Berserkers: Revisiting Michael Crichton’s “Eaters of the Dead”

… Maybe Sir Bedivere wasn't so “courtly,” after all? The “knights” in King Arthur’s Court actually originated from a much earlier, much “darker” time and place. Theirs was not the fairy castle with gilded towers, swans floating by in the dark blue moat below. No steel-clad soldiers in shining armor, here.

Arthur’s knights were much likelier to have been barbaric warriors along the lines of Braveheart. Some still used clubs: a weapon straight out of the Stone Age. Their fortresses would have matched up well, too, with Braveheart’s forts: small, wooden, and bristling with spikes called peels. The Roman castles in the fifth century were falling into ruin, and no one had enough men to man all of them anyway. But the frontier hillforts, the province of small, local chieftains, survived. At least, for a while.

So, rather than the handsome Sir Bedivere of French romance, we are confronted with a savage man, probably part-Pictish, who fought like a demon in battle and, as a consequence, was left with only one arm…