<p>Wolf the Quarrelsome was an 11th century Irish warrior whow as known at the time as the biggest and most badass motherfucker on the known planet.&nbsp; Brother of the legendary Irish High King Brian Boru, Wolf's mother was killed by a viking raiding party while he was still young, allowing him to cultivate an unending hatred for everything viking-related.&nbsp; While Wolf honed his ability to crack peoples' heads open with a gigantic fucking axe and then turn their skulls into decorative wine goblets, Brian made a name for himself by uniting all the Irish peoples under one banner and standing up to the combined forces of viking jackasses across the island.&nbsp; See, back in the day Ireland was divided out into a shitload of little crappy kingdoms, pointless city-states, and other such garbage so Brian put together a bitchin-ass army, kicked the bejeezus out of his rival warlords and unified the country&nbsp;<a href="http://www.badassoftheweek.com/qin.html">Qin Shih Huangdi</a>-style, breaking the political hold the viking nations had over some of the Irish counties in the process.&nbsp; Well apparently not everyone in Ireland realized how totally sweet it was to be ruled by High King Brian Boru, so these jerks from the province of Leister decided to be complete dicks and revolt.&nbsp; In order to help them kick Irish ass they called in their BFFs, a horde of motherfucking bloodthirsty Viking pillagers.&nbsp; Approximately twenty billion hardcore Vikings, Scotsmen, Irishmen and other assorted Celtic and Gaelic warriors met at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 and immediately proceeded to start beating the fuck out of each other with swords, hammers, axes, fists, rocks, shields, cats, barbells, pitchforks, stun guns, shopping carts and whatever the hell else they managed to bring along with them.&nbsp; It was at this point in history that Wolf the Quarrelsome proved himself to be the most hardcore motherfucker in an arena filled with hardcore motherfuckers.</p>
<p>Now in order to fully appreciate the importance of his actions, let's examine Wolf the Quarrelsome from an historical perspective.&nbsp; First off, his fucking name is Wolf.&nbsp; You don't get a name like Wolf by being a seventy-pound nerd that gives himself a hernia trying to pick up a box of file folders (unless of course it's like an uninspired RPG handle or something, but even then you would never have the fucking balls to ask your friends to start referring to you as "Wolf" in your day-to-day life).&nbsp; Wolf is a serious fucking name.&nbsp; In the Viking histories his first name is translated as "Ulf", and as we all know Ulf is the sort of name that's reserved for guys who eat entire chickens in one sitting, drink their weight in beer, grow beards at the rate of one inch per hour, wail death metal on X-plorer guitars, play professional ice hockey and who are so ripped that every time they flex their shirt explodes and fly off.&nbsp; Ulf isn't a name, it's the gutteral sound that your enemies make when you punch them in the stomach with enough force to make Rocky Balboa cough up blood.&nbsp; As if "Ulf" isn't a badass enough name, his epithet is "The Quarrelsome" and you can be pretty fucking sure that you don't get an epithet like "the Quarrelsome" by taking shit like an overworked veterinary fecal analysis technitian.&nbsp; Quarrelsome by definition means that you fuck up motherfuckers who fuck with you, so we can assume that this guy was so good at putting bitches in their place that his name became synonymous with beating the shit out of people for little to no reason.&nbsp; That's badass.</p>
<p>In case you can't close your eyes and inherantly picture what a guy named "Wolf the Quarrelsome" would look like, we can learn a little more about Wolf by the description the Viking skalds give him in the epic&nbsp;<em>Njall's Saga</em>.&nbsp; They refer to him as "the greatest champion and warrior" of Brian Boru's army.&nbsp; Now Brian Boru's forces are comprised of hardcore motherfucking Scots, Irish, Celtic warriors, vikings, ninjas, pirates, zombies, red wizards, necromancers, samurais, United States Marines and Roman gladiators.&nbsp; For this guy to be singled out&nbsp;<em>by his enemies</em>&nbsp;as the biggest badass of this insane army, you have to imagine that he's even more hardcore than even the biggest, meanest, axe-swinging, Guiness-chugging, shillelagh-busting hooligan bastard rugby players you've ever seen.&nbsp; The guy probably drank beer by the keg and then went out into the woods to chop down trees with his crotch so he could whittle the ends into points with his teeth and hurl them at enemy castles.</p>
<p>Another thing that totally rocks about Wolf the Quarrelsome is that he only appears in history twice, and both times he's kicking ass.&nbsp; It's those folks that are shrouded in mystery who are often the most interesting, kind of like how&nbsp;<a href="http://www.badassoftheweek.com/snakeeyes.html">Snake Eyes</a>&nbsp;just shows up, kicks the shit out of everyone and goes home without speaking a word and everybody thinks he's the most awesome of all the G.I. Joes.&nbsp; Or how a lot of nerds used to think Boba Fett was totally fucking sweet until they learned his lame-ass backstory and he went from being "mysterious badass bounty hunter" to "Jango's curly-haired kid".&nbsp; That's how it is with Wolf.&nbsp; We never learn about his policy-making efforts.&nbsp; We don't know shit about his childhood, his girlfriend, his favorite color or what he liked to do in his spare time.&nbsp; When you read a history of his life, you only learn one thing - he kicked fucking asses.&nbsp; That's it.</p>
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<p>Wolf first shows up in history right at the beginning of the Battle of Clontarf.&nbsp; The main thrust of the Viking offensive was personally led by a hardcore&nbsp;<a href="http://www.badassoftheweek.com/skallagrimsson.html">Egil Skallagrimsson</a>&nbsp;motherfucker named Brodir of Man, a legendary hero reknowned for his strength and his badassitude.&nbsp; Brodir was one of those helmet-with-horns-on-it bastards with a giant fucking longaxe who started whipping Irish balls all over the place, driving Brian Boru's men back, when all of a sudden Wolf the Motherfucking Quarrelsome sought him out on the battlefield and engaged him in one-on-one combat.&nbsp; Brodir of Man took one shot at Wolf, Wolf sidestepped him and bashed him in the fucking face with his axe, knocking him to the ground.&nbsp; Brodir tried to scramble to his feet, but Wolf kicked him in the fucking chest, knocking him back down to the ground.&nbsp; Brodir got up a third time, brought up his shield and Wolf smacked him with a mighty axe blow that sent him tumbling down the side of a fucking hill.&nbsp; When Brodir got to his feet for the fourth time, the big bad viking warlord hero decided he'd had enough of getting his ass kicked by an obviously superior warrior and went running away like a little bitch.&nbsp; As Brodir ran towards safety, Wolf the Quarrelsome allegedly yelled, "JOGGING IS FOR GIRLS!!!".&nbsp; With Brodir of Man no longer leading the Viking army, Wolf the Quarrelsome almost single-handedly cut a swath of destruction through the enemy ranks, severing limbs and adding a nice glossy crimson sheen to his axe blade as Brian Boru's Irish forces began to rout the Leister foes.&nbsp; By the end of the day 6,000 viking warriors had been slain and the political power the Viking Kings held over Ireland was forever broken.</p>
<p>However, it wasn't all unicorns, rainbows, butterflies and giant piles of severed Viking heads for the Celtic warriors at Clontarf.&nbsp; You see, as Brodir of Man and his entourage of elite viking warriors were bravely running away from the serious asskicking Wolf the Quarrelsome had righteously laid upon them, by a sheer stroke of luck they came across the tent of Brian Boru.&nbsp; Now while Brian Boru was a pretty badass dude back in the day, at the time of the Battle of Clontarf he was like eighty years old or some shit.&nbsp; The vikings busted into his tent, caught him in the middle of his prayers, chopped his fucking head off, and ran off into the woods yelling about how awesome they were.&nbsp; About an hour later, Wolf the Quarrelsome returned to report victory and found the decapitated corpse of his older brother.&nbsp; This sent him into a fucking insane rage, and he swore vengeance on the man who had killed his brother and his King.&nbsp; He immediately put together a force of tough-as-shit celtic warriors and set out to fuck Brodir up, because as you can probably guess, medieval badasses with names like Wolf the Quarrelsome don't fuck around for one second when it comes to living for revenge.&nbsp; He and his men hunted the viking raiders down and engaged them in the most brutal hand-to-hand combat this side of the original&nbsp;<em>Mortal Kombat</em>.&nbsp; All of Brodir's men were slain, and Wolf took down Brodir himself with a badass judo shoulder throw followed by a punch to the throat.&nbsp; Then he cut open Brodir's stomach with a huge fucking axe, pulled out all of his entrails and tied them around a tree for some strange reason, causing Brodir to die a horrible and painful death.&nbsp; This is what happens when you mess with Wolf the Quarrelsome.&nbsp; You end up having your small intestines used as a sick-ass Halloween decoration.</p>
<p>Perhaps I'm over-glorifying a guy who really has very little place in history, but in my opinion Wolf the Quarrelsome is a totally underrated badass.&nbsp; He shows up, beats the shit out of a hardcore motherfucking viking army, bests their hero in single combat on two separate occasions, lives for revenge, and is tough enough to merit special mention from incredibly hardcore Icelandic warrior-poets as being the "greatest warrior and champion" on the field of battle.&nbsp; As far as I'm concerned that's pretty badass.</p>
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<td><span>Wolf the Quarrelsome turned then to meet him, and thrust at him thrice so hard that Brodir fell before him at each thrust,and was well-nigh not getting on his feet again; but as soon as ever he found his feet, he fled away into the wood at once.</span></td>
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<p><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;">Links:</span><br /><br /><a href="http://omacl.org/Njal/11part.html" target="blank">Njall's Saga, Part 11</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.doyle.com.au/battleclontarf.htm" target="blank">The Battle of Clontarf</a></p>