Ashurst Masculinity in Old Norse

Male Bedpartners and the ‘Intimacies of a
Wife’: rekkjufélagar and vífs rúnar

David Ashurst
‘Vaki æ ok vaki’ (Awake! Oh, but awake!) cried Þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld

Bersason, declaiming the ancient Bjarkamál, to the slumbering army of King
Óláfr helgi Haraldsson on the morning of the day that would see the king’s
death and his own at the battle of Stiklastaðir:
vekka yðr at víni

né at vífs rúnum,
heldr vekk yðr at hǫrðum
Hildar leiki.1
(I do not wake you to wine, nor to the intimacies of a wife; rather I wake
you to the hard sport of Hildr [i.e. to action in battle].)
Thus Þormóðr gives voice to a warrior’s rueful, bordering on contemptuous,

juxtaposition of the hard manly work of warfare and the soft pleasures of
sex.2
1 Heimskringla II, pp. 361–62, lines 141.5 and 142.5–8.

2 The implied contrast between hard manly pursuits and soft women calls to mind
a dichotomy proposed by Clover in a much-cited article, where it is suggested
Copyright © 2020. Boydell & Brewer, Limited. All rights reserved.
that the adjective hvatr (brisk) is associated primarily with men whereas blauðr
(soft, weak) is primarily associated with women: Carol Clover, ‘Regardless of Sex:
Men, Women, and Power in Early Northern Europe’, Representations 44 (1993),
1–28. Although Clover (p. 1) cites Cleasby and Vigfusson as noting that blauðr is
‘answering Latin mollis’ (soft), she does not take the opportunity to observe that
the hvatr/blauðr dichotomy was widespread in earlier cultures, particularly in the
Latin world. Isidore of Seville, for example, asserts in his Etymologiae (at least
parts of which were well known in medieval Iceland) that ‘Vir nuncupatus, quia
maior in eo vis est quam in feminis […] Mulier vero a mollitie’ (‘Man’ is so called
because strength (vis) is greater in him than in females […] ‘Woman’, in fact, is
from ‘softness’ (mollitia)): (San) Isidoro de Sevilla, Etimologías, ed. and trans. (Latin
and Spanish) José Oroz Reta and Manuel-Antonio Marcos Casquero, 3rd edn, 2
vols. (Madrid, 2000), XI.2.17–18. Clover’s proposition that a person, regardless
of their sex, could increase or diminish their masculinity in accordance with the
extent to which their behaviour was hvatr or blauðr, has been subjected to much
183
Masculinities in Old Norse Literature, edited by Gareth Lloyd Evans, and Jessica Clare Hancock, Boydell & Brewer, Limited, 2020.
ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/leicester/detail.action?docID=6191717.
Created from leicester on 2021-05-21 16:12:00.
David Ashurst
Similar sentiments are encountered elsewhere in Old Norse literature,

for example in Fóstbrœðra saga, when Þorgeirr Hávarsson meets his end
while putting up a stout defence against Þorgrímr trolli Einarsson and
overwhelming odds, and the saga writer remarks, with notable contempt for
the men who have sex with women, in contrast with the celibate Þorgeirr, ‘Nú
fyrir því at þeim Þorgrími reyndisk meiri mannraun at sœkja Þorgeir heldr
en klappa um maga konum sínum, þá sóttisk þeim seint, ok varð þeim hann
dýrkeyptr’ (Now because it proved a greater trial for Þorgrímr and his men
to attack Þorgeirr than to slap against the bellies of their women, they were
slow in attacking, and he was dearly bought by them).3
This theme of the warrior’s contempt for sex is by no means peculiar to
Old Norse; in fact, it is widespread across many languages and cultures, and
across many centuries. In Renaissance England, for instance, Shakespeare
gives especially piquant expression to it in All’s Well that Ends Well, when
Paroles urges the newly-wed Bertram to flee the perils of married life:
To th’ wars, my boy, to th’ wars!

He wears his honour in a box unseen
That hugs his kicky-wicky here at home,
Spending his manly marrow in her arms,
Which should sustain the bound and high curvet
Of Mars’s fiery steed.4
criticism and adjustment (not to be summarised here), but it is certainly the case, in
the wider cultural context, that a man lost masculinity if he became mollis. This is
neatly exemplified by a remark of Isidore’s concerning such a man (X.179): ‘Mollis,
quod vigorem sexus enerviati corpore dedecoret, et quasi mulier emolliatur’ (He
is ‘soft’ because he dishonours the vigour of his sex by his weakened body, and
is made soft like a woman). One way in which a man can become blauðr/mollis,
and hence lose masculinity, is through having sexual intercourse with women, as
discussed below.
3 Fóstbrœðra saga, p. 208. Zoëga glosses ‘klappa um’ as ‘to pat’, but also notes that
klappa can indicate stronger actions such as to chisel and to hammer; Fritzner offers
‘klappe eller stryge’, citing ‘klappa um kviðinn á konu’, as the second meaning of
klappa but gives the primary meaning as slaa, banke. If ‘pat the bellies of their women’
is the accurate translation in the above context, the strongly pejorative nature of the
comment suggests that it is being used euphemistically; ‘slap against’ is therefore
proposed as seeming to catch the connotations. For Þorgeirr’s celibacy, note the
remark that ‘sagði hann þat vera svívirðing síns krapts, at hokra at konum’ (he
declared it to be a dishonour to his strength, to crouch over women), Fóstbrœðra saga,
p. 128. For a further example of a contemptuous reference to sex with women as an
indicator, or cause, of unmanliness, see the sailors’ words to Grettir Ásmundarson
when their ship is in urgent need of bailing out while Grettir is spending time with
the skipper’s wife: ‘“Þikkir þér betra,” sǫgðu þeir, “at klappa um kviðinn á konu
Bárðar stýrimanns en at gera skyldu þína á skipi”’ (‘It seems better to you,’ they said,
‘to slap against the belly of the wife of Bárðr the captain than to do your duty on
board ship’). Grettis saga, pp. 51–52. For a parallel analysis of the subject, although
the discussion above was produced independently of it, see Gareth Lloyd Evans,
Men and Masculinities in the Sagas of Icelanders (Oxford, 2019), pp. 98–99.
4 William Shakespeare, All’s Well that Ends Well, in William Shakespeare: The Complete
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Male Bedpartners and the ‘Intimacies of a Wife’
In the Classical world, furthermore, Alexander the Great is said to have used
the topos as part of his address to his mutinous forces when they demanded
to be discharged and sent home from Asia: ‘Bonis vero militibus cariturus
sum, pelicum suarum concubinis’ (Truly I shall be losing fine soldiers, the
male concubines of their mistresses!).5 The Shakespeare quotation highlights,
among other things, the recognition that ejaculation (‘spending his manly
marrow’) can temporarily, or cumulatively over a limited period, deplete a
man’s strength and energy, an idea that, in Old Norse, underlies an insult in
Njáls saga, when two men have been trying unsuccessfully to round up some
sheep: ‘Ámælti þá hvárr þeira ǫðrum, ok mælti Þjóstólfr við Glúm, at hann
hefði til engis afla nema brǫlta á maga Hallgerði’ (Then they blamed each
other, and Þjóstólfr said to Glúmr that he had strength for nothing except to
thrash about on Hallgerðr’s belly).6 Doubtless the same idea also underlies
Alexander’s sarcasm towards his men in the Curtius quotation: they no
longer have the strength to be proper soldiers, Alexander implies, because
of constantly servicing their female camp followers. A different rendering of
concubinis (nom. concubini), however, would be ‘bedpartners’, since the word
is derived from concumbo ‘to lie with, to sleep with’ – and in fact the Loeb
translator, Rolfe, renders the phrase pelicum suarum concubinis as ‘bed-mates
of mistresses’.7 In the context, ‘male concubines’ and ‘bed-mates’ may
amount to much the same thing, but the latter translation has the advantage
that its connotations prompt the thought that, from the point of view of a
demanding general such as Alexander, a soldier’s best bedpartner (though
not usually sex-partner), for the avoidance of the supposedly enervating
influence of women, is another soldier.
Counterpointing, but not counterbalancing, the misogyny apparent in
all the above texts, there is, in much Old Norse literature, a sense of ease
and naturalness about men sharing beds, which has tended to be lost in
the western world.8 As will be elaborated in the discussion below, the
Works, ed. Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, John Jowett, and William Montgomery
(Oxford, 1988), pp. 855–82, II.iii, lines 275–79.
5 Quintus Curtius, History of Alexander, with trans. by John C. Rolfe (Cambridge,
MA, 1946), X.ii.27.

6 Njáls saga, p. 49.
7 See note 5 above, and see the glosses for concumbo and concubinus in Charlton T.
Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1879).
8 In the great literatures of Europe and America, the bedroom scenes between Ishmael
and Queequeg, when they chance to become bedpartners at the Spouter-Inn in
Melville’s 1851 novel, Moby-Dick, testify to a cultural period in which the routine
sharing of beds has become freighted with homosexual connotations: the first
of these scenes evidences a good deal of anxiety, partially covered by jocular
allusions to marriage and comic ‘expostulations upon the unbecomingness of […]
hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style’; yet the two men soon
decide to go on sleeping together on future nights, establish a level of apparently
non-erotic physical intimacy, and become firmly bonded, so that Ishmael later
refers to Queequeg as ‘my poor pagan companion, and fast bosom-friend’. Herman
Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale, intro. by Andrew Delbanco, notes by Tom Quirk
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David Ashurst
naturalness of same-sex bedsharing visible in Old Norse literature goes

beyond a merely neutral habit formed in response to the limited availability
of sleeping places in farmhouses, halls, and on board ship: it occasioned
intimacy and male bonding that could be socially recognised and powerfully
emotional, and which, unless there is definite evidence to the contrary in
particular cases, should not be construed as repressed or sublimated sexual
desire, except insofar as all intimacy between males can be so construed.9
For unmarried men, or for soldiers and sailors away from their wives, the
bond and the routine of bedsharing accommodated the opportunity for male
bedpartners to have sex with women, and this opportunity could – but did
not inevitably – lead to jealousy or envy, sometimes expressed in terms of
misogyny; furthermore, the possibility of sleeping together as an expression
of trust, commitment, mutual belonging, and unity between men could
become a matter of keenly felt social or even spiritual aspiration.
To return to Þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld: aspects of his story encapsulate
something of the last point above, though not in all accounts. In Snorri’s
Heimskringla version, which has already been quoted from, King Óláfr
gives Þormóðr a gold ring after the recitation of Bjarkamál, now renamed
Húskarlahvǫt (Incitement of the Retainers) by the grateful army; Þormóðr
responds by declaring that he and the other men have a good king, but he
then adds that it remains to be seen how long-lived the king will be. This
sounds like a wrong note in the context of the goodwill the poet has just
received, but it represents a facing of facts amid the ‘hard sport of Hildr’,
and it immediately becomes apparent that it forms the basis for a bold
request that is simultaneously a courageous statement of loyalty, for Þormóðr
continues: ‘Sú er bœn mín, konungr, at þú látir okkr hvártki skiljask lífs né
dauða’ (It is my request, king, that you let the two of us be parted neither
(London, 1992), pp. 13–63 (p. 30), and p. 519. Compare this with the very different
erotic content of Iago’s description of Cassio’s alleged dream of having sex with
Desdemona, in Shakespeare’s Othello. Iago, simply to set the scene, notes factually,
‘I lay with Cassio lately,’ and then relates that Cassio, asleep and dreaming, would
‘kiss me hard, | As if he plucked up kisses by the roots, | That grew upon my lips,
lay his leg o’er my thigh, | And sigh’. Shakespeare, Othello, in The Complete Works,
pp. 819–53, III.iv, lines 418 and 426–29. Here Shakespeare is doubtless toying
with his audience even as Iago is toying with Othello, who focuses entirely on
what he takes to be evidence that his wife has committed adultery with Cassio,
yet the whole speech depends for its effect on the normality of the two soldiers
lying in bed together, and on the audience’s recognition of the fact that men who
are bedpartners will become intimate with each other’s erotic dreams, and not be
embarrassed by them.
9 For a warning against examining medieval representations of social attitudes and
behaviour through a heterosexual filter, see James A. Schultz, ‘Heterosexuality as a
Threat to Medieval Studies’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 15.1 (2006), 14–29. The
objective of the present discussion, however, is to draw conclusions from what is
clearly present in the texts; it does not seek to suggest that characters experienced
erotic longing or engaged in sexual activity where none is mentioned.
186
living nor dead).10 It is notable that Þormóðr here addresses the king in the
singular, þú, which may be taken as an indication, or assertion, of familiarity;
Óláfr, however, parries the request even while granting it, by pitching his
response to all the men listening, using the plurals vér and þér rather than þú
and the dual vit: ‘Allir munu vér saman fara, meðan ek ræð fyrir, ef þér vilið
eigi við mik skiljask’ (We must all move together, while I am in command, if
you [pl.] do not wish to be separated from me).11 Þormóðr, apparently both
provoked and chastened, since he now addresses Óláfr with the honorific
plural, yðr, takes a swipe at the rival poet, Sigvatr Þórðarson, who has gone
away on pilgrimage and to whom Óláfr has given a more prestigious gift than
the one Þormóðr has just received: ‘Þess vætti ek, konungr, hvárt sem friðr er
betri eða verri, at ek sjá nær yðr staddr, meðan ek á þess kost, hvat sem vér
spyrjum til, hvar Sigvatr ferr með gullinhjaltann’ (I expect, king, whether our
friendship is better or worse, that I will be stationed close to you, while I have
opportunity for it, whatever we hear about where Sigvatr is going with the
golden-hilted sword).12 No answer on Óláfr’s part is reported. Thus Snorri,
with characteristic deftness, sketches a revealing encounter between a king
who is careful to spread his favours among his men, and a poet who is brave
and staunch but jealous, but for whom proximity to his lord, even in death,
trumps all gifts as an index of status.
The same wording for the same story is also found in Snorri’s ‘Separate
Saga of St Óláfr’.13 The account of the exchange between Þormóðr and
Óláfr in Fóstbrœðra saga, Hauksbók text, however, is different in several
revealing ways. There the exchange is exclusively between the poet and the
king, and it is Óláfr himself who gives the new name Húskarlahvǫt to the
ancient Bjarkamál; it is also Óláfr who first mentions Sigvatr, prompted by a
non-specific reference, in a stanza recited by Þormóðr, to poets who are not
present at the battle; the most significant difference, however, concerns the
nature of Þormóðr’s request not to be parted from his lord:
Þat er sagt, at Þormóðr var heldr ókátr um daginn fyrir bardagann.

Konungr fann þat ok mælti: ‘Hví ertu svá hljóðr, Þormóðr?’ Hann
svarar: ‘Því, herra, at mér þykkir eigi víst vera, at vit munim til einnar
gistingar í kveld. Nú ef þú heitr mér því, at vit munim til einnar

gistingar báðir, þá mun ek glaðr.’ Óláfr konungr mælti: ‘Eigi veit ek,
hvárt mín ráð megu um þat til leiðar koma, en ef ek má nǫkkuru um
ráða, þá muntu þangat fara í kveld, sem ek fer.’ Þá gladdisk Þormóðr.14
(It is said that Þormóðr was rather gloomy before the battle, during that
day. The king noticed it and said, ‘Why are you so quiet, Þormóðr?’ He
answers, ‘Because, lord, I don’t think it certain that the two of us will
10 Heimskringla II, p. 362.

13 Den store Saga om Olav den hellige, pp. 547–48.
14 Fóstbrœðra saga, pp. 262–64 (Hauksbók text, i.e. main text).
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David Ashurst
both be in one resting place tonight. Now if you promise me that the
two of us will both be in one resting place, I will be glad.’ King Óláfr
said, ‘I don’t know whether my authority can bring that about, but if
I can have my way at all, you will go tonight to the place where I go.’
Then Þormóðr cheered up.)
That King Óláfr was accustomed, or was assumed in saga literature to have
been accustomed, to sleep in close proximity to several other men is shown by
Snorri’s anecdote concerning the Icelander Þórarinn Nefjólfsson: he visited
Óláfr for a few days in Túnsberg, and the king ‘talaði við hann’ (talked with
him); the natural progression of this friendly rapport, or part of the original
invitation, was that ‘svaf Þórarinn í konungsherbergi’ (Þórarinn slept in the
king’s chamber); one morning Óláfr found himself awake, ‘en aðrir menn
sváfu í herberginu’ (but the other men in the chamber were sleeping), and he
noticed that Þórarinn ‘hafði rétt fót annan undan klæðum’ (had stretched one
foot out from under the bedclothes).15 There follows some banter in which
Þórarinn draws the king into a bet over whether an uglier foot can be found;
he claims to have won when he stretches his other leg into view and displays
a foot that is no prettier than the first and has a toe missing, which makes
it look worse; the king counters by claiming that the absence of an ugly toe
makes the foot less repulsive than the other, which has five ugly toes. Points
could be made here about the modes of masculinity indicated by the easy-
going but competitive early-morning camaraderie between the king and his
male subordinate, and by the evidently rueful delight that men can take in
the ugliness of their own or one another’s bodies, but the chief relevance of
the anecdote to the present discussion is that it illustrates the kind of intimacy
and favour that Þormóðr probably has in mind when he asks Óláfr to promise
that the two of them will be in one gisting after the battle. The fact that
Þormóðr’s words and Óláfr’s response are freighted with ominous connota-
tions of death should not distract the reader from the emotional urgency of
the poet’s literal request: he wishes to sleep with his lord, not necessarily in
the same bed but close beside him. In the event, the literal fulfilment of the
request becomes impossible because Óláfr is cut down in the fight, whereupon
Þormóðr moves on to rejoicing in its metaphorical fulfilment: he is pierced by

an arrow immediately after saying that it would be better to die than to live,
since he would not be in the same gisting as the king that night; then, ‘Því sári
varð hann feginn, því at hann þóttisk vita, at þetta sár mun honum at bana
verða’ (he grew happy on account of the wound, because he thought he knew
that this wound would be the death of him).16 Thus, as the longed for sleep
beside the beloved lord has served as a symbol and harbinger of death, so
now death serves to confirm the importance and intensity of that longing for
the bond of ordinary sleep shared by living men.
15 Heimskringla II, pp. 125–26; see also Den store Saga om Olav den hellige, p. 184, which
uses almost identical wording.
16 Fóstbrœðra saga, pp. 268–69 (Hauksbók text).
188
The near equivalent emotional pull of men sharing sleep and sharing
death is implicit in the Hauksbók text of Fóstbrœðra saga discussed above,
but it is made quite clear in the Flateyjarbók version of the same saga, which
represents a conflation of a redaction of Fóstbrœðra saga material with Snorri’s
‘Separate Saga of St Óláfr’. Here, Þormóðr’s initial request is reported thus:
‘En sú er bœn mín, konungr, at þér látið okkr hvárki skilja líf né dauða, því
at ek vilda fara til einnar gistingar ok þér í kveld’ (but it is my request, sire,
that you let the two of us be parted neither alive nor dead, because I would
go to one and the same resting place with you tonight).17 This wording shows
unmistakably that, for Þormóðr in this moment of existential crisis, there
are only two tolerable options: for the king and him to live and sleep in one
another’s company, or to die together. The latter is no doubt a consummation,
but both are devoutly to be wished.18
It has to be asked whether what is envisaged by Þormóðr here involves
something akin to a ‘homosexual Liebestod’ such as that found in Alexanders
saga, where two young soldiers die clasping each other, ‘sva var asten heit
orðen með þeim’ (so hot had the love between them grown).19 The question
is especially reasonable since issues concerning Þormóðr’s sexual behaviour
have been a recurrent topic in Fóstbrœðra saga, surfacing briefly in the reference
to the rógsmenn (slanderers) who tried to cause trouble between the sworn
brothers, according to a verse composed by Þormóðr after Þorgeirr’s death,
and re-emerging in the account of the poet’s killing of Falgeirr Þórdísarson,
which is redolent of male rape.20 The matter is made overt when King Óláfr
asks Þormóðr why he has killed so many people in Greenland, and Þormóðr
answers, ‘Illr þótti mér jafnaðr þeira vera við mik, því at þeir jǫfnuðu mér
til merar, tǫlðu mik svá vera með mǫnnum sem meri með hestum’ (I took
badly to a simile of theirs for me, because they compared me to a mare;
they declared me to be among men like a mare among stallions).21 It would
therefore be consistent to suggest, from a modern standpoint, that Þormóðr’s
desire to be with the king includes an element of erotic longing, probably
denied and possibly repressed. From a medieval Norse-Icelandic standpoint,
however, Óláfr himself draws the authoritative conclusion to the saga’s
17 Fóstbrœðra saga, p. 264 (Flateyjarbók text, i.e. subsidiary text); see also Den store
Saga om Olav den hellige, pp. 548 and 822.
18 It is the idea of sleeping with one’s lord as an alternative to, or symbol of, dying
with him that is the focus here. For a broader discussion of the ideal of dying
with one’s lord as a common topos of medieval literature, see David Clark, ‘Notes
on the Medieval Ideal of Dying with One’s Lord’, Notes and Queries 58.4 (2011),
475–84.
19 David Ashurst, ‘The Transformation of Homosexual Liebestod in Sagas Translated
from Latin’, Saga-Book 26 (2002), 67–96; Alexanders saga, p. 132.
20 Fóstbrœðra saga, stanza 5, p. 152, and p. 240 respectively. For further discussions
of the rógsmenn and their slanders, see Carolyne Larrington, Brothers and Sisters in
Medieval European Literature (Woodbridge, 2015), pp. 213–14, and Evans, Men and
Masculinities, p. 55.
21 Fóstbrœðra saga, p. 259.
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David Ashurst
‘slander’ theme when he responds to Þormóðr’s statement of the offensive

comparison: ‘Várkunn var þat, at þér mislíkaði þeira umrœða; hefir þú ok
stórt at gǫrt’ (It was allowable that their talk displeased you; you have also
magnificently put things right).22 The poet’s actions, it is clear, speak louder
than any words, including his own: that is the level on which the saga works
overtly. By his acts of vengeance, Þormóðr shows that he is not like a mare
among stallions, and the words of the sainted king confirm this fact; thus the
saga goes out of its way to bring the slander theme to a conclusion. In view
of this, and irrespective of whatever other voices or ironic undercurrents may
be detectable in earlier parts of the saga, Þormóðr’s request to share with the
king in sleep or death should be read as the saga’s endorsement of sleeping
together as the expression, or cause, of what was primarily a supremely
important social, rather than erotic, bond between men.
One consequence of this custom and bond between men was that vífs rúnar
– rendered above as ‘the intimacies of a wife’ but which could equally well
be translated as ‘the secret things of a wife’ – were far from secret, and not
even very private. At the highest level of Old Norse society, in the court of
kings, this can be illustrated by a passage early in Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar,
the life of the Norwegian king Hákon gamli, attributed to Sturla Þórðarson
and apparently written by him under the watchful eye of Hákon’s son, King
Magnús lagabætir.23 Hákon had been born out of wedlock and his paternity
was challenged when he was put forward for the title of king; his mother,
Inga, had been due to undergo the ordeal of the hot iron to prove that his
father truly was King Hákon Sverrisson, but the standard versions of the saga
cast doubt on whether she actually did so.24 The saga account of Hákon’s
conception according to the testimony of witnesses is therefore especially
important: ‘Inga var í herbergjum Hákonar konungs, ok samrekkði konungr
hjá henni, svá at þat vissi Hákon galinn ok fleiri trúnaðarmenn hans’ (Inga
stayed in King Hákon [Sverrisson]’s quarters, and the king lay in the same
bed next to her, in such a way that Hákon galinn and more of his confidants
were aware of it).25 In the context of a man being in bed with a woman, the
verb samrekkja (to share a bed) is clearly a euphemism for having sex, similar
to the one used by Sigurðr Fáfnisbani, for example, when trying to reason
with the suicidal Brynhildr Buðladóttir in Völsunga saga: ‘Gjarna vilda ek at

vit stigim á einn beð bæði ok værir þú mín kona’ (I would earnestly wish
that the two of us might get into one bed together and you were my wife).26
Hákon galinn and King Hákon’s other confidants, furthermore, were quite
22 Fóstbrœðra saga, p. 259.

23 For the attribution and circumstances of composition, see Sturlunga saga, vol. 2, p.
234.
24 Hákonar saga, vol. 1, p. 194.
26 Völsunga saga, p. 56. The euphemism for sex is confirmed by the fact that Brynhildr
replies with an innuendo: ‘Eigi mun ek eiga tvá konunga í einni hǫll’ (I will not
have two kings in one hall).
190
probably in the same herbergi as the king, just as Þórarinn Nefjólfsson and
other men were in the herbergi of Óláfr helgi, or at least they must have been
within earshot of Inga and her royal lover, since being aware only that the
man and woman shared a bed, and not knowing for certain that they actually
had sex, would have weakened the claim that the future King Hákon gamli
had been conceived at that time. Hákonar saga takes it for granted that its
audiences would understand that Hákon galinn and his comrades could
certify that Inga had sex with the king because they heard it, and possibly
saw it, for themselves.
At a lower level of the social range, sex in farmhouses must often have
been something of a spectator sport. Bósa saga ok Herrauðs gives a particu-
larly detailed and specific account of this in the famous quasi-pornographic
episodes, the first of which explains that the foster-brothers, Bósi and Herrauðr,
arrive at a farmstead and are entertained until everyone retires for the night:
‘Bóndi lá í lokrekkju, en bóndadóttir í miðjum skála, en þeim fóstbræðrum
var skipat í stafnsæng við dyrr utar’ (The farmer lay in a bed-closet, but the
farmer’s daughter in the middle of the room, and the foster-brothers were
assigned a bed in the gable, farther out by the doorway).27 Note that the two
young men share one bed. Establishing a pattern that will be repeated twice,
with variations, Bósi soon gets up, wakes the farmer’s daughter, engages her
in salacious chitchat, gives her a valuable present, has tumultuous sex with
her repeatedly, gets her to impart some useful information, and finally goes
back to Herrauðr (who is still in bed, it is assumed, before the farmer is up
and about) to report on his findings.28 It is notable that the account of this first
night-time sortie of Bósi’s gives a nod, at least, in the direction of according a
measure of privacy to the sex-partners by saying that Bósi left Herrauðr only
‘er fólk var sofnat’ (when the household was asleep);29 it may be doubted,
however, whether Herrauðr would continue to sleep as his companion
climbs out of the bed they are sharing, and throughout hours of vigorous
sex interspersed with conversation. In any case, for the second similar
episode, Bósi does not wait for people to fall asleep, but gets up and goes
to the (new) farmer’s daughter ‘þegar at ljós var slokit’ (as soon as the light
had been extinguished).30 It must be likely, therefore, that Herrauðr is well
aware of what his foster-brother is getting up to a few yards away, although

the conventions of this kind of story oblige us to understand that the young
woman’s elderly parents are oblivious inside their lokrekkja.
There is undoubtedly something of the French fabliau in these episodes
although the details of the sleeping arrangements are believably those
of a farmhouse in the Old Norse world. A particularly masterful English
27 Bósa saga, at p. 298.

28 Bósa saga, pp. 298–300. For the later iterations, see pp. 308–10 and 315–16. The last
iteration abridges the final part of the action.
29 Bósa saga, p. 298.
30 Bósa saga, p. 308.
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David Ashurst
example of the fabliau genre, and one that points up the shared heritage of
bed-hopping in a more or less communal sleeping space, in which one man
knows that his friend is having sex whilst another does not, is Chaucer’s
‘Reeve’s Tale’; as with the Shakespeare, Melville, and Classical references
above, a brief overview of this is appropriate as a means of setting the Old
Norse treatment of the topos in its wider cultural context. Two young men
are guests at a mill near Cambridge: initially they share a bed; later, one lies
awake, aware that the other has gone to have sex with the miller’s daughter;
stimulated by this, the less lucky one contrives to have sex with the miller’s
wife – all of them being in the same room, where the miller is sleeping
soundly. It all goes wrong when one of the young men returns to his friend’s
bed, as he thinks, and gleefully crows over his sexual adventure – only to
find that he has climbed into the miller’s bed in the dark and that the miller
is suddenly wide awake.31 On one level, the comic mix-up over the beds in
Chaucer’s tale serves to emphasise the importance of the idea, common also
to Old Norse literature, that male bedpartners will split up to have sex with
women but then return to each other, as indeed they must if they are to evade
detection in circumstances where the sexual activity would be frowned on by
the man of the house. In the case of Chaucer’s story, it is easy to imagine that,
had there been no mix-up, the crowing of one bedpartner would have been
followed by similar boasting from the other, and so the bond between the two
young men would have been strengthened by their friendly rivalry over their
exploits with women – a perspective on things that is quite recognisable in
modern society. A slightly more sober version of this topos is also evident in
Bósa saga, since Bósi leaves Herrauðr in their shared bed to go on his pleasure-
seeking fact-finding missions before returning to him there to report on what
the supposedly grateful women had divulged post coitum. Herrauðr must
understand the context in which the information has been gathered, even if
he may have slept through the process, and is happy to make use of it in the
endeavours he shares with his foster-brother.
A much more serious French-derived Old Norse work that exhibits the
separation-and-return topos between male bedpartners, and incidentally
illustrates the conventional understanding that a king is likely to sleep with
his wife or female concubine in a room full of other men, is Tristrams saga ok
Ísöndar.
The latter issue becomes apparent when King Markis has started to suspect
his wife, Ísönd, of having an affair with Tristram. A plan is hatched ‘því kóngr
vill enn freista þeira í svefnhúsi sínu leyniliga’ (because the king again wants
to test them secretly in his bedroom).32 Night comes, and ‘þá lét kóngr engan
þar vera nema Tristram einn’ (then the king allowed no man to be present
31 Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The Reeve’s Tale’, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson
et al., 3rd edn (Oxford, 1988), pp. 78–84, at lines 4168–270.
32 Tristrams saga, p. 142.
192
except Tristram alone).33 It is clear from this that the saga writer takes it for
granted that Markis and his wife would frequently be surrounded by other
men, and that he is thinking specifically of the king’s high-status warriors is
implied by the fact that two other people do remain in the bedroom, namely
Ísönd’s maid and ‘hinn illi dvergr’ (the evil dwarf) responsible for the plan of
sprinkling flour on the floor so that it will be obvious whether Tristram goes
to join Queen Ísönd in the king’s bed once Markis has slipped away.34
The former point, about male sleeping-companions, is well illustrated by
an earlier passage, which also emphasises the powerfully emotional nature of
the ties that can exist between such men:
Tristram átti einn félaga, er hann unni mjök vel með öllum trúnaði ok
fögrum félagskap, ok var hann ræðismaðr […] ok var hann kallaðr
at nafni Maríadokk. Þeir fylgðuz jafnan, Tristram ok hann, ok höfðu
báðir eitt herbergi. Ok bar svá til eina nátt, at þeir svávu báðir samt,
ok er ræðismaðr var í sæng kominn í svefn, þá stalz Tristram braut frá
honum.35
(Tristram had a certain associate whom he loved very well in all

good faith and beautiful fellowship, and he was a counsellor […] and
he was called Maríadokk by name. They always accompanied each
other, Tristram and he, and the two of them had one room. And it so
happened one night that they were sleeping both together, and when
the counsellor had fallen asleep in bed, Tristram stole away from him.)
Rather like Bósi slipping out of Herrauðr’s bed for one of his encounters,
Tristram has slipped out of Meríadokk’s to spend quality time with Ísönd.
Unfortunately Meríadokk, who is not at this stage aware of the liaison
between his bedpartner and Ísönd, suffers a nightmare, to which he reacts
in a way that indicates the easy intimacy between the men: he wakes up
‘af mæði ok angri’ (through exhaustion and grief), reaches for his friend
because he wants to tell him about the dream but, finding him gone, gets up
out of bed; thinking no ill but puzzled as to why Tristram would have gone
out into the night without saying anything, he follows his footprints in the
snow; guessing, true to the topos, that there is an erotic adventure involved,
he imagines that his félagi is interested in Ísönd’s maid – so he carries on

quietly in order to see.36 Thus he discovers the truth and returns silently to
the shared room, divided in his loyalties and suffering great perplexity over
what he should do. The separation-and-return theme is then completed with
what looks like an overt negation of the final element of talking in bed: ‘Sem
Tristram kom aptr, þá lagðiz hann í rekkju hjá honum, ok gat hvárrgi fyrir

36 Tristrams saga, pp. 132 and 134.
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öðrum’ (When Tristram came back, he lay down in bed next to him, and
neither spoke about this to the other).37
The emotional frankness displayed in this romance saga, as seen in the
episode discussed above, is not typical of saga narratives in other genres;
nevertheless, it is clear that men in native saga narratives not only develop
emotional ties to their bedpartners but can also choose them on the basis of
an emotional attraction. Snorri’s Heimskringla version of ‘Óláfs saga helga’
offers a good example of this in its account of the friendship that springs
up between Ásmundr Grankelsson and Karli inn háleyski (Karli í Langey):
Ásmundr has been appointed to a stewardship in Hálogaland by King Óláfr;
going north on the business of his stewardship he arrives in Langey and for
the first time meets Karli, a wealthy and much respected man whom Snorri
says was ‘fríðr sýnum ok skartsmaðr mikill’ (handsome in appearance and a
great lover of display); Karli wants to meet King Óláfr, so Ásmundr agrees
to take him into his company and to sponsor him when they reach the king;
as they sail south, they enquire about the movements of Ásmundr’s enemy,
Ásbjǫrn Selsbani Sigurðarson.38 At this point Snorri makes an interjection:
‘Þeir Ásmundr ok Karli váru rekkjufélagar, ok var þar it kærsta’ (Ásmundr
and Karli were bedpartners, and there was very great affection there).39 The
purpose of this apparent non sequitur seems to be to indicate the motivation
for Karli’s support, or at least acquiescence, when Ásmundr kills Ásbjǫrn
as their ships chance to pass each other at sea.40 This action ultimately has
terrible consequences in that Ásbjǫrn’s avenger, Þórir hundr Þórisson, uses
the same spear with which Ásmundr had killed Ásbjǫrn to kill first Karli
and then the king himself;41 nevertheless, Snorri is at pains to point out that
Ásmundr and Karli themselves tell Óláfr about Karli’s part in the killing
of Ásbjǫrn, that Karli becomes Óláfr’s retainer (in fact he later becomes a
high-ranking official and business partner of the king’s), and above all that
‘Heldu þeir Ásmundr vel vináttu sína’ (Karli and Ásmundr maintained their
friendship staunchly).42
The description of Karli as a skartsmaðr probably relates to the thick torque
that he takes from a heathen idol and is wearing at the time of his death,
and which is subsequently a source of contention.43 Karli’s love of display
fulfils no other role in his story, unless it is that Ásmundr likes the company
of flamboyant men. In any case, it is apparent that the two men take to each
37 Tristrams saga, p. 134; the final phrase, however, could be rendered as ‘and neither
spoke about it in front of others’.
38 Heimskringla II, pp. 211–12; see also Den store Saga om Olav den hellige, pp. 320–21.
In what follows, references will be to the Heimskringla text, but the treatment in the
‘Separate Saga’ is the same.
41 Heimskringla II, pp. 233 and 385.
42 Heimskringla II, p. 213; for Karli’s later status, see p. 227.
43 Heimskringla II, pp. 231 and 251.
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other rapidly and, given their status, are not forced by circumstances to
become rekkjufélagar but choose to do so as an expression and deepening
of their friendship. The terminology of Snorri’s interjection, together with
his approving remark about the friends’ continued staunchness at the royal
court, indicates that the relationship between the rekkjufélagar was recognised
and accepted for what it was, whilst Óláfr helgi’s acceptance of the men, his
subsequent promotion of Karli, and his avenging of Karli’s death, confirm
that neither Karli nor Ásmundr was, according to the values of the eleventh
and thirteenth centuries, like ‘a mare among stallions’. For this reason, a
subsequent interjection by Snorri, quoting the saying that ‘hverr á vin með
óvinum’ (every man has a friend among enemies, or alternatively ‘a friend
along with enemies’) should not be understood as reflecting badly on the
friendship, and on Óláfr’s approval, but as affirming the reality, especially in
a feud based society, that every friendship that is faithful and true comes with
responsibilities and unpredictable consequences; in this case, the particular
consequence is that news of the friendship and of Karli’s supporting role in
the killing of Ásbjǫrn reaches Þórir hundr, Ásbjǫrn’s avenger, thus making
Karli a target.44
A fine example of a faithful and true friendship that is acted out to the
death, in all sober fact, during the thirteenth century, can be found in Hákonar
saga (it occurs in 1222, to be precise): a Norwegian ship carrying Ívarr útvík,
one of the king’s sýslumenn (stewards), is overwhelmed and capsizes in
strong currents and high seas: ‘Jógrímr hét maðr er Ívari kom á kjöl, ok hinn
þriði maðr komsk á kjölinn’ (Jógrímr was the name of the man who got Ívarr
on to the keel, and a third man got himself on to the keel); a nearby ship puts
out a rescue boat, ‘ok kom Jógrímr þeim í bátinn. Ok þá lézk Jógrímr eigi sjá
Þorsteinn, félaga sinn, ok hljóp þá enn á sund í röstina. Ok þar lézk hann ok
allir þeir er á váru skipinu nema þeir tveir einir, Ívarr ok annarr maðr’ (and
Jógrímr got them into the boat. But then Jógrímr said he did not see Þorsteinn,
his partner, and then leapt back into the water, into the currents. And there
he died with all those who were on the ship except those two alone, Ívarr and
the other man).45 Neither Jógrímr nor Þorsteinn is mentioned anywhere else
in the saga, so their appearance at this point can have only two functions: first
to explain the circumstances of Ívarr’s survival thanks to Jógrímr’s strength

and dutifulness towards his superior, and then to impress the reader with
Jógrímr’s fidelity to the bond he shares with Þorsteinn, for he does not lose
his life on account of general heroics or the desire to save anyone he can find,
but because he is seeking that one man, his félagi.46 He accepts the respon-
sibilities and the unpredictable consequences of the bond he has entered

45 Hákonar saga, vol. 1, pp. 252–3. For the date of these events, see p. 251.
46 As it happens, the saga’s account of Ívarr útvík gives an example of a friendship
that is not lived up to: Ívarr becomes sworn brothers with a man called Guðólfr
blakkr, ‘ok váru góðir félagar’ (and they were good partners); he shares the
stewardship of Oslo with him, ‘ok varði engis nema góðs’ (and expected nothing
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into, even though it costs him his life – and who can doubt that a powerful
emotional commitment is part of this?
Given that they are at sea together, it is likely that Jógrímr and Þorsteinn
are húðfatsfélagar, a húðfat being literally a ‘hide-vessel’, hence a kind of
leather travel bag, especially a sea-bag that could partly be used to sleep
in as well as to carry goods in, and the term húðfatsfélagar being used as an
equivalent to rekkjufélagar (or indeed hvílufélagar, another obvious term for
bedpartners).47 It is so used, in fact, in Hákonar saga just a page or two after
the anecdote of Jógrímr’s death has been narrated: Skúli jarl, stationed mostly
in Túnsberg¸ has received intelligence about the Ribbungar, the opponents of
the king and him, and decides to send a force against them; he orders that
‘þar sem húðfatsfélagar váru tveir skyldu þeir hluta með sér hvárr fara skyldi.
Þeir váru rekkjufélagar, Þórir flík ok Játgeirr skáld, ok hlaut Játgeirr at fara’
(where there were two húðfatsfélagar, they were to cast lots between them as
to which was to go. Þórir flík and Játgeirr the poet were bedpartners, and
Játgeirr drew the lot to go).48 The félagar duly split up, Játgeirr goes off with
the army, there is a battle on Kýrfjall in which the Ribbungar are killed or put
to flight, Skúli’s men return to Túnsberg, and Þórir asks his old mate how the
expedition has gone. At this point Játgeirr recites a scornful verse, which will
be the last passage to be discussed here; it returns to the theme enunciated
by Þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld in his recitation of Bjarkamál and encapsulates
several of the issues elaborated above:
Rjóðr, sá ek hlækinn heðna,

hjaldrdrifs, á Kýrfjalli,
stirðaurriða storðar,
stórfjarri mér Þóri.
Þat frá ek líkn, þá er lékum,
lungtorgs, við Ribbunga,
dásinn lá at við dísi
dvergranns í Túnsbergi.49
(Reddener of the sword [battle-drift > flight of arrows, ground of the

flight of arrows > shield, stiff trout of the shield > sword], on Kýrfjall
I saw the snuggly Þórir furry-tunic a very long way from me. I heard
it was his heart’s [lung market-place > breast = heart] comfort, as we
but good); however, he is attacked and robbed by Guðólfr and his men. Hákonar
saga, vol. 1, p. 229.
47 See Fritzner, s.v. húðfat and húðfatsfélagi. Þorleifur Hauksson, Sverrir Jakobsson,
and Tor Ulset regard the primary function of a húðfat as being that of a sleeping-
bag: ‘svefnpoki úr skinni, sem men notuðu einkum á ferðalögum’; Hákonar saga,
vol. 1, p. 254, n. 1.
49 Hákonar saga, vol. 1, stanza 16, p. 254. See also Játgeirr Torfason, ‘Lausvísa’, ed.
Kari Ellen Gade, in Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2, ed. Kari Ellen Gade (Turnhout,
2009), pp. 652–53.
196
sported with the Ribbungar, that the loafer lay with a woman [dwarf-
house > stone, goddess of stone > woman] in Túnsberg.)
This is the sole surviving stanza by the Icelander Játgeirr Torfason, but he
is listed in Skádatal as having composed poems for several rulers in Norway
and Denmark;50 the anecdote above marks his first appearance in Hákonar
saga, but he goes on in the subsequent account to be a valued retainer of
Skúli jarl, siding with him against King Hákon and meeting his death as the
eventual result of a failed diplomatic mission on Skúli’s behalf.51 Here one
can observe a variation of the separation-and-return topos where, in this
case, it is the male bedpartner remaining in the shared bed who has sex with
a woman while the other partner goes off on the manly pursuits of war, and
it is the one who does not have sex who gives a report on sexual activity to
the one who does. The warrior’s disdain for sex with women, as outlined at
the start of this discussion and visible in the lines quoted from Bjarkamál, is
clearly present in Játgeirr’s second helmingr, as is the misogyny that is bound
to underlie such sentiments: it is not certain whether the kenning for ‘woman’
used here is pejorative in its connotations although it does, in a manner,
link Þórir’s sex-partner with dwarfs; however, it is unmistakable in any case
that Játgeirr’s gibe depends on the idea that Þórir, who used to sleep with a
proper man who goes soldiering, now lolls in bed with a mere woman – a
‘kicky-wicky’, as Shakespeare puts it.52 The concern about a male ‘spending
his manly marrow’ is also present:53 the designation of Þórir as dásinn is a
double-edged insult. Taken as a noun, dásinn means ‘the lazy man’ (hence
‘loafer’, as translated above, or, as Gade suggests, ‘sluggard’);54 taken as an
adjective, it means ‘lazy’ or ‘sluggish’.55 Játgeirr’s insult gets its twofold force
partly from the idea that a layabout is exactly the kind of man who will waste
his time in dalliance with women, which informs the insult against Grettir
Ásmundarson quoted above, and partly from the alleged fact that even a
brisk man will become sluggish if he is too often in the company of women,
expending his ‘marrow’ – which informs the abovementioned insult against
Glúmr Óleifsson.56 There may, furthermore, be a certain level of seepage
between the connotations of the stanza’s adjective dásinn (spelled dasinn by
Guðbrandur Vigfússon in his dictionary and his edition of Hakonar Saga [sic.])
and the term dasaðr (exhausted, spent), which are linked semantically by the
concept of enervation.57
50 Játgeirr Torfason, ‘Lausvísa’, p. 652.

51 Hákonar saga, vol. 2, pp. 35, 45, 59, 70, and 118.
52 See note 4 above. Shakespeare, All’s Well, II.iii, line 277.
53 Shakespeare, All’s Well, II.iii, line 278.
54 Játgeirr Torfason, ‘Lausvísa’, p. 652. See also Lexicon poeticum, s.v. dási.
55 See Lexicon poeticum, s.v. dásinn.
56 See notes 3 and 6 above.
57 Cleasby-Vigfússon, sv. dasinn; Hakonar Saga and a Fragment of Magnus Saga, ed.
Gudbrand Vigfusson (London, 1887), p. 72.
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It will be apparent from the above that Játgeirr’s second helmingr is largely
conventional in substance. Likewise, in the first helmingr, the phallic imagery
of the ‘stiff trout’ is standard fare although its use in the present context is
especially appropriate.58 If it is asked whether there was any real animus
on Játgeirr’s part – and, if so, why – it would be easy to imagine that it
stemmed from envy: the poet has risked his life in battle and suffered the
discomforts of active service in the field, so he envies the ease and sexual
gratification that his old mate has been enjoying, and he expresses that envy
by hitting out with the usual hostile tropes. In addition to envy, however,
could Játgeirr have been motivated by a species of jealousy? Could he have
felt that Þórir was ‘his’ and that the woman was taking him away? Given
the Christian social conventions of Iceland and Norway at the time (again,
this was happening in 1222) and the importance of ergi as a concept, it is
unlikely that a poet would imply that he had sexual relations, or wanted to
have them, with another man, so the possibility that Játgeirr was expressing
a lover’s jealousy should be discounted.59 Men who regularly shared a bed,
nevertheless, must also have shared a level of intimacy that would seem odd,
or even erotic, to many people in the modern world, especially in the West:
unless medieval Scandinavian men were physiologically and psychologi-
cally different from Renaissance and modern men in radical ways, they must
have been aware of one another’s erotic dreams, as illustrated by the Othello
quotation above; they must have seen or felt one another’s morning erections;
they would not habitually have slept without touching, like Brynhildr and
Sigurðr with a sword between them as a preventative measure that would
have been redundant between men.60 There is no reason to believe that
58 For a discussion of aspects of the use of phallic imagery in Old Norse skaldic verse,
see Kari Ellen Gade, ‘Penile Puns: Personal Names and Phallic Symbols in Skaldic
Poetry’, Essays in Medieval Studies: Proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association 6
(1989), 57–67.
59 For the date, see Hákonar saga, vol. 1, pp. 251 and 255. Concerning ergi, see Preben
Meulengracht Sørensen, The Unmanly Man: Concepts of Sexual Defamation in Early
Northern Society, trans. Joan Turville-Petre (Odense, 1983), pp. 18–20.
60 See note 8 above: Shakespeare, Othello, III.iv, lines 418 and 426–29. Völsunga saga,
pp. 50 and 61. It is possible, or even likely, that particular pairs of bedpartners
were lovers and/or that they engaged in sexual intercourse. Given the heavy
emphasis on the shame a man would be subjected to on account of ergi, and in
particular of being supposed sorðinn (sexually penetrated – see Sørensen, Unmanly
Man, pp. 17–18), it is also possible that men, whom the modern world would see
as primarily heterosexual, engaged in non-penetrative activities, such as mutual
or communal masturbation, without regarding them as ‘real’ sex. Some slight
evidence for communal masturbation may be detectable in stanza 2 of Bjarnar
saga Hítdœlakappa, in which Björn contrasts the activities of himself, and possibly
the crew of the ship he is on, with the sexual intercourse enjoyed by his beloved
Oddný and her husband: Oddný is vigorously bounced on the feather-bed,
‘meðan vel stinna vinnum […] ǫ́r’ (while we [or ‘I’, since the skaldic plural may be
in use here] labour to make the soft oar properly stiff); Bjarnar saga, stanza 2.5 and
6. For a well-evidenced discussion of the likelihood that men in an Early Modern
198
such routine intimacies were an embarrassment to rekkjufélagar, and every

reason to suppose that they were a part of the special bond, both comfortable
and comforting, between the particular men who shared them; therefore
it is reasonable to conclude that they could, in themselves, be the basis for
jealousy if they were shared with another person, especially a woman, over
a period of time.
In the case of Játgeirr’s stanza, there may be a hint of this. The use of the
term hlækinn (translated above as ‘snuggly’) as an epithet for Þórir is striking.
Gade suggests ‘cuddly’ as the translation, whilst Finnur Jónsson, in Lexicon
poeticum, gives kælen, umandig (affectionate or amorous, unmanly).61 Finnur
catches the complexity of the potential insult, since to be ‘affectionate’ or
‘amorous’ can, in some circumstances, be ‘unmanly’, but Gade catches the
physical reality: if Játgeirr’s intention is to disparage Þórir at this point in
the stanza, then hlækinn implies that he is a soft unmanly man who enjoys
caresses and the comfort of sleepy physical contact like a child or pet dog;
in the context of the saga narrative, however, it is impossible not to notice
that, if Þórir is indeed a cuddler, Játgeirr is the person best placed to know.
The nickname-epithet heðni, from heðinn, furthermore, is intriguing because it
implies some kind of hairy covering (or lack of it) on the upper body: Lexicon
poeticum gives skind, skindpels (skin, fur); Fritzner gives laaden Skindkjortel
(leather skin-tunic); Zoëga gives ‘jacket of fur or skin’; Gade suggests
‘woolly-shirt’.62 Lexicon poeticum and Gade note that the term relates to Þórir’s
nickname, flík, which signifies a part, or flap, of clothing;63 this is certainly
the case, but it does not explain why Játgeirr’s term is associated with a pelt
or hide. In the context of bedsharing, an obvious answer would be that it is
a reference to Þórir’s hirsute (or, alternatively, glabrous) body, with which
Játgeirr would be intimately acquainted. Although they look like a couple of
taunts, therefore, hlækinn and heðni can be read together as an angry procla-
mation of intimacy, an indignant claiming of knowledge and hence of the
person, an expression of a recognised and acceptable jealousy.
Jón Viðar Sigurðsson above all others – but also Durrenberger and Gísli
Pálsson, Gaskins, Auður Magnúsdóttir, Miller, and Byock – has written
context could fail to recognise as real sex the activities they engaged in while in
bed together, see Alan Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (London, 1982),
pp. 67–69. The present discussion does not seek to argue that any sexual activity,
whether recognised as such or not, actually took place between male bedpartners;
nor would the analysis above be affected if it did. It has already been argued that,
if Játgeirr had what was recognised as sex with Þórir, he would not have drawn
attention to the fact; on the other hand, if he and Þórir engaged in activities that
did not count as real sex, they would simply be numbered among the standard
intimacies.
61 Játgeirr Torfason, ‘Lausvísa’, p. 652; Lexicon poeticum, s.v. hlœkinn.
62 Lexicon poeticum, s.v. heðinn; Fritzner, s.v. heðinn; Zoëga, s.v. heðinn; Játgeirr
Torfason, ‘Lausvísa’, pp. 652 and 653.
63 Lexicon poeticum, s.v. heðinn; Játgeirr Torfason, ‘Lausvísa’, p. 653.
199
David Ashurst
extensively on friendship in the Old Norse world.64 In general the focus has
been on the practical and political benefits of friendship, how friendship
intersected with kinship, how it was facilitated and regulated by law or
mitigated the law, how it affected or informed relations between Icelandic
chieftains or Norwegian rulers and men of lower status, how it was drawn
into the teachings of the Church, how it related to the formation of networks
and how these contributed to the establishment of state-like social entities,
and how it helped keep those entities in a condition of evolution or dynamic
stability.65 The above discussion, in contrast, has focused on saga representa-
tions of shared sleeping arrangements between men, primarily the sharing of
beds, and has sought to show how these practices were both the basis and
the expression of powerful bonds, pragmatic and emotional, that informed
the behaviour, attitudes, and aspirations of the individuals who entered
into them. Laws and other binding norms were, of course, a part of these
bonds – men who went on seafaring expeditions and became huðfatsfélagar,
for example, made legal agreements and incurred legal responsibilities –
but they have not been discussed here; rather it has been shown that the
anecdotes represented above make complete sense on their own terms, and
that legal considerations, whilst relevant, are not essential. At the same time
the discussion has foregrounded kinds of masculine performance that are
no longer current, at least in the forms investigated here, and which are not
always fully recognised by modern readers, who are apt to think in terms
of modern hetero-normativity and of actual or repressed homosexuality.
64 Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Viking Friendship: The Social Bond in Iceland and Norway, c.
900–1300 (Ithaca, 2017); Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, ‘Friendship in the Icelandic Free
State Society’, in From Sagas to Society: Comparative Approaches to Early Iceland, ed.
Gísli Pálsson (Enfield Lock, 1992), pp. 205–15; Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, ‘Forholdet
mellom frender, hushold og venner på Island i fristatstiden’, Historisk tidskrift 74
(1995), 311–30; Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, ‘The Changing Role of Friendship in Iceland,
c. 900–1300’, in Friendship and Social Networks in Scandinavia, c. 1000–1800, ed.
Jón Viðar Sigurðsson and Thomas Småberg (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 43–64; E. Paul
Durrenberger and Gísli Pálsson, ‘The Importance of Friendship in the Absence
of States, According to the Icelandic Sagas’, in The Anthropology of Friendship,
ed. Sandra Bell and Simon Coleman (Oxford, 1999), pp. 59–77; Richard Gaskins,
‘Political Development in Early Iceland: Applying Network Theory to the Sagas’,

in Applications of Network Theories, ed. Susanne Kramarz-Bein and Birge Hilsmann
(Berlin, 2014), pp. 10–33; Auður Magnúsdóttir, ‘“Þeir Kjartan ok Bolli unnusk
mest”: Om kärlek och svek i Laxdæla saga’, in ‘Vi ska alla vara välkomna!’ Nordiska
studier tillägnade Kristinn Jóhannesson, ed. Auður Magnúsdóttir, Henrik Janson et
al. (Gothenburg, 2008), pp. 65–81; William Ian Miller, ‘Justifying Skarphéðinn:
Of Pretext and Politics in the Icelandic Bloodfeud’, Scandinavian Studies 55 (1983),
316–44; William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society
in Saga Iceland (Chicago, 1990), p. 107; Jesse L. Byock, Feud in the Icelandic Saga
(Berkeley,1982), pp. 42, 75, and 217; Jesse L. Byock, Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas,
and Power (Berkeley, 1988), pp. 131–32; Jesse L. Byock, Viking Age Iceland (London,
2001), p. 135.
65 For a discussion of friendship in an ecclesiastical context, see also Carl Phelpstead’s
chapter in the present volume.
200
That a man can cease to be manly through having sex with women, as
implied by Játgeirr’s stanza and in other passages featured above, remains
counter-intuitive to many people; that a soldier such as Játgeirr, in a society
deeply anxious about any loss of masculinity, can publicly express irate
jealousy over the cuddles of a hairy man in bed, and yet not be confessing
to homosexual desires, will seem odd, or preposterous, to many who have
just read the argument here; and that male bedpartners would typically split
up in order to have sex with women before returning to the shared bed to
reaffirm the primacy of the male bond – as again touched on in Játgeirr’s
stanza and elsewhere in this discussion – will strike many as being either a
male fantasy or, if real, just yet another manifestation of masculine hegemony
and the depersonalising of women (as indeed it was).
The kinds of expected male practice, and hence the form of masculinity,
that have been teased out of the various texts discussed here display some
limited similarities to several masculinities that can be observed in current
society, but the differences are profound. The primacy of the male bond that
is reaffirmed after the male-bonded pairs, or groups, have split up to have sex
with relatively depersonalised women finds a correlative in the modern stere-
otype of lad or frat boy culture, but the routine sharing of a bed, and all the
intimacy that goes with it, plays no part in the stereotype. The easy-going and
normally non-sexual sharing of beds is to some extent paralleled by the habits
of modern sportsmen, especially in their university days, when their teams or
clubs travel to an away match or race, and the choice of who shares a bed with
whom can be recognised and articulated as having emotional resonance: ‘You
pick someone you trust, and it deepens your friendship.’66 This is not so very
far removed in spirit from the medieval bedsharing discussed above, but it
is profoundly different in that it is occasional behaviour that fulfils a specific
purpose, and there is no expectation that the bedpartners will continue to
sleep together every night unless their friendship turns into a love affair;
rather, there is a strong expectation that they will not. In fact, none of the
masculinities observable in the modern cultures of the western world makes
a good fit, despite some parallels, with the forms of expected masculine
behaviour displayed by male bedpartners as portrayed in Old Norse liter-
ature: their masculinity appears as something very rich but strange.

Possibly strangest of all to many modern readers but familiar to medieval
audiences is a matter not expressed by Játgeirr, and that is the religious
aspect of bedsharing. No medieval Christian could hear the story of how
Jógrímr hurled himself back into the deadly currents in order to search for
his félagi without thinking of Christ’s saying, in John’s Gospel, that ‘greater
love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’.67 The
understanding they would take from the story is that the bond between male
66 Max Robinson, Men’s Captain of Durham University Boat Club 2016–17, in

conversation with the author. Quoted with permission.
67 John 15:13.
201
David Ashurst
partners, especially but not exclusively between male bedpartners, could

inspire the greatest of all loves. The reply of King Óláfr helgi to Þormóðr
Kolbrúnarskáld’s request before the battle of Stiklastaðir, ‘muntu þangat fara
í kveld, sem ek fer’ (tonight you will go to the place where I go), would also
have unmistakable biblical resonance for a medieval audience, for whom
the words of the soon to be martyred saint would parallel those of Christ on
the Cross to the thief who was about to die with him: ‘To day shalt thou be
with me in paradise.’68 Nothing could say more about the importance of the
subject of this discussion for an Old Norse audience than that the author of
Fóstbrœðra saga should take a poet’s desire to be with his lord in paradise and
affirm as its earthly symbol and correlative the wish to be beside him in the
here and now, sleeping with him.
68 Fóstbrœðra saga, p. 264 (Hauksbók text, i.e. main text); Luke 23:43.
202

Ashurst Masculinity in Old Norse

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Ashurst Masculinity in Old Norse

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Male Bedpartners and the ‘Intimacies of a

Wife’: rekkjufélagar and vífs rúnar

‘Vaki æ ok vaki’ (Awake! Oh, but awake!) cried Þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld

vekka yðr at víni

Thus Þormóðr gives voice to a warrior’s rueful, bordering on contemptuous,

1 Heimskringla II, pp. 361–62, lines 141.5 and 142.5–8.

Similar sentiments are encountered elsewhere in Old Norse literature,

To th’ wars, my boy, to th’ wars!

MA, 1946), X.ii.27.

naturalness of same-sex bedsharing visible in Old Norse literature goes

Þat er sagt, at Þormóðr var heldr ókátr um daginn fyrir bardagann.

gistingar í kveld. Nú ef þú heitr mér því, at vit munim til einnar

10 Heimskringla II, p. 362.

Þormóðr moves on to rejoicing in its metaphorical fulfilment: he is pierced by

‘slander’ theme when he responds to Þormóðr’s statement of the offensive

with the suicidal Brynhildr Buðladóttir in Völsunga saga: ‘Gjarna vilda ek at

22 Fóstbrœðra saga, p. 259.

aware of what his foster-brother is getting up to a few yards away, although

27 Bósa saga, at p. 298.

(Tristram had a certain associate whom he loved very well in all

he imagines that his félagi is interested in Ísönd’s maid – so he carries on

33 Tristrams saga, p. 142.

to explain the circumstances of Ívarr’s survival thanks to Jógrímr’s strength

44 Heimskringla II, p. 213.

Rjóðr, sá ek hlækinn heðna,

(Reddener of the sword [battle-drift > flight of arrows, ground of the

50 Játgeirr Torfason, ‘Lausvísa’, p. 652.

such routine intimacies were an embarrassment to rekkjufélagar, and every

‘Political Development in Early Iceland: Applying Network Theory to the Sagas’,

ature: their masculinity appears as something very rich but strange.

66 Max Robinson, Men’s Captain of Durham University Boat Club 2016–17, in

partners, especially but not exclusively between male bedpartners, could

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