Primitive Drug-Suckers

Comic Book Resources - CBR News - The Comic Wire:

"'The Wolfskin is a Viking-like warrior; 'wolfskin' was in fact one term for the famous 'berserker' warrior of Nordic antiquity. Like the 'warp-spasm' warriors of ancient Ireland, the berserkers were said to transform into animals, in some accounts, like werewolves. What it seems they did, of course, is to take psychoactive mushrooms, which drove them nuts.

'Historically, they were far from alone in the concept of getting out of their heads before battle; some eastern cultures would give their soldiers sugar, which sent them absolutely haywire, as humans just didn't eat that stuff at the time. And, of course, there were the hash-head killers of Hassan I Sabbah, the hashishin from whom we take the word 'assassin.'

'But never assume the Vikings were just primitive drug-suckers. They were treated as freaks by other cultures because they washed every day. They were literate, and good with languages. I lifted a lot from the period and put it into a fantasy context: an elite Northish soldier, a Wolfskin, walking south into temperate Europe - speaking several languages, having adopted elements of other cultures as his own, and yet somehow excommunicated from his people."