul nearly 250 years later

Quote:
You love your comrade so much in war. When you see your quarrel is just and your blood is fighting well, tears rise to your eyes. A great sweet feeling of love and pity fills your heart on seeing your friend so valiantly exposing his body to execute and accomplish the command of our Creator. And then you prepare to go and live or die with him and for love not to abandon him. And out of that there arises such delectation, that he who has not tasted it is not fit to say what a delight is. Do you think that a man who does that fears death? Not at all: for he feels strengthened, he is so elated he does not know where he is. Truly he is afraid of nothing.


Thanks for giving this interesting poem, that I actually didn't know!
Well what can you say the Germanic warrior spirit took a looooong time to be changed to a peace-loving version of Christianity (because these examples shows a war-loving form of Christianity - actual soldiers of Christ).
Yet the elite Odin warriors had apparently a battle lust and psyche, that seemingly was alien to even other non-Odinnic Scandinavians and Christians in their own time. The Christian examples you gave loves war, but going berserk and "changing" into animals (lycanthropy) is not on the list - so there is some difference.
I know from Denmark that the change from the Viking Age to Christian Middle Ages was simply from going "viking" to going on "expeditio" (amphibious "crusades" launched from viking ships) against pagans (or other Christians you just claimed were pagan) and that "peaceful Christian virtues" are something that apparently took a very long time to settle in the warrior nobility (perhaps first post-Reformation in Scandinavia? - perhaps even later?).
The result was the same whether viking or "crusader" - attack, raid, capture, kill, sail back and feel good and manly about yourself.

Also one thing that is easily forgotten. Christian warriors had sometimes no problem with burning churches down "belonging to the enemy" (also with people in them). You could always claim afterwards they were heretical and if you had killed them all, no one could really challenge your claim.
You also often only buried your own people in YOUR village cemetery. A stranger could probably just be dumped somewhere, if he was so unfortunate (dumb?) as to die away from his home and not having people transporting his body home for burial. The peaceful pan-Christian-community dream probably only existed in the heads of monks (even many Bishops were extremely warlike). The reality was still family feuding and blood-revenges or occasionally "tribal" warfare.

But you make an important point. Both Anglo-Saxons and Franks were really also hard-nosed war-loving combat machines and yet there was something about the Vikings that gave a fear aspect. The clergy that wrote must of the stuff in the period were often from that warrior-aristocracy. So they shouldn't scare easily; so something must really have been unsettling with (some) Vikings and it's not just because they were pagans.
About the beserk thing, I actually made the last part bold to indicate some sort of fury was present. i.e. he feel strengthened, has no clue where he is and does not fear death.

One more unsettling thing about the vikings I can think of is that they effectively had naval supremacy for a while. A ship that could go pretty much everywhere and was neigh unstoppable. Coastal settlements have always been at risk of a sudden attack without any warning, but inland villages could receive warning of a marching army or at least detect smoke on the horizon. That is not the case when ships can go upriver and travel between two and five times the distance a terrestrial army can in a given day. For all intents and purposes they might as well have had Star Trek teleporter technology.
Pieter B. wrote:
About the beserk thing, I actually made the last part bold to indicate some sort of fury was present. i.e. he feel strengthened, has no clue where he is and does not fear death.

One more unsettling thing about the vikings I can think of is that they effectively had naval supremacy for a while. A ship that could go pretty much everywhere and was neigh unstoppable. Coastal settlements have always been at risk of a sudden attack without any warning, but inland villages could receive warning of a marching army or at least detect smoke on the horizon. That is not the case when ships can go upriver and travel between two and five times the distance a terrestrial army can in a given day. For all intents and purposes they might as well have had Star Trek teleporter technology.


Yeah clearly he is in the "combat zone". Among vikings you perhaps both had cool-headed fighters (attributed to Tyr) and the ecstatic (sometimes shape-changing) Odin warriors. It doesn't really look from the text like he goes into battle "rage/fury", but he certainly goes into another place where he has no fear.
But it could be more like a Tyr-fighters, more than Odin style?
From Iron Age Vendel-"Sweden" you possibly also had boar fighters of Frey.

You are correct that the ship aspect is a very important factor; but what about land battles with vikings? Is the ship really the only aspect?
Perhaps it is the were-bear (man-bear) and were-wolf (man-wolf) aspect of the Berserker and Ulfhednar that was unsettling.
We see scare stories of werewolves all through the middle ages, so it could have an background in actual human warriors in a state of Lycanthropy.

Some etymology:
The prefix Were- means "man". It is an Indo-European word cognate with Latin Vir (man) and also seen in "Virtus" manliness (probably the most important attribute for a Roman soldier).
Frey was known as the "Ver-aldar God" [= God/Ritual Cult leader? of (the) Man-age]. Ver-aldar is genitive of Ver-ǫld.

The English word "World" (and other Germanic cognates like German Welt, Danish Verden, Swedish Värld) is thus actually not a place, but a time period (an era). The word for the actual place we live on is Midgard.
World (and the other Germanic cognates) are from Proto-Germanic *Weraz-aldiz [Man-Age], and is still totally obvious in modern Dutch Wer-eld.

NB: Of all the animal-inspired Indo-European fighting brotherhoods the one from the Iliad with Achilles and his Myrmidons is seemingly really the most odd and unique. Myrmidons = Ant fighters and they apparently all had black armour (wonder if their helmets actually had antennas?). People really always forget this enormously interesting aspect when going through the Iliad. Achilles is metaphorically the leader of an roaming ant-hive :lol:


Last edited by Niels Just Rasmussen on Thu 28 Apr, 2016 12:05 pm; edited 2 times in total
Niels Just Rasmussen wrote:
Pieter B. wrote:
About the beserk thing, I actually made the last part bold to indicate some sort of fury was present. i.e. he feel strengthened, has no clue where he is and does not fear death.

One more unsettling thing about the vikings I can think of is that they effectively had naval supremacy for a while. A ship that could go pretty much everywhere and was neigh unstoppable. Coastal settlements have always been at risk of a sudden attack without any warning, but inland villages could receive warning of a marching army or at least detect smoke on the horizon. That is not the case when ships can go upriver and travel between two and five times the distance a terrestrial army can in a given day. For all intents and purposes they might as well have had Star Trek teleporter technology.


Yeah clearly he is in the "combat zone". Among vikings you perhaps both had cool-headed fighters (attributed to Tyr) and the ecstatic (sometimes shape-changing) Odin warriors. It doesn't really look from the text like he goes into battle "rage/fury", but he certainly goes into another place where he has no fear.
But it could be more like a Tyr-fighters, more than Odin style?
From Iron Age Vendel-"Sweden" you possibly also had boar fighters of Frey.

You are at least partly correct that the ship aspect might be an important factor; but what about land battles with vikings? Is the ship really the only aspect?
Perhaps it is the were-bear (man-bear) and were-wolf (man-wolf) aspect of the Berserker and Ulfhednar that was unsettling.
We see scare stories of werewolves all through the middle ages, so it could have an background in actual human warriors in a state of Lycanthropy.

Some etymology:
The prefix Were- means "man". It is an Indo-European word cognate with Latin Vir (man) and also seen in "Virtus" manliness (probably the most important attribute for a Roman soldier).
Frey was known as the "Ver-aldar God" [= God/Ritual Cult leader? of (the) Man-age]. Ver-aldar is genitive of Ver-ǫld.

The English word "World" (and other Germanic cognates like German Welt, Danish Verden, Swedish Värld) is thus actually not a place, but a time period (an era). The word for the actual place we live on is Midgard.
World (and the other Germanic cognates) are from Proto-Germanic *Weraz-aldiz [Man-Age], and is still totally obvious in modern Dutch Wer-eld.

NB: Of all the animal-inspired Indo-European fighting brotherhoods the one from the Iliad with Achilles and his Myrmidons is seemingly really the most odd and unique. Myrmidons = Ant fighters and they apparently all had black armour (wonder if their helmets actually had antennas?). People really always forget this enormously interesting aspect when going through the Iliad. Achilles is metaphorically the leader of an roaming ant-hive :lol:

Hey, ant swarms are terrifying and nothing to laugh at. Army ants have been know to kill birds and strip them to the bone. I remember as a little kid poking a stick and brushing at ant hill, get it deep enough and then seeing horrifying, thousands of army all crawling towards me in unison , I squashed a few, they walk around there friends body and climb into your hand and start attacking, thousands of tiny soldiers all , all operating under a single purpose, uttering destroying those that attack them and carrying the remnants back to home. Nature's tiny death machines. I ran away after realize I couldn't kill them all and that they wouldn't stop.
Philip Dyer wrote:

Hey, ant hives swarms are terrifying and nothing to laugh at. Army ants have been know to kill bird and strip them to the bone. I remember as little kid poking a stick and brushing at ant hill, get it deep enough and then imagine can be rather horrifying, thousands of bug all crawling towards in unison , squash a few, they walk around there friends body and climb into your hand and start attacking, thousands of tiny soldiers all , all operating under a single purpose, uttering destroying those that attack them and carrying the remnants back to home. Nature's tiny death machines.


Well the reason for picking ants is most likely their absolute loyalty to their leader and mother the queen. Its not that ants swarms can't be terrifying, but then so could swarm of locusts? In the warrior world it is still a very unusual animal to choose.

The dog and wolf embodies the same ideas of group loyalty and coordinated pack attacks as ants would and dog and wolf warriors are far more common. Wolf actually being the most common of all animals chosen by Indo-European warrior bands.
In nature ants can generally only kill mammals if the are injured to such an extent that they can't get away in time; so that's why I think they are chosen primarily for their manner of fighting (never fleeing) and their loyalty . Not because they are a real danger towards humans or great hunters of prey as the more normal warrior animals chosen.
If ants were chosen more often, one should also think that you would have bee- or wasp warriors, but we don't see that.

What I was actually laughing at is by choosing ants it makes Achilles as the leader over the absolutely loyal Myrmidons a Queen - who by the way is mother to all her workers!
Could explain why nobody else chose ants, bees or wasps - but Achilles did. It does make you think over Achilles very emotional behavior and make you wonder if he was a transvestite warrior?! But which way? A woman by chromosomes having the social gender of a man, or a man by chromosomes taking the social gender of a woman?
Off course the Iliad has a long tradition as an oral poem before it is written down (so many different versions would have existed, also with many contradictions between them); so the Ant significance could be important OR not.
Achilles could just like ants and the loyalty they show their Queen and then he is powerful enough to kill anyone that might crack jokes about that.
It was apparently also strictly forbidden to even mention the word "goat" within hearing range of Julius Caesar. He was apparently extremely hairy but getting bald early (but statues of him had to have more head-hair than reality) and also notorious in his younger days for being "every woman's husband and every man's wife" -> lots of horny goat jokes to be had about the hairy one.

Achilles as a transvestite doesn't seem so impossible as at first glance, when one takes into account some Indo-European peoples had clearly a difference between sex and gender and definitely more than just two categories.
You have a ancient third gender in Indian - tritiya prakriti - still in existence today (called Hijra).

In Scandinavian mythology Loki is actually the mother of Sleipnir and Odin can and does shape change into female women. Seidr magic was "female magic" and you were regarded as a "passive homosexual" in the real medieval Icelandic world (but remember these Icelandic texts are from far into the Christian period, where it is clearly not acceptable to cross-dress) if you did it as a man. Yet Odin clearly do this kind of magic in the mythology after he learned it from Freya - Loki states that Odin did it on the Danish Island of Samsø in the Lokasenna.
We find archaeologically Viking Age men dressed as vǫlur ("specialists in seidr magic") and the best weapon-equipped viking-warrior chamber grave at all from the Viking Age (from Birka), the skeleton in the grave is with all likelihood a woman.
It seems that in the pagan Scandinavian Viking Age world your gender is the clothes you wear. Trousers = Male, Dress = Female.

Tertullian wrote about a "tertium sexus" among Roman pagans in his "Ad Nationes" Book 1, chapter 20.
Tertullian as a Christian is speaking directly to pagans here in the Roman Empire: "You too have your "third race;" not indeed third in the way of religious rite, but a third race in sex, and, made up as it is of male and female in one, it is more fitted to men and women (for offices of lust)."
Source: http://earlychristianwritings.com/text/tertullian06.html
This sounds to be a hermaphrodite?
- "every woman's husband and every man's wife" - Julius Caesar?
I would not read too much into late sources like Tertullian, coloured as they would be with Christian prejudices against the 'heretical' pagan past.

That said, while gender dynamics of the ancient past could be a very interesting study, I'm not sure that this is quite the place to discuss that topic. I'll let Nathan or Chad determine that, though.

I'm also not sure that the ancient Greeks would have been aware that ants have a 'queen'. I could be wrong, though.

I would not be surprised at all if Achilles' Myrmidons wore feathers on their helmets as a crest; a pair of feathers could certainly resemble an ant's antennae. I would wager that the name was derived more from a certain physical similarity (black armour, black ants), or as a jest against relatively young warriors in the midst of an army of older career soldiers, than any actual perception of ant social behaviour.
Niels Just Rasmussen wrote:
Philip Dyer wrote:

Hey, ant hives swarms are terrifying and nothing to laugh at. Army ants have been know to kill bird and strip them to the bone. I remember as little kid poking a stick and brushing at ant hill, get it deep enough and then imagine can be rather horrifying, thousands of bug all crawling towards in unison , squash a few, they walk around there friends body and climb into your hand and start attacking, thousands of tiny soldiers all , all operating under a single purpose, uttering destroying those that attack them and carrying the remnants back to home. Nature's tiny death machines.


Well the reason for picking ants is most likely their absolute loyalty to their leader and mother the queen. Its not that ants swarms can't be terrifying, but then so could swarm of locusts? In the warrior world it is still a very unusual animal to choose.

The dog and wolf embodies the same ideas of group loyalty and coordinated pack attacks as ants would and dog and wolf warriors are far more common. Wolf actually being the most common of all animals chosen by Indo-European warrior bands.
In nature ants can generally only kill mammals if the are injured to such an extent that they can't get away in time; so that's why I think they are chosen primarily for their manner of fighting (never fleeing) and their loyalty . Not because they are a real danger towards humans or great hunters of prey as the more normal warrior animals chosen.
If ants were chosen more often, one should also think that you would have bee- or wasp warriors, but we don't see that.

What I was actually laughing at is by choosing ants it makes Achilles as the leader over the absolutely loyal Myrmidons a Queen - who by the way is mother to all her workers!
Could explain why nobody else chose ants, bees or wasps - but Achilles did. It does make you think over Achilles very emotional behavior and make you wonder if he was a transvestite warrior?! But which way? A woman by chromosomes having the social gender of a man, or a man by chromosomes taking the social gender of a woman?
Off course the Iliad has a long tradition as an oral poem before it is written down (so many different versions would have existed, also with many contradictions between them); so the Ant significance could be important OR not.
Achilles could just like ants and the loyalty they show their Queen and then he is powerful enough to kill anyone that might crack jokes about that.
It was apparently also strictly forbidden to even mention the word "goat" within hearing range of Julius Caesar. He was apparently extremely hairy but getting bald early (but statues of him had to have more head-hair than reality) and also notorious in his younger days for being "every woman's husband and every man's wife" -> lots of horny goat jokes to be had about the hairy one.

Achilles as a transvestite doesn't seem so impossible as at first glance, when one takes into account some Indo-European peoples had clearly a difference between sex and gender and definitely more than just two categories.
You have a ancient third gender in Indian - tritiya prakriti - still in existence today (called Hijra).

In Scandinavian mythology Loki is actually the mother of Sleipnir and Odin can and does shape change into female women. Seidr magic was "female magic" and you were regarded as a "passive homosexual" in the real medieval Icelandic world (but remember these Icelandic texts are from far into the Christian period, where it is clearly not acceptable to cross-dress) if you did it as a man. Yet Odin clearly do this kind of magic in the mythology after he learned it from Freya - Loki states that Odin did it on the Danish Island of Samsø in the Lokasenna.
We find archaeologically Viking Age men dressed as vǫlur ("specialists in seidr magic") and the best weapon-equipped viking-warrior chamber grave at all from the Viking Age (from Birka), the skeleton in the grave is with all likelihood a woman.
It seems that in the pagan Scandinavian Viking Age world your gender is the clothes you wear. Trousers = Male, Dress = Female.

Tertullian wrote about a "tertium sexus" among Roman pagans in his "Ad Nationes" Book 1, chapter 20.
Tertullian as a Christian is speaking directly to pagans here in the Roman Empire: "You too have your "third race;" not indeed third in the way of religious rite, but a third race in sex, and, made up as it is of male and female in one, it is more fitted to men and women (for offices of lust)."
Source: http://earlychristianwritings.com/text/tertullian06.html
This sounds to be a hermaphrodite?
- "every woman's husband and every man's wife" - Julius Caesar?

Thank you for the wonderful analysis but all I was trying to say in convoluted, hilarious antedate that ants, like bees, wasps, and locusts can be very scary.
Upon using google, the book is actually *Achilles* in Vietnam. Author is Jonathan Shay, and after a quick check I found that he gets a mention on the Beserker page on Wikipedia (for whatever that is worth).
If I understand his thesis correctly (psychology is not my field) I think he would argue that PTSD does not necessarily have to be grounded in fear. He seems to put forward that it is an adaption based on a stressful situation or incident which may well be helpful for that situation, but manipulative for others (to use an example from an Australian song, throwing yourself into the dirt when you hear a chopper might help you survive Vietnam, but is a maladaptive behavior if the only chopper in your area is the channel 9 traffic copter)
The beserks would seem to fit that description, flipping out into a bloodthirsty hulk-out in response to a perceived threat might be quite useful if you are the Jarl's shock troops, but would be pretty maladaptive behavior for day to day life.
As was mentioned earlier, George Silver's system takes wounding dynamics into account. It emphasizes defense, finding the play from which you can strike your opponent without getting struck in return.

As far as fatalities in battle go, I think it's misleading to claim that few happened. It depended on the battle. In a hard-fought contest, many received mortal wounds; that's why close combat was so terrifying. Soldiers broke and ran for good reason: in individual terms, fleeing often increased odds of survival, even if reduced the odds of one's side winning the battle. I'll once again cite Yuval Harari's interpretation of Robert III de La Marck's account of Novara 1513. According to Robert III de La Marck (Florange), only six of the 300-400 soldiers in the first rank of the pike formation he commanded survived, and victorious Swiss losses were equally severe. Florange himself lived to tell the tale because his father and some other men-at-arms charged into the infantry melee in order to save him. Florange's father found him literally "amongst the dead," with forty-six wounds. The claim that Swiss losses were just as bad is probably an overstatement, but it's still likely lots of the pikers in the front rank fell in the struggle. Harari notes that Florange probably saw more soldiers killed in a few minutes than Philip Caputo say in an entire year in the Vietnam War.

Hard-fought battles in antiquity (since that's the context of the initial question) appear to have had similar casualty rates. The winning side might still lose 5-10% killed. Just ask Pyrrhus of Epirus!
Benjamin H. Abbott wrote:
According to Robert III de La Marck (Florange), only six of the 300-400 soldiers in the first rank of the pike formation he commanded survived, and victorious Swiss losses were equally severe.

How many continued to fight after receiving mortal wounds? How many died after the fighting had finished? It can take hours or even days to die from a mortal wound. The majority of the people Robert assumed were dead could have been unconscious during the fight and died later.
Dan Howard wrote:
Benjamin H. Abbott wrote:
According to Robert III de La Marck (Florange), only six of the 300-400 soldiers in the first rank of the pike formation he commanded survived, and victorious Swiss losses were equally severe.

How many continued to fight after receiving mortal wounds? How many died after the fighting had finished? It can take hours or even days to die from a mortal wound. The majority of the people Robert assumed were dead could have been unconscious during the fight and died later.

Dan, I agreed with you for the most part, but isn't sending your opponent into coma or inducing paralysis essentially a functional death on the battlefield?
Philip Dyer wrote:
Dan, I agreed with you for the most part, but isn't sending your opponent into coma or inducing paralysis essentially a functional death on the battlefield?

Death is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is incapacitation.
Dan Howard wrote:
Philip Dyer wrote:
Dan, I agreed with you for the most part, but isn't sending your opponent into coma or inducing paralysis essentially a functional death on the battlefield?

Death is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is incapacitation.


I think you dropped a "strategically" somewhere, the difference between my own death and temporary incapacitate would matter a bit to me on a personal level ;)
As tactically combative function, death doesn't matter. But it can effective psychological weapon, to show to your enemies that you willing to go the extra mile, that facing you and your team could very much mean your ultimate demise. That the enemy doesn't even regard you as valuable enough as captives. That they willing to permanently put you down and walk over your corpses if necessary. Sorta like what the US message sent by dropping the A bomb on Japan, that they were willing to take the war to a new horrifying level.
While I can't comment on the medieval period, in 20th C European armies, it was generally more efficient to wound an enemy. Given modern morals..much energy will be expended in saving a wounded soldier. First of all you have stretcher bearers/medics on the actual field of combat, trying to get the soldier back to first aid points. Then you have to transport them to field hospitals and then back to more major hospitals. All this ties up valuable manpower that can't be used in actual combat roles. If a soldier is killed outright..it takes maybe one or two men, after the battle to bury them. So..from an practical view..wound the enemy so he can't fight, then lots of other men have to look after them, draining enemy resources. Cynical and callous ?? Yes..but effective.
Nobody has mentioned ransom either. It is a bit hard to ask someone about their family if they are dead.
I of course agree that incapacitation was the immediate goal in combat and that killing was irrelevant, but the techniques that facilitated quick incapcitation could also lead to rapid death. Blood loss, whether from thrusts or cuts, was a basic and prominent way to incapacitate opposing soldiers, and it was frequently fatal as well as incapacitating. Raimond de Fourquevaux, for exampled, wanted his idealized pikers turned targetiers to only thrust with their swords, aiming at the face, legs, or any other unarmored part. Stabbing people in the face and legs will lead to lethal blood loss and/or brain injury a significant amount of time. Sir John Smythe wanted his pikers to cut and/or thrust at the head/face with their swords while closing distance and then attempting to stab their opposing counterparts in the belly under their armor. Thrusts to belly wouldn't necessarily incapacitate swiftly, but could lead to sufficient blood loss in some cases.
I've been reading Comentarii De Bello Gallico now and it amazed me how often comments were made on how many people were wounded or exhausted from wounds. At one point Caesar moving into the fray bolstered the morale and made even those exhausted by wounds fight on and in another case it is remarked how less than one in ten men remained unwounded during a particular siege/attack on a camp. I suppose this is all confirmed by a few battlefield graves we found where a sizable minority had old combat wounds or descriptions of battle scarred soldiers, Henry V had a scar on his face and Charles the Bold had a large scar across his neck (and he missed a couple of teeth). What I am getting at is that it suddenly doesn't seem like a stretch to imagine half or even more than half of soldiers involved in melee combat received minor or major wounds.
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