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256 KELiaiOlf CflP teE NOfiTHMEU.
The Berserks had another name given them by
our forefathers, viz.: hamramir menn, and their
madness was at ha/mast. These expressions' denote
the idea of the ancients concerning the nature of
the Berserksgang. The Old-Norse word hamr sig-
nifies external form, disguise or semblancg. Some-
times it was also used to denote the animal-fylgia or
attendant spirit, which was believed to accompany
every human being invisibly, as a kind of inferior
guardian spirit.* The animal-fylgia (d^r-fylgja), as
before said, expressed, in a certain manner, the
character of the person whom it attended. Cruel,
passionate men were thus believed to have ferocious
wild-beasts as their fylgias. When their passion
overpowered them to such a degree that it made
them raving and deprived them of the use of reason,
it was believed that the beast stepped up in the
place of the man, that it entered the outward form
of the man but acted with its own peculiar strength
and unruliness. It was, therefore, said of one thus
possessed by the Berserksgang, that he was not
single or one-formed (ekki einhamr), *. e., that
another, stronger being acted in . his human form.
The superstition in this matter sometimes went even
so far that they believed the man, in the moment
of madness, to assume the outward form of the
animal, as well as its internal nature and its
strength.
Warlike chieftains endeavored to attract the
Berserks to their armies, in order to render them-
* Chap. 18.