Fire Born series: You don’t have to be mad to berserk here – but it helps
The Fire Born series is now complete. And, as the dust settles on my epic five-book Viking saga of bears, berserkers and battle, I thought I would reflect on . . . well, what the hell it was all about. I often find, and maybe all creatives do this, that a submerged part of my mind, a part that I am not wholly in control of, is in the driving seat when it comes to my characters and their actions. Sure, I roughly plan out a story. But the themes and moods and underlying psychology of the novel all spring from my sub-conscious. And I think that the Fire Born series, which began with The Last Berserker, in 2021, is actually about madness.
There may be SPOILERS ahead, so if you haven’t read any of the books yet. Stop reading this blog and grab a copy of The Last Berserker (Fire Born 1) and get stuck into the gripping first volume of the series. But if you are still here, this is my take on the main themes and underlying meaning of the five books.
The Last Berserker
Bjarki Bloodhand and Tor Hildarsdottir both desperately want to become berserkers. These terrifyingly frenzied fighters (who really existed) are the elite warriors of their late 8th-century North European world, the Special Forces of their day. In order to become a berserker (or a Fire Born as I call them), you have to go through a series of tests and ordeals, but most importantly you have to invite the spirit of a wild animal (a bear, wolf or boar) called a gandr to possess you.
Basically, I am describing becoming a berserker as Dark Ages spirit possession, a phenomenon which is recognised in the Bible and is still practised today in many parts of the world – from Christian Baptists meetings in the Deep South to Hindu temple dancers in South East Asia. It is, in my view, a kind of socially sanctioned madness. Spirit possession does something to the mind, something not fully understood, that alters the perceptions of the possessed. They behave oddly, sometimes seeming to harm themselves without feeling pain – being bitten by snakes, for example, for walking on red-hot coals.
SPOILERS: Bjarki manages to become a berserker in Book 1. Tor, to her initial regret, does not. And thus begins Bjarki’s long descent into madness, witnessed by his beloved sister Tor.
The Saxon Wolf
Bjarki soon realises that being a berserker, with all that enormous destructive power in battle, is not actually wholly desirable. He cannot control what he does in his berserk state (in which he has enhanced strength and ferocity). I was thinking about the Hulk, when I was writing this. A berserker sometimes goes completely crazy and kills everyone round him, even people he loves. Bjarki nearly kills Tor and does actually kill his girlfriend at the end of The Saxon Wolf. He feels deeply, almost suicidally, ashamed of this, even though it is not his fault. He was not in control of his actions. He was spiritually possessed.
The Loki Sword
Bjarki seeks to rid himself of his gandr (the spirit of a mother bear) in beginning of The Loki Sword – he sees the she-bear as evil, and she certainly is bloodthirsty – and he seems to manage this exorcism successfully. He has an antagonistic relationship with the gandr, which is resolved in the end of the book when the gandr helps Bjarki survive a battle (and triumph) and Bjarki returns the favour and saves the mother bear’s real live cub from a huntsman’s trap. They now get on well – but Bjarki is spending more and more time in the Spirit Realm meeting the bear gandr and talking to her. He is slowly going mad. This is not revealed in the book but there is no Spirit Realm, no bear gandr. It’s all happening in Bjarki’s head.
King of the North
Bjarki seems to be getting better. The gandr is quiet most of the time, and when Bjarki does unleash her, in a rescue of a Saxon princess, it is a pretty well controlled. The bear cub has grown up by now and is a tame but ferocious companion of Tor’s. Bjarki is till having conversations in his head with the she-bear. However, when the bear cub is killed in battle, the she-bear asks Bjarki to save him by allowing his spirt to enter him as a gandr. At the end of King of the North, Bjarki is possessed by TWO wild animal spirits.
Blood of the Bear
In the final book in there series, Blood of the Bear, Bjarki’s slide into madness is apparently accelerated by a “magical” attack. One of his enemies uses seithr, Viking sorcery, to send him mad and over the course of the book he becomes more and more mentally ill and disassociated with the real world. He still continues to play his role as an elite, respected warrior, but in the final battle, when he goes berserk for the last time in one great, glorious bloodletting, he finally succumbs to his growing madness and is killed.
So, I now realise, the Fire Born series is a tragedy. Maybe it’s not quite King Lear, but it is the story of an ordinary man who tries to achieve greatness and by achieving it dooms himself to madness and death. My daughter Emma asked me at dinner the other day, why my books are always so sad. And to be honest I couldn’t find a good answer. Maybe because sad stories are more moving. Maybe it is just because life is tragedy. All lives, even the most glorious and successful, end in death. And Bjarki’s life was indeed glorious – and he was happy for a time, too. He pursued his dream and achieved it, which is something.
The Last Berserker (Fire Born 1) – along with the other four books in the Fire Born series – is available as an eBook, paperback and audio book from Amazon and other retailers. (Just £1.99p. And it’s not all doom and gloom – I promise – there are funny bits, too, and some extremely exciting, if gory, battles!)
Thanks for this reflection on this series. I enjoyed Fire Born tremendously, but at the end of each novel, did feel the sadness you’ve noted. Not only because I knew it would be many months until the next one but, as you remind us, every tale of humanity ends the same. Even so, Bjarki’s adventures, struggles with his berserker spirits, and courage as he fought enemies internal and external, more than sustained this saga. The ambiguity in many cultures, including Bjarki’s and our own, between spiritual and physical realms, mental health and conditions of the soul, and for writers the conscious and the unconscious, are questions that can never be resolved entirely, but I appreciated the historical and fictional context in which you presented these for our consideration.
Thank you, Wayne. That is very insightful. And thank you for reading the books and for your many kind reviews. I hope you will continue to enjoy my books for many years. All the best, Angus
The tragedy assumption is an interesting one, but I’m not sure I entirely agree. This was an age where a long life was rare and, for a warrior even less likely.
so, “gritty, bloody and realistic” would be my summary!
I’ll take that! Thank you, Nick