Thread by @jessnevins

So...is now a good time for a Twitter thread on the queerness at the heart of the Norse myths & belief system, or should I save it for another day?

Thread!, I guess, on, as I said, the queerness at the heart of the Norse myths & belief systems.

One doesn't think of the Vikings as the most gay-friendly of cultures. Certainly the various legal codes and cultural traditions punished queer folk for being queer.

....but.

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The position of gay Vikings (a term I'm using indiscriminately here) in Viking culture was a contradictory one. Gay sex was good, as long as it wasn't the bad kind of gay sex. Women were supposed to bear children and marry men, unless they preferred women to men.

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Being the penetrated partner in gay sex was bad, unless you weren't passive about it. Being a mannish woman was bad; being a manly woman was good. And so on.

Viking culture had homophobic epithets and gay relationships and lesbian weddings.

It also had queer gods.

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Now, the Viking gods--the Æsir and the Vanir--were not (with a couple of prominent exceptions) intended to be role models. (They were like the Greek pantheon of gods in that). They taught wisdom and morals, but didn't embody them, and it was a fool who imitated them.

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(Odin got his chosen warriors killed so that he could have their souls. Thor's thunder & lightning killed farmers and destroyed plants. Freyja was a cold-hearted manipulator and user of others. Loki, at least, didn't pretend to be trustworthy when he acted friendly).

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Nonetheless, humanity was supposed to learn from them and emulate them when they acted well. They were, after all, the gods--they expected regular sacrifices from men and women and children, they were the creators and protectors of humanity, etc.

Nothing too unexpected.

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But queerness was an inextricable, integral part of the Viking pantheons of gods, as we'll see, and while the Viking legal codes and cultural traditions were homophobic, they moral lessons the sagas & poems gave the Vikings were quite the opposite.

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How the Vikings understood this contradiction, and how they actually interacted with & felt about queer folks, is not known. (There's a lot we don't know about the Vikings). Presumably some reconciled themselves to the contradiction, and others didn't.

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Keep in mind: the gender imbalances in the Viking kingdoms could be intense. The polygamy of jarls and kings and the royal concubinage system meant that there was often a lack of single women for upper class males to marry.

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For free men--the karls (Viking society had three levels: jarls (leaders), karls (free men) and thralls (slaves))--the situation was worse. Unless a karl had property or wealth, women usually wouldn't marry them--so there were a lot of unmarried "bare sticks" floating around.
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For women, the situation was worse still. The death rate of husbands, whether through farming accidents or because they did while going raiding or trading, was very high--and a husband's wealth/property was a woman's only security in the Viking world.

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So one can see where queer relationships would happen both naturally & situationally.

There were no queer ongoing relationships among Norse and Vanir gods for queer Vikings to model themselves on--but there were plenty of moments in the myths that were recognizably queer.
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I'll start with the Vanir. They were essentially the Swedish counterparts to the Norse Æsir, and were uneasily incorporated into the Viking myths. In the myths, the Vanir were respected for their magical power, but seem as unwholesome because of their sexual practices.

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Which practices were they? Well...Njord (I should write it as "Njǫrðr" but I'll stick with the Anglicizations of the gods' names) is the Odin of the Vanir. His wife was his sister. Their children were the god Frey and the goddess Freyja...who hooked up with each other.

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In the myths, the Æsir distrust the Vanir because of the latter's incestual relationships, which were in some way associated with the magic the Vanir used. The Æsir and Vanir even fought a war for supremacy. It ended up a stalemate, however.

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Incest between brothers and sisters isn't queer. But there were the real life worshipers of the Vanir in Sweden, centered around the great temple to Frey in Uppsala.

And BOY were they queer! My goodness. The temple was the Provincetown/West Hollywood of Scandinavia.

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We only know a bit about what the worshipers did--the Christian historians & Victorian commenters totally clutched their pearls and refused to go into detail, and so never passed on what they knew. Lots of euphemisms and horrified allusions, little information.

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What we do know, though, about the ceremonies is this: massive orgies! Everyone cross-dressing! Statues of Frey bearing massive erections! Horse-penis sex toys for everyone! Plenty of sex tourists! Plenty of young men and women arrived in town just for the ceremonies!

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Men having sex with men, women having sex with women, groups having sex with each other on the floor of the temple...the temple in Uppsala was (in?)famous across northern Europe because of the ceremonies in honor of Frey, the King of the Vanir.

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This reputation rubbed off on the Vanir of the myths, so that in the sagas & poems you can see--if you look for them--glimpses, as if between cracks in the floorboards, of gay Frey and lesbian Freyja. Certainly the authors of the sagas & poems hold them at arm's length.

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Ostensibly the Norse gods, the Æsir, were all heterosexually married. But on closer examination the facade begins to fall apart.

Odin is the Allfather of the Æsir, the literal "father of the gods" and notoriously a skirt-chaser of the first degree. Odin would sex *anyone*.

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Odin is the mightiest warrior of the gods, the most masculine, the most manly. Being compared to Odin was a male compliment of the highest order. Being named Odin placed large expectations on a boy child.

Emphatically male, emphatically heterosexual. Right?

No, actually. 22/

See, Odin is also the master of magic, the most powerful magic-user of the Æsir. And that's where the complications begin, because for the Vikings magic was women's work.

Was. Women's. Work. Get it, pal?

Not what a man would take part in if he wanted to remain manly.

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In fact, a man who took part in magic was "ragr" (adj.) and "ergi" (noun), both terms meaning, roughly, a man who became a woman & became the passive partner in a sexual relationship with a man. Being called ragr/ergi was grounds, in the legal codes, for justified homicide.

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There's not a word in English that has as much homophobic power as "ragr" and "ergi" did for the Vikings. It was like the F word had a baby with the N word, the C word, and the K word, and that baby punched you in the groin every time it was used.

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The Vikings viewed those who were ragr/ergi with a peculiar moral horror--to be ragr/ergi was to transgress powerfully.

And yet here was Odin, most manly of the gods, not only using magic but being the "master of magic." It was never said directly, but Odin was ragr/ergi.

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Not only that, he was also a shapeshifter who changed his body into that of animals and, sometimes, women. And who dressed as a woman to further his plans. Changing ones body, dressing as a woman when you were a man--these were both major transgressions for the Vikings.

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Not only that, part two: Odin castrated himself, thereby rendering himself literally unmanly, and in proper shamanic tradition made himself into a third gender.

I'll asplain. Odin always wanted knowledge, and did anything to get it--and I do mean anything.

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We all know of men who'll use liquor to get sex. Odin would use sex to get knowledge.

The big knowledge Odin wanted, in the early days of the universe, was not available to him as he was. He would have to make an enormous sacrifice to get the knowledge he wanted.

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So Odin did just that: he sacrificed himself by hanging himself (possibly upside down) on Yggdrasill the World Tree. "I trow I hung on that windy Tree/nine whole days and nights."

That wasn't enough, though, so before he hung himself he stabbed himself with his spear.

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W.H. Auden has it as:

"Wounded I hung on a wind-swept gallows
For nine long nights,
Pierced by a spear, pledged to Odhinn,
Offered, myself to myself
The wisest know not from whence spring
The roots of that ancient rood."

Interesting thing about the spear wound.

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The original in the Havamal just has it as "geiri undaðr": "wounded with a spear." But centuries of Christianizing have left people with the impression that he stabbed himself in the side with the spear. You see the parallel with Jesus?

Big nope, though.

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I think it far more likely that Odin stabbed himself in the groin with the spear--to sacrifice his own genitals (what greater sacrifice for a Viking man?) and therefore to become physically more similar to women (who were, again, the masters of magic).

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In doing so he doesn't become a woman, but neither is he a man. He's third gender.

If this sounds shamanic, ding! You're right. The shamanic practices of the Sámi people of northern Norway/Sweden/Finland were an influence on the Vikings and their belief systems.

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So that's Odin--1 of the 3 creators of humanity at the dawn of time, and a queer god. ("Odin: A Queer God" is the name of like eighteen different papers I've read on this).

Who were the other two creators of humanity? #2: depends on who you ask. #3: none other than Loki.

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Loki is an oddity in the Viking pantheon. He has no portfolio, no function, no purpose. He transgresses everything that the Vikings & the Æsir held dear. He had no worshipers that we know of. He seems to be as much plot device as a god.

What was he doing creating humanity? 36/

From what scholars can tell, Loki's role evolved over time, and what might be his "original" self, the one worshiped centuries before the Viking Age (750-1066), was a sky god and as Odin's equal. (Even much later, Loki is still called Odin's "blood-brother").

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Side-note: no, Loki was not the god of fire. No, he wasn't. No! Stop that! 19th century translators confused "logi" ("fire") with "Loki". Loki was associated with spinning and with webs. One name he has is Loki Long-Legs, after the spider.

"But Jess," you wearily ask, "isn't spinning a woman's art in Viking culture? Why would male Loki be associated with that?"

Interesting coincidence, isn't it?

Or not a coincidence. Rather, something pointing toward Loki's real nature, which is fluid, including his gender.

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Like Odin, Loki was a shapeshifter. Only Loki did it a *lot*, always to further his plans. (I should probably start saying "their" rather than "his.") When a giant was threatening Asgard, home of the gods, Loki became a mare to distract the giant's stallion.

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It worked, and the giant ended up dying, but Loki had sex with the stallion and gave birth to Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged horse. (Sleipnir is all gray and has runes on all of his teeth, which I think is a neat touch).

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Oof--forgot to mention. Odin's sacrifice on the tree? Successful. But--most people interpret what he got from the sacrifice as "runes." But an alternative translation is "secrets." Meaning Odin didn't gain the power of runes, which weren't primarily magical for the Vikings.

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Back to Loki: not only did they give birth to Sleipnir, they gave birth to gods. See, Loki was as much of a playa as Odin, and they had affairs with erryone. And one result of those affairs was their children.

(Loki was pan).

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Loki wore women's clothing when it suited them. Loki was female, when it suited them. Loki had sex with women (including Sif, Thor's wife) and men.

Loki also let himself be castrated.

See...long story short, Loki needed to pacify a giantess who (justly) hated him.

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So, as a peace offering, his genitals are tied to those of a goat, and when they are pulled in separate directions, each gives a great yelp which makes the giantess laugh. Left implied is when the goat pulls Loki's junk completely off.

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Now, the preferred inscribed narrative of this story--what the story wants you to believe is the message of the story--is Loki's humiliation and figurative and literal emasculation.

Except that the story isn't the ending of Loki. There's an afterward, a later on.

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Later on Loki fathers three monster children with a giantess. Later on Loki, in the shape of a male god, has sex with most of the goddesses. Later on Loki is not treated as if he's ragr/ergi, even though the label certainly fits him. Later on Loki seems fine & not castrated.
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Dammit, I knew I forgot something about Odin.

The Vikings had "kennings," or poetic metaphors, to describe things. "Rain of spears" was a battle. "Swan of blood" was a raven. "Chariots of gold" were women. And so on.

The gods had kennings as well. Odin has 200+.

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Two of Odin's kennings are, for real, "gelding" and "hermaphrodite." Why? Nobody knows...unless my theory is right and he did castrated himself with his spear while he hung on the world tree Yggdrasill. But the Vikings definitely called the father of the gods "gelding."

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Back to Loki--I'll let Armann Jakobson, in "The Flexible Masculinity of Loki," say it:

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I promise I'll try not to go on that much longer. Just Thor and Freyja to cover.

Thor: ultra-masculine god. Big Dick Energy. Except that he gets symbolically castrated by a giant who steals his hammer, Mjolnir, and he panics. So--

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Loki comes up with a Brilliant Plan (tm): he and Thor will sneak into the giant's hall dressed as women--Thor dressed as Freyja, who will pretend to marry the giant, and Loki as Freyja's bridesmaid.

Of course Thor hates the plan. Not quite for the reasons you'd think, tho.

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Thor worries that the other gods will think him ragr/ergi for dressing as a woman. Thor does not, however, mind that the jewelry Loki puts on him accentuates the size of his breasts.

(Really!).

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In other words, Thor doesn't mind having some of the physical attributes of a woman, he just doesn't want the other gods to know that he dresses up as a woman.

(Thor gets his hammer back from the giant and kills *everything* as a way to regain his masculinity).

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(At) Lastly, there's Freyja. The most important Viking goddess. Like Odin's wife Frigg, Freyja is Odin's equal and feminine counterpart. Odin gets half of all dead Viking warriors? Freyja gets the other half, and all the dead Viking women warriors besides.

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Odin goes on quests to get magical knowledge? Freyja does the same. Odin hobnobs with giants to learn their wisdom? Freyja does the same. Odin teaches the gods magic? Guess who taught Odin magic? That's right, Freyja.

They're equals--only not really.

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Odin gets half the souls of the dead warriors--only Freyja gets first choice, and all the women warriors besides. (Fun note: Thor got all the dead thralls). Odin is ragr/ergi; Freyja shapeshifts as well as he and usually dresses as a man besides.

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Odin has sex with anyone if it will get him knowledge. Freyja has sex with everyone as part of her plans. When Odin was exiled from Asgard, it was Freyja who ruled.

Freyja, in other words, is more masculine than Odin--who is, remember, third gender.

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A couple of things about this:

- the parallelism between Odin & Freyja is, as best can be told, deliberate, and not a later revisionist interpretation.

- Freyja was seen as Odin's moral superior, despite being a Vanir. Why? Well--content warning for the next tweet.

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TW:

Odin was a rapist and violator of women, giantesses, etc. (Odin's an asshole, basically)

Freyja only cheated on her husband. HUGE difference for the Vikings. That's why Odin was exiled from Asgard, btw.

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- did Freyja have sex with women? Wooo yes. Dressed as a man during the seductions too, though never pretending to be a man, the way Odin dressed as a woman to pretended to be a woman.

Freyja was a bad ass--master of magic, war goddess, sexual thunderbolt, etc.

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So you can imagine how the Christianizers among the Vikings felt about her, and how men from Snorri Sturluson up until now have written about her: as a "slut," as an airhead blonde bombshell, as the intended victim of rape by giants, etc.

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Of all the Viking gods, Freyja was the most shamefully treated by sexist writers, academics, etc. Deliberately or not, they neglected her awesomeness & accomplishments and focused only on her sex life (I know--unprecedented!)--and even there got it wrong!

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For about 800 years men have been portraying her as an object to be lusted after, as a woman without agency, as a woman who needed protection. That's entirely wrong and neglects what was actually written about her. Freyja was *all* agency--she *owned* her sex life.

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Odin, Loki, Thor, Freyja--the Big Four of the Viking pantheon. All queer in various ways, and all worshiped as the Big Four of the pantheon by the Vikings. (Pre-Aesir Kings of the Gods--Frey & Tyr--were also queer, but they were secondary characters for the Vikings).

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That the Vikings were so strident in their laws & their stated customs about heteronormativity was, I think, only an ongoing, hysterical reaction to the queerness all around them in real life and which was an integral part of their belief system.

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Maybe all it would have taken was one good push from a king or one good open role model to get the Vikings to embrace and not reject the queerness at the heart of their beliefs?

Anyhow. Thanks for reading this far, everyone!

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PS. There was a lot wrong with the Vikings. I could tell you horrifying things about them. But I'd simply rather focus on the cool stuff.

I'm not ignoring the bad stuff--it's just not what people need to hear about now, I think.