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Introduction: Homosexuality and Gender-Bending in the Viking Age

After the introduction of Christianity in Scandinavia (early 11th century AD), laws were passed that may
have forbidden same-sex couples from living together like married couples. To be more exact, there was
no exact law against homosexual relations or co-living as such, but rather a rule that outlawed
homosexuality and homosexual relationships as a valid reason to refuse offers of heterosexual marriage.
As any historian knows, laws against a phenomenon strongly indicates that the phenomenon was known
and practiced before the law was introduced. Thus it is likely that homosexual couples were known and
that some may actually have lived together before the Conversion, in Pagan Scandinavia, or at least
refused to marry hetereosexually for those reasons.
No records of lesbians are known to us, but in the penalising legal texts they are at least described by a
native term: flannfluga ( she who flees the penis). No other term is known that describes
lesbians, probably because they are not mentioned in the post-conversion texts that we are left with. Male
homosexuals were in the legal texts correspondingly called fuflogi (he who flees the vagina). No laws
were enacted against homosexual relations except the one that prohibited them from refusing
heterosexual marriage because of a homosexual relationship.
However, many laws were passed against the offense of calling other men by terms that indicated passive
homosexuality (to be the penetrated part in the relation). These terms were negative and were all directed
at the shameful unmanliness of men who allowed other men to penetrate them. No shame whatsoever
was attached to being the active part, so dominating gay men could freely engage in all the activities they
wanted provided they found another male who was willing to risk his reputation, or who, as we shall see,
belonged to the sacred queer category (more on that later). To tease someone about this was, after the
introduction of Christianity, penalised by law.
We could stop here and wonder if these laws were actual laws against harassment of feminine gay men!
But this is probably inaccurate. These laws were passed from within a Medieval Christian context trying to
deal with the Scandinavian culture of the time. The Church introduced several laws that were designed to
avoid the blood feuds that had ridden the Pagan era like a plague. Blood feuds often began with insults. It
is thus very probable that the insinuation of passive homosexuality in a man was considered a great insult
also during the Pagan Viking Age.
That unmanliness was attached to being the passive part in a homosexual relation was thus probably also
true of the Pagan era that preceded these laws. The average Viking Age warrior would be very conscious
about preserving his masculinity and would feel uncomfortable and insulted if he was teased about
unmanliness, which would include cowardice, fearfulness, physically harming women, or being the
passive part during homosexual intercourse. Before laws were enacted against such teasing, he would
likely resort to violence and manslaughter if he became the object of such teasing from someone he could
reach, and/or a blood feud could have begun as a result.
When I first mentioned this subject in one of my videos (where I talked about the myth of crossdressing
Thor), someone objected, saying that it was impossible to imagine the fierce, manly, warrior Vikings having
homosexual relations. Apart from the obvious fact that the total absense of homosexuality in any society is
an impossibility, seeing as it naturally occurs everywhere, homosexuals making up a considerable minority
of the population in all cultures whether the culture approve of them or not, the statement shows a lack of
historical insight. I would like to use the movie 300 about the last stand of king Leonidas the Spartan
king and his 300 fierce Spartan warriors to illustrate my point. I was very amused when I watched this
entertaining movie and king Leonidas jokingly accuses the Athenians of being soft boy lovers.
The Athenians certainly idealized the sexual relationship between grown men and young boys in their
puberty, but what the movie completely failed to add is the fact that the fierce warlike Spartans not only
idealized it, but actually institutionalized it. A young Spartan warrior-to-be would be taken as an apprentice
to an older warrior in order to learn the arts of being a man, which included warriorship but also sex with
the older man. The manliness, warlikeness and the fierceness of these people was in their eyes
completely compatible with homosexual relations, although to be the passive partner was not suitable for a
grown man.

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In warlike, conquering Rome, homosexuality was likewise completely accepted, although a grown Roman
male should not submit to being penetrated. He could, however, freely and without shame penetrate
foreigners, young boys, and slaves. I use these examples to demonstrate that modern views on
homosexuality were different in ancient times, and that the Old Norse attitudes may be remnants of a
largely common attitude in European cultures in ancient times that were only eradicated and outlawed by
the Church. Female homosexuality in these cultures was also completely unproblematic as such, or to be
more exact, it was ignored. The only restrictions placed on homosexuals in these cultures were the fact
that they would have to agree to heterosexual marriage and that males could be ridiculed if they were
known to be passive partners.
The written material and the archaeological records
shows us that then, as now, there were people who
defied the ordinary gender stereotypes of their time.
In short, during the Viking Age, there were men who
did not mind being called unmanly, and who would
not even be teased about it, because although they
might have been considered queer (unusual), they
belonged to a sacred category, what I would call
a sacred queer category. Ragnvald Rettilbeini, the
son of Harald Hrfagri, was a seimar a sorcerer,
and although no record of unmanly behavior are
known to us, his nickname rettilbeini could actually
mean feminine legs or welcoming legs (in a
passive, sexual way).
Another word for a male sorcerer was seiberenr,
which literally translates as magical womb.
Archaeology has shown that biological males were sometimes buried with typical female gear and female
dress in Scandinavia. Some biological females, likewise, were buried with masculine gear. These queer
burials always belong to people who were obviously associated with magic. They were also buried with all
honours. We are getting a glimpse of a society that, despite a strong male-female polarity, actually
accepted and even honoured gender-benders of both sexes, and that they associated them with magic
and sorcery, which were sacred arts during the Pagan era.

file(s) you want in return, I will send

you my one or more of my translations
of: 1)Voluspa - THE DIVINATION OF
THE WITCH (min.10 dollars)
2)Grottesongr - THE SONG OF THE
MILLSTONE OF FATE (min 5 dollars)
3)Allvissmal - THE SONG OF MUCH
KNOWING (min. 5 dollars)

History and Culture

Civilized Men in the Savage North
Democratic Parliament
Labyrinth Rituals in Scandinavia
Roots of the Bronze Age
Scandinavia before the Viking Age
Migrations
Temple of Uppsala and Dsablt
The Indo-European Roots
THE ORIGIN OF VIKINGS IN
FRANCIA
The Real Origin of Viking Raids
The Temple of Nehalennia at
Domburg
Three by Three Roots to the Edda
Myths
Tribal Mothers of the North the
Matron Cult of the Iron Age
Witches and Warriors the
Northern Barbarian Culture
Women and War The Female
Inciter

Celebrations

The Likes of Bitches

I despise the gods
and Freya is a bitch
For Odin and Freya, both
the likes of bitches I hold
.
Thus spoke the poet Hialti Skeggjason at the Icelandic assembly in the year 999 A.D. The young poet had
been abroad and returned to Iceland a Christian. Hialti was exiled from Iceland for his blasphemy, but only
the year after, in 1000 A.D the same assembly that exiled him voted for Christianity to be the new official
One Faith of all Icelanders. From then on it was allowed to openly despise the old gods, although for this
to sink in took some time.
Some 220 years after the Conversion, the scholar Snorri Sturluson realized that the old mythology was
finally about to fade in the memories of people, the gradual cessation of mythic knowledge rendering the
proud metaphoric traditions of Norse poetry meaningless. Snorris scholarly love of the past made him
spend five years trying to save some of the Norse Pagan worldview for the future, gathering his knowledge
from families that still remembered the customs of old and from poets who created such works as the
Hvaml, the Vlusp and some other poems later found in the Elder, Poetic Edda.
Pagan beliefs and practices of the home and hearth were still notable in remote places of Scandinavia
until at least the sixteenth century, indeed, Snorri in the thirteenth century conspicuously states that Freya
is the one deity of all the Norse pantheon that still lives and performs her functions as a blotgydja a
sacrificial priestess. Rests of pagan folk belief lingered on into modern times, shown in for example the
tradition of serving porridge to the tusser as well as in the contents of some fairy tales.
It has always confused me a bit why Hialti Skeggjason chose to offend exactly Odin and Freya in his
speech at the assembly in 999 A.D. These deities were not the major deities in Iceland: The cult of Thor
the thunder god was definitely the most popular in both Iceland and Norway, Freyr holding a good second
position. In Sweden, Freyrs was apparently the most important cult.
Odin and Freya were gods of the aristocracy that did not exist in Iceland, as well as of the marginal,
initiated people like poets, witches and sorcerers (vlur and seidmennir ) as well as berserk warriors.
Apparently, Freya also had some importance in the home-cults of women, sided with Frigg. If Hialti really
wanted to rock the world of Icelandic male peasants, he would have chosen to offend Thor and Freyr,
whose cults were certainly strong and popular enough to compete with the new Faith.

The Old Norse Yule Celebration

Myth and Ritual
Viking Halloween the Alfablot
Sacrifice to the Elves

Ancient Northern Tribes A-Z

A: Ancient Northern Tribes A-Z
Adogit /Halogi The Northernmost
Kingdom
Aelvaeonii Helveconae (South
Sweden and Poland)
Aeragnariciii Ranrike Viken
The Tribe that Gave Vikings their
name? And the Real Gandalf!
Alamanni/Alemanni Suebi, Suevii,
Semnones
Ambronii (Liguriii) Flood Survivors
of the 2nd Century BC
Ampsivarii The Tribe that
Perished
Angles (Ingles, English) Danish
Expansion and Anglish Migration
Angrivarii
Atuatuci Descendants of the
Cimbri
Augandzi Agder on South Norway
Queen Asa, Halfdan the Black, a
Human Sacrifice and a Man called
Wolverine

Mythology
Burning the Witch! The Initiation of
the Goddess and the War of the
Aesir and the Vanir.
Death-Marriage
Edda Poems A Summary
Fylgja Guardian Spirit and
Ancestral Mother

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Yet it would be no good to liken these two gods with bitches. The axe-wielding, thunderous Thor and the
phallic Freyr were gods with whom a Norse peasant and warrior could identify; masculine, strong,
protective and honest gods married to beautiful and honorable goddesses, they were the rulers of
weather, fertility and good sea-faring. Thors function was the dynamic and war-like defense against
destructive forces, Freyrs was to rule agriculture and livestock both deities were concerned with rain,
sunshine and weather in general.
Thors popularity in Iceland becomes very clear in Snorris Edda, where Thor-mythology seems to
dominate the picture completely. Going to the older source, the Poetic Edda, however, Thor has become
less important, and in many of the poems in which he features, he is being made fun of! His male pride, his
brute strength and his aggressive fear of the giants become the object of ridicule both in the Trymskvida
and in the Hrbardsljod. The characters who tell him off in each of the poems are Freya, who forces the
god to dress up as a woman, and Odin, who refuses to Thor the entrance into his divine spheres, telling
him to seek his mother Earth, for she will show him the way.
Even Snorri reveals a myth in which Thor is being humiliated for his masculine pride and belief in his own
strength being taken down by an old woman and made a fool of in the presence of grander cosmic
beings. Yet Snorri is quick to tell of Thors revenge, hoping to reestablish the honor of a favorite god.
What the myths of Thor seem to reveal is a certain ambivalence in the relations between the popular cults
of Thor, attended to by the common folk and the marginal cults of Odin and Freya, which seemed to
have been ecstatic cults of initiation for the specially interested.

Modern Stereotypes: The Patriarch and the Beauty

Freya is often identified with Aphrodite the goddess of love and beauty. Much emphasis has been put on
her sexual character an emphasis that has little foundation in the actual texts. There are three stories
that serve to establish Freyas role as ruling the sphere of sex and love: Snorri states that Freya liked
romantic poems and was good to pray to in such cases. In the Poetics Edda, there is a passage in the
poem Lokasenna where Loki accuses Freya of having slept with all the elves and Aesir in the hall of Aegir.
Another text describes how Freya granted a night each to the four dwarfs who made the Fiery Jewel for
her.
The image of Freya as the goddess of love is so deeply rooted in the popular mind that other passages
are also taken for granted as proof of her role as a love goddess. When she refuses to marry a giant,
exclaiming that she is not crazy for men, this is understood as irony, since the goddess of love certainly
must be quite eager. When the giantess Hyndla accuses her of running about like the goat Heidrn with
the bucks, and having men flying about her skirts, this is understood as another proof. In the 19th century,
freethinking poets in Scandinavia spoke of Freya as the protectress of prostitutes, and modern theatre
makes Freya appear like a punk hooker. This line of thought goes all the way back to Hialti Skeggjason
who in 999 A.D gave Freya the name of bitch.
In fact, that Freya likes romantic poems is not the only feature Snorri relates. He also relates that she is
the greatest among goddesses, that she owns her own splendid halls and rules her own lands, that she is
her own boss in every situation, and that she moves through the world wearing many names in the search
of her husband Odr the poetry, weeping tears of red gold as she goes. As head valkyrie, she rules over
and chooses the slain for Valhalla, and only after she has chosen does Odin receive his half of the
warriors that she sends to him and she keeps the other half to herself.
In the Lokasenna poem, Freya is not the only goddess accused of promiscuity: Absolutely all the other
goddesses are accused by Loki of just the same immoral behavior. The poem concludes with the
downfall of Loki for misunderstanding the gods.
The four dwarfs who forged the Fiery Jewel were the four directions, and if we consider Freyas origin as a
sun-goddess , it sort of gives the four nights a new meaning. It could be that Freya really means no when
she says so, and is not so crazy for men that she would marry an ogre, and it is certain that the
comparison with the goat Heidrn is a piece of esoteric knowledge. Heidrn means Bright Runes and is
the source of the Precious Drink of Memory, Poetry and Wisdom. Her admirers are her worshippers, the
initiates to seek to become worthy of her drink and her sacred embrace.
What Freya and all her hypostases actually do in the Poetic Edda does not limit her to the sexual sphere
at all. She stands out as a witch, a teacher, an initiator, a guide in the Underworld, a ruler of an alternative
Afterlife. In countless hypostases, she enters Sacred Marriage with countless heroes: These countless
marriages have to do with initiation and the union of the individual soul with the divine All-Soul. She is the
Great Goddess, the one being behind every other ds. She is the receiver of the dead, taking the souls of
the dead into her divine embrace how could she be anything else but the lover of all gods, the lover of
all elves elves representing the immortal souls?

Haustlng a Skaldic Poem about

Soul Retrieval
Hyperboreans A Curious
Pilgrimage from Scandinavia to
Greece BC
Individual and Collective Powers
Old Norse Sources to Paganism
inn and the dsir
SOLARLJOD The Song of the Sun
The "Worlds" of Old Norse Myths
The Dwarfs of Old Norse Myths
The Eddas Genuine Sources to
Pagan Mythology?
The Mead in the Underworld
The Sacred Drink and other Links
between Indian, Iranian, Greek,
Celtic and Norse Mythologies
The Sources to Old Norse Myths
Valkyriur Ladies of War
Warrior Initiation and Witch
Teachers
Womb by Magic Transcending
Gender, Transcending Realities

Rituals of Initiation in the

Poetic Edda
1. inn and Gunnl The
Initiation of a God
2. Freyr and Gerr The Initiation of
a God
3. Ottarr and Freyia The Initiation
of an Einheri
4. Svipdagr and Mengl The
Initiation of a Hero
5. The Reincarnating Valkyria
Initiation in the Heroic Poems
6. The Mead and the Maiden The
Initiation of the Goddess

Seir - Old Norse Magic

Divinatory Seir Old Norse Texts
(translated to English)
Seimar and Earl The Male
Sorcerer or Shaman
The Vlva the Norse Witch

Bibliography
Literature Bibliography

Lyrics
Asmegin Huldradans Lyrics
Gjallarhorn I Riden Sa Lyrics
Krkevisa The Song of the Crow
WARDRUNA Helvegen Lyrics
Wardruna Rotlaust Tre Fell lyrics
(English translation)

Hidden Knowledge in Old

Norse Myths (Video Series)
Video 1-9 (Cosmology and
Metaphors)
Video 10-18 (Ritual and Initiation)
Video 19-27 (Deciphering the
Codes of Norse Mythology)
Video 28-29 (Higher Mysteries)

Norse Paganism Videos

Now as to Odin, his name of bitch and castrate has been happily ignored by most popular
presentations. He is supposedly the All-Father, the patriarch and king of a hierarchic pantheon, the god of
war and human sacrifice, the ruler of Valhalla and an infamous lover.
His role as a sexually ambivalent witch-god is less prominent in the popular image. His ecstatic character,
his shaman behavior and his intimate association with the Great Goddess and the magical sphere of

Idunn and Skadi

Niflunga Saga Trilogy
Odins Raven Charm A Forgotten
Edda Poem
Runes, Mead and Initiation
The Divine Priestess

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women are rarely explored any further, although some scholars certainly have shown that Odin was
transcending boundaries to the extreme, also those of gender.

Transcending Gender in the Edda

Then Splendid World[1] said, the brightest of gods
prophetic he was like all Vanir gods:
Let us cover Thor with the bridal veil
let us give him the broad Jewel of Fire [Freyias necklace 2]
Let the keys jingle from his belt
let womens clothing fall down to his knees
Let gems be fastened on his breast
let us arrange the bridal veil on his head
Then said Thor, the manly god:
The Aesir will mock me and call me unmanly
if I let the bridal linen cover me.
Then said Loki, son of Leaf Island:
Quet, Thor, with that kind of speech!
Soon the giants will live in sgarr,
if you dont retrieve your hammer.
Trymskvida, st.15-18, Poetic Edda
.
Old Norse society nurtured, as most tribal cultures (as well as most parts of modern society) rather clearcut gender roles. Burial contents and imagery show that gender roles were clear: Yet there were
exceptions and these exceptions were not only accepted, but even so honored that the proof followed
the queer individuals to their graves.
Modern knowledge of DNA has enabled archaeologists to decide gender in ancient burials, and the
puzzlement has been great upon discovering that burials assumed to be masculine or feminine sometimes
turn out to be the very opposite. Women were sometimes buried with full hunting gear as far back as the
Stone Age, and from the Viking Age there are graves in which men have been buried in full female
adornment and traditional womens equipment. The same men appear to have had a cultic function.[3]
As to famous ship burial at Oseberg, the splendid remains of which is on permanent display at the Viking
Ship Museum in Oslo, Norway two elderly women of equally high rank were buried aboard a beautiful
ship some time in the early 10th century A.D. The women were probably cultic leaders, maybe priestesses
or witches (vlur[4]), accompanied as they were by a wealth of obvious cult objects. Among the smaller
objects was a cult staff possibly the famous wand always carried by a vlva, as well as a pouch filled with
cannabis seeds. Archeologist Britt Solli has pointed out one interesting feature about the burial contents:
The objects belong, in equal measure, both to the masculine and the feminine spheres, showing how
these two women apparently transcended traditional gender roles in some way or other, and that they
were honored as such.
Adam of Bremen, in 1071 A.D., described male Pagan priests dancing in an effeminate manner. Tacitus,
a thousand years earlier, remarks that male German priests would wear womens outfits. Going to other
sources, Bronze Age pictograms frequently shows figures that appear androgynous we see phallic
figures wearing the emblem of the Sun goddess within their bellies.
Old Norse mythology and legends not only contain, they are in fact crammed with characters who
transcend what we know to have been the common gender assignments, and these characters are always
powerful ones, either magical or magically inclined in some way or other.
Among the divine pantheon and their giant counterparts, Odin and Freya both transcend gender roles.
Odin learns from the witches, learns from females, how to practice seidr and galdr, magical functions that
were considered the spheres of women. He never hesitates to cross-dress or even change his very shape
into that of a womans. Freya, on her side, lives alone and unmarried, rules her own spheres
independently and keeps her own court, takes all the lovers she wishes for, and travels by herself through
the world. She is still honored as the most splendid of goddesses. She might sound like a modern,
liberated woman in her own time she more probably reflected the life of the independent vlva, a witch, a
woman exempt from the normal rules of female roles and power or lack of it.
Then we have the great, ancient goddess Skadi, whose shrines and sanctuaries have left their traces in
place-names all over Scandinavia, showing how she was once, before the Viking Age, a much-honored
deity. In the mythical poems the poets are playing with the meaning of her name, which is damage,
harm, accident and death. She is a typical ogress of death, living in the rocky wilderness
accompanied by wolves and shooting with bow and arrow. She is assigned a giant status, becoming divine
only through marriage to a god a marriage that she promptly leaves when she finds the new
surroundings unbearable. But she is always really on the side of the gods and has lovers among them
lovers who are as androgynous as herself, such as Njordr, Loki and Odin. Her butch image is probably a
remnant of her original role as a honored deity: She is a hunter and a warrior, she rules her own lands and
roams the mountains and the wilderness alone. She is the patroness of skiing and hunting with bow and
arrow, and as a warrior she terrifies even the mighty Aesir. Her aggressive and masculine behavior is
honored in the myths, as they were in her widespread cult.

The Golden Age and Ragnarok

Tribal Mothers of the North the
Matron Cult of the Iron Age

Last Comments
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External links
I speak at the ARC Convention in
Bath, England, in March!
REVIEW OF MY BOOK "THE SEED
OF YGGDRASILL"
The Asatru Fellowship Bifrost in
Norway

Ancient Northern Tribes A-Z

A: Ancient Northern Tribes A-Z
Adogit /Halogi The Northernmost
Kingdom
Aelvaeonii Helveconae (South
Sweden and Poland)
Aeragnariciii Ranrike Viken
The Tribe that Gave Vikings their
name? And the Real Gandalf!
Alamanni/Alemanni Suebi, Suevii,
Semnones
Ambronii (Liguriii) Flood Survivors
of the 2nd Century BC
Ampsivarii The Tribe that
Perished
Angles (Ingles, English) Danish
Expansion and Anglish Migration
Angrivarii
Atuatuci Descendants of the
Cimbri
Augandzi Agder on South Norway
Queen Asa, Halfdan the Black, a
Human Sacrifice and a Man called
Wolverine

Bibliography
Literature Bibliography

Blog Posts
Yule and Winter Solstice

BOOKS AND E-BOOKS (How to

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Loki is another character who easily plays with shape and gender. He transforms into a mare, couples with
a stallion and gives birth to the magical steed Sleipnir, the Glider, the eight-legged horse who can take
its rider through to different worlds. He cross-dresses and changes into a woman just as Odin does, and
sees no shame in it at all, although he, like sorcerers generally, is sometimes accused of shameful and
unmanly behavior. Loki was never worshipped in any Norse cult, and seems to have been a purely
poetical character, somewhat like the hero of a folktale, or rather an anti-hero, popular and infamous in his
trickster role at the same time. Some scholars have compared him with the Christian Devil, but Loki is more
complex than just evil he might be devious and irresponsible, but he is still one of the gods, and the
poets use his personality for what it is worth: He becomes the image of the human condition itself, both
sexes, both divine and material, craving, lusting, emotional, ambitious, sulking, jealous, but even so he is
vitality itself, the life fire and the passion, and the gods use him to steer and guide them through the
material world.

get them)
1. My books on Amazon.co.uk
(EUROPE)
2. My books on Amazon.com (USA)
BLADE HONER books on KINDLE
(Amazon.com)
FREE ONLINE READING of my
University of Oslo Master Thesis
(2004) : The Maiden with the Mead
A Goddess of Initiation in Old
Norse Myths?
Mimir- Journal of North European
Traditions edited by Gwendolyn
Thornton

Both Skadi and Loki are more associated with the magical arts and the other side, just as Odin and
Freya are. Skadi belongs to the wilderness, associated with rocks, wolves, winter and hunting, symbols of
the Underworld. Loki, her lover, is the one traveling between the worlds, changing shape and gender at
will, and the only one who knows how to please her, the giantess of death and destruction, when her anger
threatens to destroy the gods. He does so by playing on her sense of humor and on her devotion to harm,
ridiculing his own masculinity for all to see. As they appear, the pair is the more barbaric counterparts of
Odin and Freya, their mirror images in rougher outfits.

Celebrations

Just as Skadi is a mistress of the Underworld, so is Freya, although her realm is described as beautiful and
shining. The two, Skadi and Freya, appear as the two sides of the face of Hel, Mistress of the Dead: The
one face is grim and dark, the face of death, the other side is young and bright, the face of new life. Yet,
both are the same.

External links

And just as the two might be called sisters, so Odin and Loki are brothers, at least foster brothers and
blood brothers, friends and perhaps even lovers some time in the past, both pursuing the same arts, that
of magic, of shape-changing, divination and the altering of fate, even the ultimate fate of death. But Loki is
doomed to love the wrong side of death, the one that only means destruction. In the Lokasenna, the old
friends, now turned enemies, recall their past in mocking words:
23. Odin spoke:
If I gave to those that did not deserve it,
to small men, the victory
Then you spent eight winters below the ground
you were a woman and a milking cow
you gave birth there:
I call that unmanly behavior.
24. Loki spoke:
You performed seidr, they said,
You were at Sami-Island, beating drums in the manner of witch-women:
You traveled the world in the shape of a sorceress
I call that unmanly behavior.
25.Frigg spoke: The stories of what you two did in the past
you ought not to speak of to anyone
What these two gods did together
in the time of origin is better forgotten.
.
Self-counsciously, the poet of the Lokasenna does not deny the mythical facts: Loki has been a woman,
Loki has given birth like a woman and nursed babies. Odin has been acting like a sorcerer within the
spheres of women, of witches and apparently cross-dressed or moved in the world as a female. Something
more might have happened between the two, something that the poet, with the words of Frigg, finds too
shameful to say out loud. We must remember that the poem was written down and probably also created
during the new era, when the new faith and a new world-view was influencing and changing, finally to
overthrow, the old.
A clue to what happened is actually to be found in two different poems, where the bickering between old
friends seems to reflect the actions of Odin and Loki.
It is a duel of words between the sorcerer Sinfitli, who represents Odin, and his old friend, now foe,
Gudmundr, who represents Loki, in the poem of Helgi Hundingsbani:
37. Sinfitli spoke:
You were a witch-woman at the Island of Being
you loath wench, you came with lies
you would not own no other man,
you said then, than Sinfitli.
38. You caused harm, troll-valkyrie
you were indecent and horny at All-Fathers place
All the one-harriers at Odins fought
to have you, you false woman.

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39. We two together at the Peak of History[6]

had nine wolves (as children) and I was the father.
.
The revelation of Sinfitlis sexual and procreative relation to the giant Gudmundr in the past is
remarkable, for Sinfitli very clearly speaks of Gudmundr as a female, as a wench, a vlva, as a false
valkyrie who gives birth to nine wolves that he himself fatheres. But Gudmundr is, in the text, neverthless
very clearly a male. Gudmundr does not reply be defending himself against the accusations of having
been a woman, only states that Sinfitli is not so very manly himself:
40. Gudmundr spoke:
You did not father the wolves of Greed
even if you are older than all of them:
You were castrated by the Grove of Gnipa
By troll-maidens at the Peak of Thor.
.
The accusations of unmanliness continue further in the poem:
42. Sinfitli spoke:
You were the bride of Grani[7] at the Shining Fields
with a golden brithle you were forced to trot
You were often tired like the reindeer doe
on many a pathway with me at your back. (This is a way of saying that Sinfitli had Gudmundr sexually)
43. Gudmundr spoke:
You were a poor working woman,
milking the goats of Golden you were, another time
you were the daughter of Imdr()
.
The theme of homosexuality, transsexuality and gender-bending behavior is very strong in this poem. This
is also very clearly in connection with magical arts and with esoteric revelations. In fact, the other poem of
Helgi Hundingsbani (the second one), describes Helgi as starting out his career as initiate dressing up as
a woman: A male, royal prince taking the role of a slave woman:
Helgi could not save himself in any other way than to take the clothes of a servant-maid and sit down to
grind. They searched, but could not find Helgi. Then spoke Blind the Soul-Evil:
2. Sharp eyes has the maid by the mill of Hagal
She is not of peasant stock
the millstone breaks , the grinding bench explodes.

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3. A harsh fate has a chief received

when relatives must grind the grains
She would be better suited with her hand,
to grasp around the sword handle
than around the mill-turning handle.
5.Hagal answered and spoke:
I do not wonder if that mill makes sounds
when here a royal maiden is turning the handle
She used to float freely above the skies
in a Viking manner she dared to go forth (as a warrior)
Before Helgi took her
.
These verses not only bend the male role, making a point out of how heroes don female and even
subservient roles: They also speak of women that ought to clasp the sword handles rather than grind flour,
who dare to act like Vikings and who are free to soar the air. Yet again, the theme of transcending both
social status and gender is very much in connection to esoteric revelations.

Norse Paganism Videos

In each case, both Sinfitlis, and Helgis, the heroes are facing the giant stock: The representatives of
Fear, Greed and Death. They are also repeating the divine struggle between gods and giants. There is a
remarkable similarity between the word-duel of Sinfitli and Gudmundr, and the word-duel of Odin and
Loki.

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Yes, what did these two gods do together in the past? Did they create the Wolves of Greed together when
they mixed their blood? For certain, Loki does not hesitate to take the shape of a woman, and Snorri
relates how he, in the shape of a mare, conceives and gives birth to Sleipnir, the horse that takes Odin
through the worlds and that will jump unharmed across the fence of Hel. It is tempting to guess that the
dialogue between Sinfitli and Gudmundr actually tries to say out loud that which ought to be forgotten
about the relation between the god Odin and the giant Loki. Loki is the spokesman of the giants, just as
Gudmundr is, and although he is of giant stock, he has a partly divine status. The name of Gudmundr
actually means Source of Divinity.
The Unmanly
Odin knew that art which brings the most power, and he practiced it himself, it is called seidr, and from it
he could know all the fates of human beings and all things that were to happen, and he could give death
and bad health to people, who could take the wit of some people and give it to others. But this sorcery led

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Rituals of Initiation in the

Poetic Edda
1. inn and Gunnl The
Initiation of a God
2. Freyr and Gerr The Initiation of
a God
3. Ottarr and Freyia The Initiation
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to much unmanliness for those who practice it, so that menfolk could not practice it without shame, and so
they taught it to the priestesses.
Snorri, Heimskringla
The poem of the previous section revealed that Sinfitli, a powerful sorcerer, the son of a king, a mentor of
princes, was castrated in the past. He shares this feature with another such mentor, the kingly advisor and
sorcerer Atli of another poem. Both are figures reminiscent of shamans or sorcerers, who guide their
initiates through their trials.
This is when one of Odins most disturbing names ought to be mentioned: Neither Snorri nor the Poetic
Edda hide the fact that the great gods twelfth name is Ialk the Castrate.
Seidr was a kind of divinatory magic and was of central importance to the Old Norse cult. It involved the art
of not only seeing, but also altering, fate. It was an art led by much respected women called the vlur
(vlva, sg.), or witches, and by the more dubious seidmennir the seidr-men, the male practitioners, the
sorcerers. In the sagas, such men are described in negative terms, and were seemingly only feared, not
respected. There are several accounts where male sorcerers are being prosecuted. The negative attitude
is, however, probably a result of the time in which the sagas were written: The thirteenth and the
fourteenth centuries. Not only was seidr an art of magic: Worse, if we should trust the saga writers, it
involved unmanliness.

4. Svipdagr and Mengl The

Initiation of a Hero
5. The Reincarnating Valkyria
Initiation in the Heroic Poems
6. The Mead and the Maiden The
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Seir - Old Norse Magic

Divinatory Seir Old Norse Texts
(translated to English)
Seimar and Earl The Male
Sorcerer or Shaman
The Vlva the Norse Witch

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Scholars endlessly debate whether this unmanliness meant that the male practitioners actually
performed transgender or homosexual acts, or whether it just meant that they performed an art that
traditionally belonged to the spheres of women. All women, to some extent, might have learned some level
of seidr, as some of the sagas suggest. During sances of seidr, all women present take a central and
active role while the men keep to the periphery, only to observe and receive divination.
It is still curious why Snorri claims that the art of seidr was left to the priestesses because the priests felt it
was unmanly. Seidr was said to be the most powerful of all arts, the art which gave the most power, and
one may wonder how come the men would disregard that!
Odin, on his side, remained the great king of the gods without feeling any shame at all for acting as an
unmanly performer of seidr. The sagas show that until the end of the Viking Age, large numbers of men
did in fact perform seidr in spite of the unmanliness associated with it. So it is not true that men ceased to
work with seidr, only, perhaps, that they received less respect than the female practitioners, whom we
have seen were highly revered. But was it really so?

The Castrates
There are quite a lot of indications that men who learned seidr were respected and even held high status
at some time. The mighty Odin himself was their teacher, their role model, Odin whose cult was attended to
by kings and high-ranking members of society, by the much appreciated professional bards, and by
warrior heroes. The two examples of castrated men in the Poetic Edda, Sinfitli and Atli, were highly
respected members of the royal court, with the authority to teach princes.
In my opinion, seidr for men could involve both transsexuality and homosexuality, but it was also unmanly
because it belonged, firstly, to the feminine sphere. In the old Norse worldview, femininity was associated
with the other side, with the magical, with wilderness and the afterlife. Masculinity represented this side
of existence, the world of politics and society. Each sex could move between these borders, but political
action was still considered a masculine sphere, whereas magical actions were considered feminine. A
woman who had no other choice than to speak for herself at the assembly (a widow with no grown man to
speak her case) would assume a masculine role that was acceptable, but not preferable. A man who
devoted his life to the magical art was assuming a feminine role that was acceptable, but not entirely
respected by all in an otherwise rather macho society.
There were also most probably different kinds of male practitioners, some rather more gender-bending
than others. While some are called seidmadr the word definitely asserting his masculine sex, a different
kind of male practitioner was called a seidberendr literally meaning a seidr-vagina. That the seidr-man
and the seidr-vagina are two different types of male practitioners becomes clear in the poem Hyndluljod,
where the two are assigned different heritages, just as the vlva has her own.
One curious observance is the fact that the male castrates Odin, Sinfitli and Atli are likened unto
horses. The name Ialk is not translated as eunuch, but as a gelding a castrated horse. At the same time,
the witch the vlva is named after her wand or staff, the vl, which is also the name of the penis of a
stallion. We do know from a saga of a domestic ritual involving the penis of a sacrificed horse called
Vlsi being offered to the giantesses. Another connection to the giantesses is made in the poem
quoted earlier where Sinfitli is said to have been gelded by giantesses.
The title vlva indicates that she has been initiated to the vl, and this is what gives her the authority to
wield it. The graves of vlur suggest that they were related to both masculine and feminine spheres, and
the wand might very well be a phallic symbol, giving her authority to transcend the boundaries of gender.
In the same manner, we might imagine, did a particular kind of male sorcerers the seidr-vaginas
operate with a symbolic (or self-experienced) vagina associated with the female practice of seidr to a
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degree or in a fashion that perhaps the seidr-men could not. Perhaps this experience of having a special
vagina for magical purposes was a permanent condition experienced by transsexual sorcerers, or perhaps
it was something experienced at particular ritual occasions. One Old Norse word for sorcerer, Gylfi,
actually indicates shape-changing sorcerer, werewolf, and sorcerer changing into a woman every ninth
night. [i]
Transgender behavior is not unusual in many shamanistic contexts. Castration and feminization of male
practitioners or devoted worshippers is known also from Mystery cults such as that of Cybele, and in some
Hindu cults even today. In Old Norse society, male practitioners of seidr were common enough, and one of
their most powerful deities, Odin, practiced it without shame. The poems speak of gender bending as a
quite honorable, or at least some times useful and necessary, if not a normal thing to do. In my opinion,
the negative attitudes to male practitioners is a late influence, caused by the aggressive machismo of
medieval and Christianized Europe reaching Scandinavia and altering the old pagan worldview.
The fact that Odin and Freya and their counterparts in myth and legend transcend the roles assigned for
their gender, combined with the fact that they were the major deities of seidr a kind of sorcery would
probably be have been enough to see them as bitches and examples of the true perversion of the old
faith by those who did not wish to look any deeper.

Transcending Realities
As mentioned, the poems speak of cross-dressing and gender-bending behavior as an honorable, or at
least useful, if not normal thing to do. And this is important: Although acceptable, it was not normal.
Bending the boundaries of gender was not a structural thing to do it was not something anyone could
just do at whim. Transcending gender boundaries was an important and powerful act, and it meant
something to the practitioners and to the observers it was part of a cultic or magical experience.
The stanzas quoted above about Gudmundr and Sinfitli shows that the hero or his opponent frequently is
compared not to just any kind of woman, but to a witch or a valkyrie. Gudmundr is not only taking the role
of a woman, he is also taking the role of a vlva and a valkyrie, magical and powerful creatures. As such
he dwells with the one-harriers Odins chosen warriors in Valhalla. Yet, because of his giant destructive
nature he leads his companions them astray and births the wolves of Greed. In other sources, Loki is the
father or parent of those wolves, so we may safely say that Gudmundr is a facet of Loki.
In the case of Helgi, his opponents realize that the flour-grinding servant girl, the one who draws the millstone, is no ordinary maid. But instead of recognizing the male Helgi, they believe that he is the valkyrie
who rides air and sea, the great Valkyrie who was taken by the former Helgi Hjrvardsson, who soared
freely as a viking goddess, but was now reduced to turning a mill-stone.
Now what does the mill-stone actually mean? Another poem identifies the mill-stone it is very clearly the
Mill of Destiny, drawn by two captured giantesses who used to be valkyries.[8] This is, of course, what the
men in the poem are referring to: The valkyrie who used to be free has been reduced to a slave drawing
the mill of destiny in order to serve a greedy king.
The theme of a valkyrie a fate spinner being captured, enslaved or enchanted into sleep, made to
shape destiny at the whim of a greedy king is a very common one that constantly repeats itself
throughout the Poetic Edda. It always ends with the valkyrie rebelling and avenging herself, and with fatal
results for the greedy king. The valkyrie is a kind of norn, a mythical creature or goddess who rules the
destiny of her chosen individual, whom she chooses at birth. The relation between the valkyrie and the
individual soul seems to be close to the point of identification. For now it is enough to say that the
relationship between a person and his valkyrie is very intimate the two are parts of each other, and she
represents, if nothing more, the destiny of her chosen person, the secret workings of fate beneath the
surface.
Now Helgi becoming the woman who draws the mill of destiny in fact becoming a norn is obviously
meant to symbolize something deeper than just a strategic means to hide. He becomes not only a slave
girl, he becomes his own enslaved fate, drawing the mill of destiny while a captive of his enemies. As he
becomes his own fate-spinner, and draws his own fate, he escapes slavery, only to meet his once again
free-soaring valkyrie who guides him towards final freedom.
Perhaps this is a hint to what the puzzling gender-bending is most likely really about: The merging between
a man and his female soul, his divine destiny?
All popular imagery of the fierce, brutish Viking berserk aside, there was an aspect to Norse Pagan
manhood, more or less liminal, that was not quite as macho as national romanticism would have preferred.
Article by Maria Kvilhaug
See article on Native American Two-Spirits here.

Main Sources:
Sejd och andra studier i nordisk sjlsuppfattning Dag Strmbck (2000)
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Seid myter, sjamanisme og kjnn i Vikingenes tid Brit Solli (2002)

The Poetic Edda

[1] Heimdallr- Shining World, Splendid World, the guardian of the bridge between worlds
[2] Brisinga Mn Fiery Jewel, Freyas necklace
[3] Britt Solli, 2002, Seid Kjnn, sjamanisme og seid
[4] vlur, plural of vlva, (staff-carrier) a witch or seeress, priestess of divination and magic
[5] Whether one should translate to sorcerer or sorceress here is uncertain.
[6] Saganes
[7] Grani is the horse that carried Sigurdr and his divine gold alive through the fatal fire.
[8] The Grottasongr the Song of the Mill

[i] Fritzner, Johan, Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog, 1886

2 Responses to A Womb by Magic Transcending Gender,

Transcending Realities
Pingback: Month for Loki, Day 15: Some Words on Our Relationshipand Choice | bloodteethandflame

Paul Borda says:

26. januar 2014 at 12:49

Thank you for this essay. I really enjoyed reading it.

I have a somewhat off topic question; the image above that a appears to be a drawing of a naked man
holding to dragons, do you have any further info on it? Where it comes from and when? I tried making
sense of the runes and I started to wonder if they were miscopied in places, but Im very much a novice in
Old Norse so clear words could be staring me in the face and Id miss it.
At first glance, the image struck me as having similarities to the Smiss stone, aka the Snake Witch or
Ormhxan, in that the figure is frontal in a squatting (birthing?) position and holding two serpents/dragons.
Thank you for your work,
Paul
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