Prior to the twentieth century the densest concentration of human beings was almost certainly found in Asian cities. (except Rome and I’m coming to Rome later) When too many people got in your way you armed yourself with a panga or a kris and went out to cut some throats. It didn’t matter if you were educated in their use or not-the people you came up against were in their normal frame of reference and died. You were in the berserk frame of reference. Background: the berserkers developed from communities who for a large part of the year sat on their asses in Norwegian fjordal valleys with an unclimbable mountain range on each side, a lid of horrible grey cloud on top, and you couldn’t get away by sea either because of the winter storms. — Chad C. Mulligan