Bears in religion

In the Old Norse written corpus, berserkers () were Scandinavian warriors who were said to have fought in a trance-like fury, a characteristic which later gave rise to the modern English adjective berserk . Berserkers are attested to in numerous Old Norse sources.

religious practice in North Eurasian ethnic religions

In Inuit religion, Nanook (; , ) was the master of bears, meaning he decided if hunters deserved success in finding and hunting bears and punished violations of taboos. The word was popularized by Nanook of the North, the first feature-length documentary.

, sometimes written as is an Ainu ceremony of Hokkaido and Sakhalin in which a hand-raised brown bear cub is ceremonially killed, under the notion that the soul merely returns to its god-world (). The physical body of the bear god is considered merely to be his "disguise" (), and the pelt and meat harvested are accepted as gifts that the god has left in gratitude for the ceremonious hospitality it received.