The elite Viking warriors known as berserkers were infamous for their recklessness. Legend has it that they ploughed into combat in a trance-like state of fury, invulnerable to blades and incapable of telling friend from foe.
When the red mist lifted, they became weak and tame. Now a scientist believes he has uncovered the secret behind the rampage and subsequent come-down: they were high as kites on a potent hallucinogen known as “stinking nightshade”.
According to Karsten Fatur, an ethnobotanist at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, the plant is the best explanation for the berserkers’ “symptoms” — which may have also included a flushed face, hyperactivity and a tendency to strip naked in the heat of battle.
“They could have made tea from it,