NorsePlay.

We're not exactly sure what specifically's going on in this bear-a-riffic illuminated illustration from the  Spiezer Chronik by Diebold Schilling. The 1484-85 CE manuscript is an early history of Bern, Switzerland, from the founding of the city to events that took place in the mid-15th century. To NorsePlay, this looks like a medieval stylization of a marching army of berserkers in full-on bear form. The flute & drumming bears leading could also make it a ritual procession  or dance . Given that Bern may be named for the bear, emblazoned the bear on its flag & coat of arms, installed a Bärengraben or bear pit as a municipal feature since 1857 CE, that the Swiss Plateau was overrun & settled in ancient times by the Germanic Alemanni & Burgundians staring in the 5th century CE and looking at that in tandem with Tacitus' earlier accounts of tribal elite warrior s in Germania , and the bears in the 6th–8th century CE Torslunda plates,...

Watching the processional Bear Dance in Comănești, Bacău County, Romania, doesn't strike one as just a winter parade to drive out evil spirits. The men & women dressed in actual bear pelts adorned with oversized red tassels dance to shamanistic skin drums, wood flutes & whistles, pausing at certain intervals to make a mysterious trilling noise , lead by a masked old man, and subject to a call/response chant, has all the earmarks of a ritual. With the Indo-European lingual taboo on the actual word for bear, the migrant Roma who inspired this tradition first using real bears, and the serious to fierce demeanor of the dancers, recalls the idea that the Berserker may have been a formal entranced dance that lead to a legendary invulnerability in battle , and that perhaps this dance could be a remnant of the Berserkergang state at work. #    #    # Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in  the Norse Lore when he picked up a co...