The Bear Legend

The berserkers do not constitute a separate clan in terms of blood or lineage. They are instead a family forged by warriors who have heard the "call of the bear" and answered it by abandoning their loved ones and joining the community of mountain dwellers.

Not every man who seeks to join it is accepted into the brotherhood: the candidates must first pass difficult trials which usually end in their death. The last trial is the hardest. It is called the "Trial of the Bear's Triumph," but few outside the brotherhood have ever witnessed it and none know what those who undergo it must endure.

Quite curiously, the inhabitants of Skellige themselves know very little about the berserkers, or "vildkaarls," as they call them. They do not like to talk about these man-bears, not with outsiders and not even amongst themselves.