Similar enterprises were undertaken later among the Franks and Goths. An
ancient common Germanic word for the war-band was druhti-, Frankish
Latindructis, Old High German truht, etc.^3 The Irish equivalent is the fían,
which Kim McCone has described as ‘an independent organization of pre-
dominantly landless, unmarried, unsettled and young men given to hunting,
warfare, and sexual licence in the wilds outside the túath [tribe, people], upon
which it made claims... to sustenance and hospitality and for which it might
perform elementary police or military services where relations were not
strained by hostility’.^4
A more widely attested word for ‘war-band’ or ‘army’ was korios, repre-
sented in Germanic harja- (modern German Heer), Middle Irish cuire,
Lithuanian kãrias ‘army’, and in such personal names as Macedonian
Κο ́ ρραγο, Thessalian Κορρμαχο, Μενκορρο. The Gaulish tribes
Tricorii and Petrucorii were presumably formed from alliances of respectively
three and four roving war-bands. The addition of the suffix -nos, which we
met in Chapter 3 in connection with certain gods’ names, produced *kor i
̃
onos
‘leader of the war-band’, from which came Greek κορανο, Old Norse
Herjan (as a name of Odin), and the British tribal name Coriono-totae (CIL
vii. 481, Hexham).^5 There is no clear representative of this lexical group in
Indo-Iranian, but it was evidently pan-European.
The war-band, especially in the Celtic and Germanic areas, sometimes
had a wild and frenzied character. The Nordic berserkir were systematic
practitioners of battle fury, of ‘going berserk’ (berserksgangr). The word
ber-serkr is traditionally explained as meaning ‘bear-shirted’, but Kim
McCone has argued on philological and other grounds for ‘bare-shirted’, with
reference to the fervid warrior’s practice of fighting without armour, either
lightly clad or naked.^6 Tacitus writes that the Germans mostly fight nudi aut
sagulo leues (Germ. 6. 1). Other ancient authors tell of Celtic warrior groups
that in their pride and valour disdained trousers and plaids and fought naked
(^3) On this word and its cognates, and the Germanic war-band generally, see D. H. Green
(1998), 107–12, 136 f.; M. J. Enright, JIES 32 (2004), 216–21.
(^4) Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 12 (1986), 13; cf. McCone (1990), 203–11; Dooley–Roe
(1999), xi–xiv.
(^5) Perhaps Old Phrygian kuryaneyon (W-01c) =κοιρανων? Cf. Krahe (1955–64), i. 57,
63; Mayer (1957–9), ii. 66 f., 182; Benveniste (1973), 91–4; K. McCone in Meid (1987), 115;
Gamkrelidze–Ivanov (1995), 644; EIEC 30 f.; D. H. Green (1998), 84–6.
(^6) K. McCone in Meid (1987), 106. Cf. Ynglinga saga 6, ‘(Odin’s men) used to go without
breastplates, furious as dogs or wolves, biting their shields, strong as bears or bulls; they slew
men, and neither fire nor sword could injure them –– this was called berserksgangr’; Saxo 5. 3. 9 p.
115, 7. 2. 7 p. 185, 7. 2. 11 p. 186; de Vries (1956), i. 454, 493; ii. 94, 97 f.; Davidson (1964), 66–9;
(1979–80), ii. 76 f., 110, 111; (1988), 79–81; Puhvel (1987), 196.
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