An inconvenient chief

There is little account of many of the Viking or Norse heavies out there in the universe (that is to say easily dug up on the Internet) but I did do some digging today and got caught up in the unique and frequently hilarious names and stories that ARE out there. The Viking sagas abound with what we expect; Viking longboats filled with red bearded brutes attacking pleasant farming villages.

One such heavy was a charming chap named Ivar Ragnarsson, or Ivar the Boneless. He was a Danish chieftain who earned his heavyweight reputation around 860-870AD by attacking East Anglia with some of his trusty relatives in what they called the Great Heathen Army. What marketing. Can you imagine what went through their minds when word got out that the "Great Heathen Army" just checked in at the pub and was about to go about knocking heads? The East Anglians quietly came to terms with Ivar.

This was a good idea. Ivar was considered to be what was called in Norse lore a "beserker", a member of a potent fighting squad within a Viking army that got crazy mad, out of control freaked out over the top wild before they went into battle. So the Great Heathen Army was staffed with beserkers. Makes you vomit thinking how tough these guys were. And oh yeah, just for fun, his brothers went by the names of Bjorn Ironside and Sigurd Snake in the Eye.

Here's the odd thing: His name, Ivar the Boneless. There are some scholars who suggest that he suffered from a rare disease where the leg bones were soft, and he was actually carried about from battle to battle.