It’s Frigg, so I don’t make any assumptions about what’s possible, probable, or even slightly likely. Actually, I don’t even try and predict her actions five minutes into the future.
This comic, and this strip in particular , has forced me to acknowledge a deeply unsettling truth: Frigg is my *husband*.
*gives husband a loooong suspicious look*
Although he’s probably a little more feminine.
Being a berserker doesn’t mean that you spend all of your time flailing and foaming at the mouth. It’s a style of fighting that can be called upon but is extremely dangerous to everyone around you (think PCP).
In fact, in 1015 Norway outlawed berserker fighters.
Well, there’s a theory that the Norse Berserkers may have taken drugs to get into their Berserker state, but I was refering more to the fact that people on PCP can go on crazy ramages and beat on things relentlessly because they feel no pain.
I used to do that when I got drunk… and also after kung fu classes when sober (but so pumped on adrenaline that I didn’t really give a damn about pain).
That was long ago though.
That theory’s got some decent legs as far as I know. Classic recipe for breaking a spear wall was to find the biggest dude around, get him liquored up, and throw him at the lines. Step two really shines when you realize that actually having the guy kill anyone is less important than him knocking over a few spearmen and having something to stand on that isn’t sharp.
I see you know as much about the berserk-theory as anyone else does: Almost nothing. From norse stories it seems more like they were just what a pawn would be for chess. But since it also seems like the linguists involved had certain ideological backgrounds and were reading the texts as they pleased (as you may read here, I do the same) it is very hard to say what they really were. I’d say they were choleric men with the believe to be able to obtain the power and spirit of wolves by wearing their furs. But it is – as any other interpretation of partly over 1200 year old texts – just a guess.
People are now thinking that berserkers are mostly the product of epic poems, anyway. But going back to the practicality of berserker rage in this sort of setting- you don’t want someone flipping their shit in a closed space when they should be working on a specific task.
yes, there is a time and place for flipping out, in waist-deep water with only allies around is not that place. “There is no problem that cannot be solved with gratuitous amounts of fire. If you feel the problem has not yet been solved, it clearly needs more fire.” -nobody ever
This comic is great. It reminds me of so many of the campaigns my friends go through.. only you know.. with a lasting quality. Most of the games involve pithy characters that drive the GM crazy and end the game. Needless to say.. I love what you’re doing here and I think the berserker is my favorite.
From what I recall about ancient literature and the description of the berserkers, they were men who wore not much more than the pelts of one or two animals, chowed down on some psychotropic mushrooms and ran screaming, half naked, into battle. On top of expendability you have the fact that yes, they’re likely to take down a few people on their way (PCP!), but can you imagine a good forty to a hundred of these guys jogging down a hill screaming bloody murder, manhood flapping in the breeze while six or seven club twenty of your closest friends to death?
I believe the name is actually a direct line of muddying anglicization that came from it’s different parts ber and serker, but I can’t recall the originals.
Ber – bear. Sark – shirt. “Bearshirts”, in that they wore bearhide and supposedly gained its powers. c.f. “Wulfsark”, wolfshirts, who supposedly could change into wolves i.e werewolves.
I only see a Star Wars reference from Gravedust Deserthammer…. :( That said he happens to be my favorite character; the berserker coming in a close second.
Not to discredit anyone’s theory but when it comes to opinions vs. Facts; especially when not much is known as fact; more than one person has had an ‘idea’ on how things should be/were; take the dinosaurs for example.
At first we believed them to be giant monsters. Then we pictured them as dragons. Finally we said oh, they weren’t dragons; and proceeded to missassemble the bone structure. A decade or so after that we reread our clues to how the bones go together and realized we need to reassemble the dinosaur bones correctly.
Fact: We don’t know many of the facts about berserkers. Fact: All we have are rough explanations by a small group people who find small hints as to what they were by looking at very very very old and run down objects. Fact: What they find was most likely created by the victors of the battles the berserkers were involved in. Fact: The berserker as we see it today is a warrior who was immune to pain, and charged onto the battlefield, frothing and screaming, to maim, kill, injure, and scare the enemy, and occasionally, on accident, his allies.
Conclusive theory: We don’t know jack about the subject, and it could all be lies and propaganda anyways. And thats enough of that.
This is one of the best webcomics I’ve seen in awhile. The art is almost impossibly great for the fact the site gets updated frequently and ON TIME. Then the writing is, well, awesome and hilarious… and the characters are actually interesting, with Bryon and Frigg being my favorites by far.
Also, I haven’t seen Home Alone since… what year is it? So, yeah, no extra joke for me. One last thing… “SMUG!” Hoory for un-sound effects!
i don’t know about 50 billion years ago, but i like my rage powers…. makes car windows feel thin ice and ribs feel kinda, i don’t know, comfortable is pretty close, at least till the day after.keep it under a minute or two & you wont even get sleepy or hurt your friends. yeah, friday was weird.
Fact: Swedish word for going berserk is Bärsärkargång. Fact: I wish you could do lineage research back to the viking era (actual era in Swedish history) and find that berserkers existed and were among my ancestors.
Okay, I now love Byron to peices. I liked him before, but now I really love him. He has true heart. He knows his team, he trusts them implicitly….this guy is so a ‘Father to his Men’ type.
Discussion (63) ¬
Haha, The “smug” killed me on this page, so awesome!
The Home Alone joke sadly took me all too long to figure out. Touche.
I ain’t figured it out yet, and I saw that movie twenty billion times.
I really love this comic more with every strip. It’s wonderful!
Home alone? So give, already.
Yeah, I have no idea what the joke is.
Well I’m not telling you either.
Devious!
You rang?
Okay, Devious! Don’t move!
Took me a while but I think I got it.
I’m denser than lead and if I figured it out you’ve got no excuse.
I think most of us haven’t seen Home Alone since we were seven, and if I’m going to put on a John Hughes movie now I would pick a better one.
Never got into the Home ALone series, so whatever the joke is it’s totally over my head.
Poor, Frigg, always doing things the hard way.
Frigg! Stop trying to take yourself out of the gene pool! We need your crazy for future generations!
Could you see her settling down and having kids? EVER?
I can see her reproducing by accident. Who says you have to settle down to make babies?
A very active lifestyle like that one leads to miscarriage.
Point well made!
Well, I’m sure SOMEONE would care enough to restrain her, perhaps the poor man she’d broken?
Ohay guys what are we talking about in this thre-
:|
Yepp… Im with Phil on this one… :l
She just needs to be impregnated by someone made of sterner stuff. Someone whose genes see miscarriage as a challenge.
Someone like…Gravedust?
Chuck Norris : 3
Yes. Yes, i see that in my heart almost everytime i read this comic.
I hope you’re underestimating how charming I can be.
And i hope there’s a Frigg out there for me somewhere in the real world *sigh*
It’s Frigg, so I don’t make any assumptions about what’s possible, probable, or even slightly likely. Actually, I don’t even try and predict her actions five minutes into the future.
Non-standard sound and sight effects, removing any doubt the reader has about a character’s expression since 1979.
Go figure Frigg has to go and finish something she starts.
This comic, and this strip in particular , has forced me to acknowledge a deeply unsettling truth: Frigg is my *husband*.
*gives husband a loooong suspicious look*
Although he’s probably a little more feminine.
For a berseker, that man is very calm and collected. He doesn’t solve nearly enough problems with screaming and bloodshed.
Which reminds me of that one Final Fantasy game were you FIGHT A WALL. So don’t you tell me it can’t be done.
Being a berserker doesn’t mean that you spend all of your time flailing and foaming at the mouth. It’s a style of fighting that can be called upon but is extremely dangerous to everyone around you (think PCP).
In fact, in 1015 Norway outlawed berserker fighters.
Because of the drugs? :)
Well, there’s a theory that the Norse Berserkers may have taken drugs to get into their Berserker state, but I was refering more to the fact that people on PCP can go on crazy ramages and beat on things relentlessly because they feel no pain.
I used to do that when I got drunk… and also after kung fu classes when sober (but so pumped on adrenaline that I didn’t really give a damn about pain).
That was long ago though.
That theory’s got some decent legs as far as I know. Classic recipe for breaking a spear wall was to find the biggest dude around, get him liquored up, and throw him at the lines. Step two really shines when you realize that actually having the guy kill anyone is less important than him knocking over a few spearmen and having something to stand on that isn’t sharp.
I see you know as much about the berserk-theory as anyone else does: Almost nothing. From norse stories it seems more like they were just what a pawn would be for chess. But since it also seems like the linguists involved had certain ideological backgrounds and were reading the texts as they pleased (as you may read here, I do the same) it is very hard to say what they really were. I’d say they were choleric men with the believe to be able to obtain the power and spirit of wolves by wearing their furs. But it is – as any other interpretation of partly over 1200 year old texts – just a guess.
People are now thinking that berserkers are mostly the product of epic poems, anyway. But going back to the practicality of berserker rage in this sort of setting- you don’t want someone flipping their shit in a closed space when they should be working on a specific task.
yes, there is a time and place for flipping out, in waist-deep water with only allies around is not that place. “There is no problem that cannot be solved with gratuitous amounts of fire. If you feel the problem has not yet been solved, it clearly needs more fire.” -nobody ever
Bears, not wolves. Berserker comes from Bear-sark, the skin/pelt of the bear that they wore
Good point; I guess we just take what resonates most with us.
This comic is great. It reminds me of so many of the campaigns my friends go through.. only you know.. with a lasting quality. Most of the games involve pithy characters that drive the GM crazy and end the game. Needless to say.. I love what you’re doing here and I think the berserker is my favorite.
I ‘think’ I get the joke but I rather wait for confirmation than post the wrong punch line and kill a joke.
Another fan of the berserker, just goes to show you that the guy with the axe is usually right (why I always keep my hatchet handy)
From what I recall about ancient literature and the description of the berserkers, they were men who wore not much more than the pelts of one or two animals, chowed down on some psychotropic mushrooms and ran screaming, half naked, into battle. On top of expendability you have the fact that yes, they’re likely to take down a few people on their way (PCP!), but can you imagine a good forty to a hundred of these guys jogging down a hill screaming bloody murder, manhood flapping in the breeze while six or seven club twenty of your closest friends to death?
I believe the name is actually a direct line of muddying anglicization that came from it’s different parts ber and serker, but I can’t recall the originals.
Ber – bear. Sark – shirt. “Bearshirts”, in that they wore bearhide and supposedly gained its powers. c.f. “Wulfsark”, wolfshirts, who supposedly could change into wolves i.e werewolves.
I only see a Star Wars reference from Gravedust Deserthammer…. :( That said he happens to be my favorite character; the berserker coming in a close second.
Not to discredit anyone’s theory but when it comes to opinions vs. Facts; especially when not much is known as fact; more than one person has had an ‘idea’ on how things should be/were; take the dinosaurs for example.
At first we believed them to be giant monsters. Then we pictured them as dragons. Finally we said oh, they weren’t dragons; and proceeded to missassemble the bone structure. A decade or so after that we reread our clues to how the bones go together and realized we need to reassemble the dinosaur bones correctly.
I think everyone’s been very careful about saying that their ideas on the subject are theories.
“Theory” is stone-cold fact as far as science is concerned.
“Hypothesis” is a bit softer.
Fact: We don’t know many of the facts about berserkers. Fact: All we have are rough explanations by a small group people who find small hints as to what they were by looking at very very very old and run down objects. Fact: What they find was most likely created by the victors of the battles the berserkers were involved in. Fact: The berserker as we see it today is a warrior who was immune to pain, and charged onto the battlefield, frothing and screaming, to maim, kill, injure, and scare the enemy, and occasionally, on accident, his allies.
Conclusive theory: We don’t know jack about the subject, and it could all be lies and propaganda anyways. And thats enough of that.
This is one of the best webcomics I’ve seen in awhile. The art is almost impossibly great for the fact the site gets updated frequently and ON TIME. Then the writing is, well, awesome and hilarious… and the characters are actually interesting, with Bryon and Frigg being my favorites by far.
Also, I haven’t seen Home Alone since… what year is it? So, yeah, no extra joke for me. One last thing… “SMUG!” Hoory for un-sound effects!
i don’t know about 50 billion years ago, but i like my rage powers…. makes car windows feel thin ice and ribs feel kinda, i don’t know, comfortable is pretty close, at least till the day after.keep it under a minute or two & you wont even get sleepy or hurt your friends. yeah, friday was weird.
Fact: Swedish word for going berserk is Bärsärkargång. Fact: I wish you could do lineage research back to the viking era (actual era in Swedish history) and find that berserkers existed and were among my ancestors.
If you have to consult the charmap to type it, the comment system IS going to mangle it.
I think “smug!” should become a verb. =D
No idea what the hidden joke could be, but that sure is one wet Bandit that Syr’Nj is carrying there.
Beautifully accurate and yet semi-cryptic. Bravo
Home Alone aside, it’s interesting that Byron claims to know them all. Could that be some sort of sepia-world residue in his mind…?
What does “more willowy than Keynes” mean?
Okay, I now love Byron to peices. I liked him before, but now I really love him. He has true heart. He knows his team, he trusts them implicitly….this guy is so a ‘Father to his Men’ type.