How To Swear Like A Viking

*TRIGGER WARNING: CONTAINS OLD NORSE SWEAR WORDS* How would you insult a Viking? What strange nicknames did they give each other? And what did a Viking rap battle sound like?! Brush up on your Old Norse and impress your friends with the most obscene Viking swear words. To help you out and talk Kate through the reasons behind their offensive language is historian and author Dr Eleanor Barraclough https://eleanorbarraclough.com/. This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Check out the new Betwixt The Sheets YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@BetwixtTheSheetsPodcast Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:35Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely Betwixters, it's me, Kate Lester. Welcome back once again to Betwixt the Sheets. Hello, is this where you wanted to be? Is this the podcast you were supposed to be listening to? You didn't want The Rest Is History or some other app like that? This is the right one? Okay, well, fabulous. I'm so glad to have you here. But before we go any further, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults, to other adults, about adult things, and adulty way of living, or subjects you should be an adult to. Right, let's crack on.

• 1:06Kate Lister?

  Come and pull up a pub, Betwixters. The year is 950 AD, and we happen to be just down the road from me in the city of York, or Jorvik, as they would have said in Old Norse. And I have been dabbling in Old Norse, because, well, I saw the way that the winds were blowing, and I've welcomed our Viking overlords, quite frankly. But now we're down the pub, and there seems to be some kind of disagreement unfolding. Like I said, my Old Norse is a little bit rusty, but I definitely heard somebody dropping an unforgivable insult. The gist of it is that the man has been impregnated by a troll and given birth to its baby. Now, that's a hell of an insult. I don't think I would ever come back to that. Actually, it looks like things are about to turn a bit nasty, so let's make ourselves

• 1:49Kate Lister?

  scarce and find out more about Viking insults and what they tell us about them as a people.

• 2:19Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex, scandal and society with me, Kate Lister. When you think about it, insults reveal a lot about a society's pressure points, what their cultural values are, what they find disgusting, and what prejudices they have. The Vikings were no different. So what kind of zingers would they be slinging at one another? Either in jest or in anger? To take us back to the early medieval period and teach us how to swear like a Viking is the wonderful historian and author Eleanor Barakluf. So without further ado, let's crack on.

• 2:56Kate Lister?

  Well, hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Eleanor Barakluf. How are you doing?

• 3:03Speaker 01

  I am so well, thank you so much. Also, for anyone who isn't watching this, we have to talk about the amazing dungarees you're wearing, because they are very on-brand.

• 3:14Kate Lister?

  We were just talking before the show started. Eleanor has a pair as well, and we should have both been wearing them. Is they, they are the, what are they called? The vulva dungarees, where they're covered in fruit, but the fruit looks suspiciously, suspiciously like vulvas.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Wonderfully like vulvas. These are, these are so good. Yeah, I should pop in and get changed. I've got them in my cupboard inside.

• 3:33Kate Lister?

  We'll make a date for next time, and then we can twin. We can wear obscene-themed clothing.

• 3:41Kate Lister?

  But if only we were here to talk more about obscene-themed clothing. But we are, we're here to talk about obscenity. We're here to talk about swearing and the Vikings.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  I think it's going to get fruity, as you might say.

• 3:52Kate Lister?

  Oh, well done.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 3:54Kate Lister?

  Well done. I think the first thing we should probably talk about is, is the language of the Vikings. Because Vikings is that sort of nebulous term of like, like, what do you mean by Viking? Or like, it covers a huge range of time and people and experiences. So if I was going to say, what language were they speaking? That's probably a really difficult question to answer.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  No, no, no, actually, that's a pretty straightforward question to answer. This is good. Yeah, this is, so we can sort of drop ourselves chronologically. End of the 8th century, you know, 9th, 10th, 11th century is kind of like peak Viking age time. Viking being, actually, it's an Old Norse word, vikingur, like raiders or pirates, right? So we've got ourselves then, the language they spoke, we call Old Norse, and they tended to call norain, which is like northernness, you know, it's a north word. Or sometimes they call it the dunsktingu, which is like the Danish tongue. But it's basically, it's a North Germanic language, and it's the ancestor of particularly modern Icelandic, that's the closest one.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  But then also, you know, Scandinavian languages, so Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Faroese. I'm going to miss one, and then, and then I'm going to feel bad afterwards. But, you know, Icelandic is the closest living descendant to Old Norse.

• 5:10Kate Lister?

  And that's a bugger to try and learn. Like, we went out and filmed a documentary in Icelandic. I didn't learn it. I had this idea that like, months leaded in, I was like, I'll learn some to get by. No, you won't. No, you won't.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Well, this is, I, it's funny, because often, so I learned Old Norse when I was an undergraduate, because that's my bread and butter. It's sort of like, Old Norse is where I started. It's, I've got my PhD, it's like Old Norse, language and literature, basically. So I learnt it with a sort of Icelandic pronunciation, which is quite common, because it's pretty damn similar. You know, we can, I can give an example of some of the differences, but mostly because it's something that's kind of constant, and it's, it's nearest living descendant. But also, there's sort of reconstructed Old Norse pronunciation, which varies in, in sort of fairly subtle ways. Obviously, if you're an Old Norse linguistic expert, they are not subtle. They are crucial and important, and you can hear every single one of them.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  But, but so, yeah, Icelandic, I mean, the, the best way to learn Icelandic, there's, there's a sentence, and it's just like, I will not get the number of hours right, but it's literally au, au, au, au, au, au, you know, on, and it basically, it means something like the farmer who, you know, with the sheep that lives by the river au in the, you know, because there's, there's so many words that have that sort of like, you know, so that's, that's, that's the best way to start Icelandic, you know. But I can give you a little bit of Old Norse?

• 6:36Kate Lister?

  Yeah, please, let's do it.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  With my sort of slightly inaccurate Icelandic pronunciation, but I can, I can tell you the differences. So hovemawl, which is the saying of the Hjárum, is one of the Eddic poems, and it's said to be spoken by Odin, you know, the god with one eye. And it's a very famous verse, and it's

• 7:05Speaker 01

  But there's bits of that that are sort of my slightly ropey Icelandic. So you'd probably say, for example, like, I would be frendi, frender, rather than frender, or kven at the end would be more like kven. So there are differences, and you can see that the language evolves over time a little bit. But the Icelanders were very keen on sort of preserving their language in a way that very much speaks to that original Old Norse.

• 7:36Kate Lister?

  So do you think that if there was a Viking from the 8th century, peak Viking time, and they were having a conversation with a modern-day Icelandic, might they be able to understand each other in the same way that if you were speaking to somebody, if you were speaking to Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales, you'd just about be able to pick out what was being said?

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think very much so. So Icelanders, famously, modern Icelanders can read the Old Norse texts, say, for example, sagas that are written down in the 13th century. So I think it's, it's closer than modern English and Chaucer, you know, definitely.

• 8:08Kate Lister?

  Okay, okay.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  It's pretty close, relatively speaking. But having said that, back in the Viking Age, Old English and Old Norse were not in the same way as modern Icelandic, but similar enough that people could probably have had a sort of slightly grunty, pointy sort of hand gesture, but understanding each other.

• 8:28Kate Lister?

  I was just thinking that when you were saying that. Because I don't, I don't know Icelandic, or certainly don't know Old Norse, but I know a little bit of like Old English, because I used to teach medieval literature. And like, what you were saying there, it does sound like the Anglo-Saxon, like, like, I remember like, the Lord's Prayer in Anglo-Saxon, fedir, has how it starts, and it's got that similar sound to it.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Exactly, and that word like fáðir, you know, yeah, exactly. It's, there's, there's, again, they're Germanic, so sort of old, I'm going to get this wrong now, sort of, I should say, like, I'm, these are very exciting words, I'm sort of in my training, like philologist, rather than linguist. So linguist is sort of like, you know, you're, you're going into the really hardcore structural stuff, and you're reconstructing languages that we don't have any evidence for. Philologist, you're looking at the texts that survive and the, the literature, you know, the language that, you know, so it's, it's more the, the, the literature and the manuscripts than the mechanics, so to speak. So I'm definitely on the softer side, so sagas and poetry and that sort of stuff. But it's an interesting one, because you just end up in a position where you've got

• 9:30Speaker 01

  this northern Germanic branch of languages, and then you've got western Germanic languages, so Old English, it's very close to sort of Frisian, that sort of, you know, those, those languages sort of grouped together. But yeah, they're all part of the same family, essentially.

• 9:45Kate Lister?

  And there's lots of Norse influence in England and in Britain, especially in the North. There's loads of it.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  In areas that the Norse settled quite heavily, it's there particularly in dialect words. So sort of bæn, barn, like child, for example. Like, also there are landscape features, so a bekk, a little stream, bekkur, in Old Norse, or, you know, fæl, fjálf, that, you said, there's lots of those sorts of words. Obviously, it's there in a lot of the place names as well. So, I don't know, at random, Wetherby, like that, or Sourby, Grimsby, that B word is the farm, the settlement. And then it's, you know, the sheep, or different types of sheep, or kind of willows, or someone's personal name, grimer. So that's all there.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  But then, more broadly, it's there in modern English, both in terms of some pretty basic vocabulary, but also structurally speaking in terms of the grammar. So my, my favourite word is glitter. That is such a good one, that comes from Old Norse, because it is not what we think of when we think of Vikings. Such a good word.

• 10:51Kate Lister?

  Glittery Vikings?

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Glittery Vikings. I'm just imagining like, the males, like, with like glitter and their beards going off on their, on their pillaging expectations. Okay, so there are some words you might associate more with the sort of stereotypical idea of a Viking as a pirate raider rather than a settler. So, I don't know, things like die or ransack, ugly, knife, you know, those sorts of words. But then there are other everyday ones that are much more related to that later settlement period. So sort of ninth, 10th century in the area that later becomes known as the Danes law. So we're talking sort of Yorkshire and a Dan East Coast and East Midlands, that sort of area. Was like egg,

• 11:36Speaker 01

  that's a particularly good one. They're still fighting over egg centuries later because there's an Old English and an Old Norse version that is still doing the rounds. And there's a wonderful text where, oh, so I'm just watching, so I'm in the potting shed, I'm watching a squirrel is about to attack my prize pumpkin that I'm about to-

• 11:55Kate Lister?

  Look, Ellen, if you need to duck out for a couple of minutes to protect that pumpkin, mate, you get on it.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  I'm like, don't, don't you be touching that pumpkin.

• 12:01Kate Lister?

  Nobody in the Betwixt family is gonna begrudge you that if you need to get out there and get doing some Viking on that squirrel.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's exactly what I'm thinking. Let's, let's see. I'll, I'll keep one eye in that direction. Yeah. But, um-

• 12:12Kate Lister?

  All right. If the line goes dead, everybody, don't, we're, we're on your side, mate. You go for it.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Don't you be touching that. Thank you. Right. So egg, yes, egg is a really good one. Because there's, there's, there's one story, there's a group of traders and they basically end up, I don't know, they, they have to stay in a guest house essentially. And they're saying, oh, can we have some, can't remember the order of it. It's like, can we have some eggies? Oh, yeah, we want some eggies. And the woman who's running this guest house is like, what do you mean eggies? Like, we wanna eat some eggies. Give us some eggies. She's like, what are you talking about, eggies? And it turns out, she's, oh, you mean aeryn, aeryn. And they're like, yeah, eggies. And she's like, no, aeryn. And it's because the Old English form of the word aeryn is still doing the rounds while the Old Norse form of the word eggies, egg, eggya, is still. And so there's a point

• 13:01Speaker 01

  where basically one drops out, that you can see that process of sort of linguistic transformation going on. And then there's others like-

• 13:08Kate Lister?

  Such an academic argument, that one. That's such like, that is the kind of academic argument where like, you know, bodies are everywhere, lives are irrevocably ruined because people are rowing about what the correct pronunciation of egg was in the ninth century.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Exactly. Somewhere there will be entire conferences being held on exactly that debate.

• 13:28Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  And we've been to them. I will not be attending that. We have been to those. We don't need to go again. I think that's enough. But, um, but there's other really good ones. Things like husbands and cake. Cake is a great one.

• 13:38Kate Lister?

  Oh, thanks Vikings. Yeah. Thank you for that.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Exactly. Skye. So, you know, they, they're sort of more structural grammatical words. So you get this sense of sort of the Norse language, you know, the, the Norse language is not entering into modern, or not modern English, but sort of English as it is spoken at that time, at that point where they're basically rocking up, we're here to pillage your village, sort of raids on places like Lindisfarne, end of the eighth century. It's there in that settlement period where people are actually engaging. And that's where the place names also come in.

• 14:19Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Elna after this short break.

• 14:24Kate Lister?

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• 15:09Kate Lister?

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• 15:48Kate Lister?

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• 15:57Kate Lister?

  Hello Betwixters. I am jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right. It took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 16:39Kate Lister?

  And the really great thing about this, but having, I don't know, if you say the language is well preserved, but it certainly seems to be reasonably well preserved. If modern day Icelandic people can still read the sagas, is that we must have a good idea about what words and insults were offensive to them then.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Yes, this is a really good one. And we should say, in terms of sort of preservation, that's kind of worth thinking about because it affects what we know about things like insults. So in terms of our written texts from, you know, you, you mentioned sagas, you know, they're written down in medieval Iceland, sort of 13th century onwards. But, so we've already talked about how the Viking Age itself, the kind of core of it, is a few centuries earlier than that. And they're, they're, they're not literate. It's a oral based culture. And so it's only later down, when these stories are sort of being transmitted by word of mouth down the generations, that they get recorded. And when we think about

• 17:39Speaker 01

  how do we know what Old Norse sounded like, other than modern languages, we actually have evidence of people trying to make sense of their language and working out how to sort of use the Latin script to write their language.

• 17:55Kate Lister?

  Oh, that's clever.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  So there's, there's one, it's like really catchy. It's called the first grammatical treatises. And that already tells you, there's more than one. There's more than one. But, but they're very much saying, okay, so, you know, this is the sound that we make when we say this word. And so maybe this is how we should write it. And they're trying different ways to make that happen, you know. But in terms of the Viking Age proper, you know, the core of the Viking Age, they're not writing things down, say in manuscripts, but they are using runes. And so that's another way. We can see, you know, what are they saying? And, and, you know, and so that we're using both those and other things when we're thinking

• 18:36Speaker 01

  about, yeah, for example, what's rude? What, what's the sort of, because we're talking about the Viking Age, what's a killing insult? And what's just a kind of like, you know, and there, there was definitely killing insults.

• 18:49Kate Lister?

  The historical linguist Melissa Moher, she said, and I always remembered it was brilliant in one of her books, she said, people swear about what they care about. Did they have a sense of words that were obscene in the way that we have a sense of word? Like to the point where we've got lists, historians for the future will have no trouble working out what was obscene to us, because we have lists of like, you can't say that word. We know, all know what it means. You could, like, like the word cunt, for example. Like, you can say the C word and everyone knows what you mean, but you can't actually make the noise itself. That's too far.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, we've got legal equivalents in, for Old Norse. It's this, it's basically, if someone uses this word, you can kill them, you know, because it's such an insult, right?

• 19:32Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  But there's, we, I mean, maybe we can build up to that because actually the sort, like you say, the sort of C word type words, they're not as bad. They're still sometimes there in, basically, how to put it, you know, what they are concerned about is sexuality and gender, sexual practices. That is the stuff that really gets them going, you know, which is ironic, because you look at, for example, the Old Norse gods, the stories of the Old Norse gods, you've got Loki who literally shapeshifts. And, you know, at one point, he transforms himself into a mare, into a female horse, goes and has sex with a giant stallion and gives birth to Sleipnir, the famous sort of eight-legged horse of Norse mythology.

• 20:18Kate Lister?

  As you do.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  As you do. Or when you have this, and this is actually telling, because they, they, in this, there's, you know, the story of Thor's marriage, where basically the giants steal his hammer, Myrnir. And so, and they say, you can only get it back if Freya, the, the, you know, goddess, marries one of the giants. And she's like, I think not. This is not going to be happening. Thank you very much. And so instead Thor is dressed up in bridal gear and sent off to get married. Or rather, the idea is he's not actually going to get as far as being married. But he's gonna use it as a way to get back his hammer. But once again, Loki transforms himself into a handmaiden to accompany Thor. You know,

• 21:03Speaker 01

  so there's complex ideas of gender and sexuality and behaviour already playing out with gods. Odin himself practises a very female form of magic called savor. You know, so it's not quite that simple. But it's interesting because in the story of Thor going off to the giants, you know, in what we might think of as drag, he uses the absolute, the killing word. He says, people will think me rager or arger. You know, it's the same word. If I do this.

• 21:34Kate Lister?

  Rager or arger.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, like the other word. Like A R G R and rager, just with an R at the front. So with that R at the end, you give it a little rager. Yeah. But it's, it's, arger will also do. I'm sure, again, they would have known what you meant and they'd have probably killed you for it.

• 21:50Kate Lister?

  That would have caused a lot of confusion, wouldn't it, if a Viking was to come back today? Have you seen my new arger in the, in the kitchen, darling?

• 21:56Speaker 01

  And they'd be like, oh, no.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  But so, so but the interesting thing is that's what he says that he's, people are going to call him. And this is from his point of view, this is terrible.

• 22:10Kate Lister?

  What is that? What is that? It's, it's not an oven. What is it? What's, what's an, what's a rager, agar?

• 22:15Speaker 01

  So it's this idea that basically you are, you are subverting or not conforming to the, the norms of your gender. You know, so basically from man, that's usually sort of passive homosexual partner. It's that sort of territory. A bottom. But it's really, it's not, yeah, it's, and it's quite specific. It's, it's so, there are cases where, um, how, it's, it's so weird. It's sort of like, oh, the, the troll of whatever sort of mountain used you as a woman for nine days and you had his babies. The insult is that you're the one, you male, who had his babies. I mean, no, yeah, yeah. So.

• 22:57Kate Lister?

  Troll thing's fine.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  The troll, yeah, trolls are all right. Trolls like, yeah, you know, but it's, it's the idea of being basically penetrated, you know? And the, the, the female equivalent of being rager or agar is more, because obviously sort of penetration is more the norm from their point of view. So it's more about being excessively lustful. It's sort of, it's, it's the equivalent of calling someone a nymphomaniac, you know, that's, that's what's going on there.

• 23:24Kate Lister?

  Oh, make up your mind, lads. Like, which bloody hell? As if like the worst thing you can call a man is a man that, you know, has sex like a woman and presumably doesn't have sex with women. But like, then you're going to insult women by saying, mind you, what am I talking about? That's still the case today. It's still like, you, you still insult masculinity by saying that they're feminine and you still insult women by calling them slags.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Exactly. It is, it is just the same. And also the other thing that's sort of related that you do with women is, again, you say they're masculine, you know? So if you, it's not so much, there's, it's not so much a swear word, but if you put around a rumor that a woman wears trousers, then that's not good. You know, and there's saga, um, stories where basically there's one case where the woman then goes and takes vengeance on the man by dressing up. As exactly as he says, dressing up in trousers and going and sort of cutting him across the nipples, which is again meant to be a really unmanly thing. Yeah. So, so there's all sorts, all sorts of, um, but there's also some words, but honestly, I think we should bring them back and reclaim them because he's excellent words.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  So there's, um, a futhflogi, which is basically, uh, you know, that's, so in, in sort of Scots, you'd still say a fud. I don't know how sort of, I haven't really heard it when I.

• 24:42Kate Lister?

  Yeah, I've, I've heard Scottish people using that word, a fud.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  That's a futh. Yeah. It's the same. Yeah. So a futhflogi is a fudflia, someone who flees from a vagina, basically, you know? It's, so it's, which I think is a great word. I'm like, yeah.

• 24:55Kate Lister?

  See, you'd say that if you were questioning someone's masculinity, that you're a fudflia, basically.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  You're a fudflia, exactly. And then the female equivalent is, so there's the futhflogi and there's the, uh, fanfluga, I think. Which is basically someone who runs away from a penis. So it's the same thing.

• 25:12Kate Lister?

  That's just sensible advice, quite frankly, as far as I'm concerned.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  There have been times in all, all lives, I'm sure, where you just need to flee. Yeah. But one of my favorites is, um, sansurden, so like truly fucked. And again, that's the idea of basically being, I don't know, it's almost like in an old fashioned sense, sort of buggered. You know, you completely, oh, but completely buggered, which we could say sort of metaphorically, as it were, but also sort of physically.

• 25:40Kate Lister?

  We've still got that in our, in our lexicon, haven't we? Like, we're not in those exact words, but if you say someone's fucked or something's buggered.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Exactly. And this is, this is kind of in the ca, in the, in the sense of like very physically so, you know? So, yeah, I think it's just that extension of that. So there's, there's all this, there's, yes, drudin is another one that's very similar. But it, what's really interesting is that we have from medieval Iceland, we have these law codes called graugaus, which means grey goose. And graugaus has words that if someone uses it of you, you can kill them. And it's basically agar, rager and strudin and strudin. So, you know, it's, which are all variants of, of, of that sort of sexual deviancy, as they would, as they would sort of call it. So yeah, absolutely. You can, you can get killed for that.

• 26:30Kate Lister?

  Isn't it strange that, that, that, like, that masculinity is so caught up with that? And that this idea of who is penetrating who, actually it underpins so much of our different cultures. So much of our different cultures. You can see it in, in Greece and you can see it in ancient Rome. You can see it like the oldest worlds. I was talking to an expert on, um, the history of Japan and, um, the warrior culture there. And, and it's all the same thing. It's like that, there is honor attached to being the top, the penetrating person. There is dishonor attached to being the one who is being penetrated if you're both male, which is often why, um, these are pederastic relationships that are set up because the boy becomes a proxy woman because he isn't a man yet.

• 27:14Kate Lister?

  So therefore it doesn't upset this strange dynamic that's going on.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  Exactly. And basically underlying that is, like, women are.

• 27:23Kate Lister?

  Yeah, don't be a girl. That's the worst thing that you could possibly ever, ever, ever be in these cultures. It's like, it's to the point where you can kill somebody if, because basically what they say is that you have sex like a woman and you're not a man.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Yep, exactly that. And there is actually sort of, other than the law codes, there's a sort of rune stick, like literally like a piece of wood that where they carved runes into it. And it's from Oslo and it's, I think, around maybe kind of 12th century, 13th century, something like that. But it, it's two men, it seems, writing, uh, to each other, sort of in runes and then like kind of passing the stick over and then doing the next bit. And there's, you know, he says, what's that message that you carved when you were in the church of the cross? Like basically they're in, they were in another church. And then it's, the other one says, yeah, Uli, which is a man's name, is unwiped and fucked in the ass.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  And that's, you know, and they're basically, they're, they're specifically, they are, obviously this is a different, you know, these few hundred years. I say a few hundred years later. I mean, it's probably still current, but it's like within a Christian context. When I'm not, you know, other things are like layered on top of this. And then the first hot hand like carves again is like, yeah, that went well then. And it's just like, I, I don't want to sort of say, maybe old school rugby banter. That's what it feels like to me. It just like feels like two idiots sitting in, well, I say a pub, but in this case a church. Um, writing stupid things about people's sexuality, you know?

• 28:55Speaker 01

  So, and that's a very rare case when we've got something to sort of back up the law codes, back up the sagas, back up the stories. You know, because for the most part, they don't exist outside that context.

• 29:07Kate Lister?

  Do we have any documented evidence of anybody actually killing somebody because, because, well, basically because they said that they were gay?

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Well, in the sense that if you're writing law codes about it, it's probably happened. Do you know what I mean? There's a good chance.

• 29:22Kate Lister?

  Good point. There's only one reason you do that.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Exactly. This is clearly a thing. And then you have, yeah, certainly you have like saga stories. Um, I think, I'm trying to remember if, if, when, so many killings. But there's ones where, for example, there's like during the sort of missionary phase in Iceland, which is around sort of 1,000. Bishop comes out with sort of his, you know, assistant and they kind of, they, they're doing horrible things around Iceland. They're like really pissing everyone off. And someone makes up a scurrilous rumor about how basically they are, they're a couple. And I, I'm just trying to remember at what point the killings happened, but certainly there are killings. And, you know, so there's a lot underlying, you know, where it's, yeah, basically it's there in the stories.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  But saga stories are tricky beasts because they're not sort of historical fact in that way that we might think of historical fact. You know, they're sort of on those borderlines between fact and fiction. I, I don't think there's any way we could tell how often it actually happened. And the nature of our source material is sort of so nebulous or sort of multifaceted. You know, when you're looking through sort of one, one face of it, you're seeing something very different to the other. But bringing everything together, there is definitely a sort of a cultural norm. And that cultural norm is that this is the bad shit.

• 30:41Kate Lister?

  This is the worst thing you can say.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  That's definitely the worst thing you can say. Yeah. Whereas kind of, you know, it's not, I'm, I'm just thinking. But it's not unlike now, is it? You know, like someone's saying shits, that's not, that's not a big deal, you know?

• 30:55Kate Lister?

  No, I mean, you probably wouldn't be able to say it on primetime TV. I think now our swear words, that they're moving now from a place of bodily functions, which is clearly what we were upset about and sex. That's what's upset. Now they're moving into, into race. That's the issue. You swear about what you care about. That's the issue. Those are now the ones that are the most offensive that you could possibly say. And I think probably homophobic slurs are in there as well. And I'm sure that they will move again and do something else again. But there, there's no sense that the Vikings were upset by bodies and by sex. Like they didn't, they wouldn't have been, they didn't have like a word, a cunt word or a fuck word that would have had everybody going, please, there are children present.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  I think the children would have used them as well, you know? And then you've got place names in Iceland. There's one where, you know, according to the sagas, everyone sort of relieves themselves when they're in this particular bay. And so they call it dritvik, which is like shit, shitvik, shit's bay, basically, you know? I think, I think that's, yeah, they're pretty sort of robust about that. It's, it's sexual norms and.

• 31:55Kate Lister?

  It's saying that a man is a woman and a woman is a man. Do we have, do we have anything about gay culture and, and Vikings? I don't know how you'd begin to research that.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  This is it. It's how, I'm sure, I mean, there are, there are studies, but they're coming from the point of view of this like agar or rager phenomenon. Because that's something you can actually document. Um, certainly the, the, the rune stick is an interesting one because it could just be like two people being idiots. But also it could be two people being idiots and Uli really is gay or queer or whatever they would have, you know? So it's not documenting it, but it's certainly sort of like allowing for that space where that might have been a possibility. And again, yeah, the fact that they're, they're sort of legislating against it. But then they're legislating, there's one, oh my God, it's, it's, I think it's like when the Christian law codes come in, but it's

• 32:53Speaker 01

  men using drilling holes in woods to pleasure themselves with or something like, no, no, no, no. That's not, and I mean, there are plenty of reasons why you, you've got to be a bit careful. They're in splinters, you know?

• 33:04Kate Lister?

  Glory holes, Viking glory holes.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Glory holes. How long can it take us to get to Viking glory holes?

• 33:12Speaker 01

  It's only a matter of time.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  I don't know, there are sort of suggestions. So if you look at the archaeological record, it's like, and what would you be looking for?

• 33:24Kate Lister?

  Yeah, what are you looking for?

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Exactly. So that is from, I can't remember exactly where the burial is, but there's a burial and it's looked like it's someone who's sort of Sami, so traditionally kind of semi-nomadic from the northern part of Scandinavia, but also operating very far south in this period. It looks like it's sort of, it's a male who has been dressed in a combination of Sami, I think male clothing and then female Norse clothing and

• 33:53Kate Lister?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  The suggestion is he's sort of like being pushed up to the side of the grave. And I think you know, people have said, was this to make room for the spirits? What's going on? There is the famous Birka female warrior, whatever that actually is, you know, and there are lots of different possibilities, you know, but, but that idea that, you know, you can have a woman who is buried for whatever reason in sort of like what we would think of as traditionally male warrior clothes, you know. So there are, you know, there, there was definitely space for that. Um, but that's not the same as looking at sexuality, which is really quite, that's quite complicated.

• 34:45Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Eleanor after this short break.

• 34:54Kate Lister?

  Hello, Betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right. It took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that.

• 35:23Kate Lister?

  Right, let's get on with it.

• 35:35Kate Lister?

  What about the Vikings and their love of crazy names? Because if there's one thing that everybody knows about the Vikings is they, that when you go through them, they just have some incredible names that they're giving to one another. Were they supposed to be offensive? Like some of them, you look at it and you think like, oh God, that poor bugger going around the whole time with, with that as, as like hairy breeches and, and all the rest of it. And, and the boneless and all this stuff. You just think, Jesus, they must have been so upset that that one stuck.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  So I think the one where I really, if I were him, I would not want it to stick. There's one whose nickname is Butter Penis.

• 36:11Kate Lister?

  See, that's just, it must have just been, it's going, really lads?

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Really?

• 36:14Kate Lister?

  Really?

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Can we drop it? Can we give us one time?

• 36:17Kate Lister?

  Well, I'm not laughing. I don't find this funny. It's not funny if I'm not laughing.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  And we're still talking about it, however many centuries later. He's like, will you just let it go? Please?

• 36:28Kate Lister?

  Not funny.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  I think some are definitely meant to be, yeah, it's like, it's, it's one of those things where like, it's a joke for everyone else apart from you. Butter Penis has got to be one of those.

• 36:39Kate Lister?

  You wouldn't be advertising that, would you? I mean, maybe, well, maybe, but I just can't think why you would be. But like, maybe he was there just going, nope, it's Butter Penis. You got that right. Spot on.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 36:49Kate Lister?

  My penis is made of butter.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Happens to everyone. Thank you very much. Yeah.

• 36:52Kate Lister?

  Doesn't sound flattering though, does it?

• 36:54Speaker 01

  No. And, and that's it. That often they're not, they're not always hugely flattering. My, one of my, as, as an asthmatic, um, one of my favorite is actually unkt i brysti or something, which means like sort of tight in the chest. And so it's been suggested that is literally the asthmatic, you know, which I I quite like the idea, but of course it could also not be very much. It could be something physical. It could be something entirely different. You've got, I don't know, like ale lover, clumsy, you know, you've got them for women as well. So things like ship breast, ship breast. And the idea there is like, okay, is it that she's particularly statuesque, you know, or she's sort of particularly well endowed on top, you know, something maybe, you know, the, the amorous, the unlucky, you know, so there's all sorts, there's, there's, there's a lot of them.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Some of them give a sense of the stories that were told about them. Um, particularly when they crop up in the sagas. So the most famous one, Brennu Nyarl, so Nyarl, the burnt, burnt Nyarl basically, because that's how he's killed. Basically he's burnt to death in this fire in his farmstead as part of this big feud, which is again, very much typical sort of saga story. Um, but interestingly there, coming back to what we're saying earlier, obviously that's only, that comes later, you know, he's, he hasn't been called that in his own lifetime. But according to the saga story, he can't grow a beard.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  And so his sons are given the, it's clearly meant to be, um, you know, it's, it's not a good thing, but they're called, um, dunglings because I think the idea, I'm probably going to get this wrong now, but it's like, basically he'd have to put dung on his chin to try and, you know, like his manure basically to make a beard grow. But again,

• 38:35Kate Lister?

  They're creative. They are creative people.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Creative. Well, I mean, there, there's some good ones, you know, and we still use them. I mean, famously Bluetooth, right? That's, that's a Viking nickname. Yep. So, and that's Harald Bluetooth, who's like king of Denmark.

• 38:52Kate Lister?

  But he would have no understanding that his name would go on to, to me. And it didn't mean like that he could digitally connect his, his mobile device to, to his boat and play music when he was Viking, did it? It meant a literal Bluetooth, probably.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably. But it's again, very much only after his lifetime. I think it's like 12th century. It's like some Danish chronicle, like Roskilde chronicle that comes in or something. So it's not something that as far as we know, which is different to be actually knowing, but as far as we know, is in his lifetime used, but it may have been. Um, but of course, you know, many people will already be aware of this, but if you look at that little Bluetooth sign on your phone, those are two runes that have been put together. It's the H and the B runes. So, which I rather love. This is, yeah, so anytime you see that, you've got your little runes on your, on your phone, on your computer, whatever you've got. So.

• 39:41Kate Lister?

  I like that. Like Viking names, they're just like, like, the only way you can describe a lot of them is bance. It's like, it's that kind of reminiscent of like, you know, the, like you get a nickname from someone like, um, there was, there was someone I knew, he was a police officer, but he was very small. So they called him laptop. So, because he was a little PC.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  That's, see, that's, that's, that's a great Viking name. This is, if they're witty, I think this is, you know, then, then you're like, yeah, okay, that was worth it. So I wouldn't say Bluetooth is, is hugely witty, but they are often about physical appearance. So Sveinoforkbeards, who famously, he's king of England for five weeks.

• 40:16Kate Lister?

  But then you've got like Ragnar Hairy Breeches, who must have one time wore a pair of hairy breeches and then just never fucking had the end of it.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  It was a fashion choice. I stand by it. They were excellent.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  But yeah, this, this is the thing. There are so many and there are ones, the fact that we still know about them now. Again, that's telling and like Harald Fairhair, who famously is known as Harald Tanglehair until he conquers Norway. So the sagas say, he says, I'm not combing or cutting my hair until I've conquered Norway. And so then he becomes Fairhair afterwards. But it's actually weirdly, it's, it's really good publicity because in this one nickname for someone, you've encapsulated potentially like the whole story of their life or something, yeah, physical about them or the story they'd rather everyone just went and bloody forgot. You know, there's all sorts of possibilities, but they are.

• 41:09Kate Lister?

  Change as well. Like, like you might, you might have started off as like Eleanor of, of the PhD and then developed a nickname of like Eleanor squirrel hunter from the actions that you took to protect your pumpkin. And then it might change again. And then how, how do we know who the hell anyone's talking about?

• 41:24Speaker 01

  So that does happen. There's one and he, his nickname is, is twig belly because it, oh basically.

• 41:30Kate Lister?

  That's good. That's funny.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Twig belly is again, but again, it's due to a feud and he gets sort of like really cut up and stabbed or something he dreams about. I honestly, I can't remember off the top of my head. But well, no, no, no. I mean, they, they're doing it. He survives and it's funny for them. But again, Viking humour is a very, shall we say, specific beast, you know, it's, it's, and again, it's the humour that is predicated for the most part, I'd say on stoic manliness. So once again, so it's coming back to this idea of the values, you know, it's like, if you get a spear in your stomach, you look down and you say, oh, I see they're making the spears in the Frankish way now, before you keel over backwards. The whole point is

• 42:07Kate Lister?

  How very stoic.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Strong, silent Nordic type sort of behaviour. Yeah. So that's there going all the way back. And so you can see how that ends up. It's, it's sort of, it indicates not only, I suppose, sort of society's pressure points, the things they really care about, but it also indicates what they value. And it's a funny thing, looking from a different time and place and seeing those points of similarity. Having said that, it gave that little snippet of Old Norse at the beginning, but I don't think I translated it. And it is actually relevant. So it's deir feir, so like cattle die or livestock dies, deir frender, um, family, friends die.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  And then it's deir selvir summer. So the self too must but die. And then it goes on. But the one thing that doesn't die is a good reputation.

• 42:56Kate Lister?

  It's very important to them, wasn't it?

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And so much of this, whether we're talking about nicknames or sort of this sort of, the sort of swearies that you can be killed for, for levelling at someone. It's about reputation. It's about the stories that are going round about you, both in your lifetime and after your death.

• 43:16Kate Lister?

  They'd loved a roast battle, wouldn't they, the Vikings?

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:18Kate Lister?

  They'd loved, they'd loved one of them.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  They do. So this is what the poets do. This is so, so there's a particular type of Old Norse poet, or scald or scald. And they basically spend their time, it seems, or at least if you're going to believe the sagas, going around, getting into trouble with other poets and stirring up beef, and then having these fabulous epic rap battles of history.

• 43:42Kate Lister?

  Oh, my God.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Against each other. And often there's sort of, there's something else at stake. So it's, you know, you know, you might, you might be battling for the affections of someone that you both fancy, or, you know, for the affections of a monarch that you both want to be in the, in the pay of, or whatever it is. And some of these, these, these sort of poet feuds get really nasty. And it's interesting because if you accuse someone of being arger or rager, or, you know, within the context of a poem, that's worse. And I think the reason is,

• 44:20Speaker 01

  it's forever. Once, once you've, once you've put it into verse, and scaldic verse is fiendish, it's got, so it alliterates across the line. So you've got all these like, letters that you know you've got to hit to get to the next line. And there's all these little cryptic crossword clue Kennings sort of bundled up in there. And so what that means is very difficult to change a verse once it's been written. And that means that when these scaldic verses appear, for example, embedded in the sagas, there's a good chance that that's the oldest material that we've actually got. So sort of when you're looking at it from a literary or historical point of view, it's like, yeah, this is, this is the stuff we need.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Because this is like a hook back into the Viking Age itself in a way that the sagas are more problematic. And so within that context, if what you're remembering, what passed down the generations, is the equivalent of, all he is fucked in the arse, then there's, you can see why that would be outlawed for that sort of stuff. Or you can, depending on, you know, you can be, you can be killed for that sort of stuff.

• 45:26Kate Lister?

  They didn't like fuck around with libel laws then, the Vikings, did they? It was just, you can stab him. That's if someone said that, you can go and stab him.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  But that's the equivalent. Because even if you are outlawed for something, so there's two types of outlawry. Lesser outlawry, you have to go away for three years, think about what you've done, then you can come back. But full outlawry, permanent outlawry, is akin to a death sentence because you can be killed, you know, with impunity. No, no, there's, there's nowhere you can hide. And so, once you're in that position, if you've been outlawed, for example, because you have, well, said something nasty about someone else, then that person can come and find you, or that person's family can come and take vengeance. And so, full outlawry, particularly say if you're talking about Iceland, which is pretty inhospitable, you know,

• 46:18Speaker 01

  full outlawry is, is pretty much a death sentence. When you have the sagas that are about outlaws, they don't tend to survive to the end of the saga. The whole point is, you know what's coming at some point. It's going to be a tragic end.

• 46:30Kate Lister?

  Oh, Eleanor, you have been fascinating to talk to. Thank you so much. And what have we learned from this? That Vikings were hella good at banter and insults, but if you really wanted to upset them and possibly get stabbed and banished, you would say that they were a big girl, basically.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  There you go. Yep, that's the one. Yeah.

• 46:49Kate Lister?

  If people, tale as old as time. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Oh, so Embers of the Hands is the book that came out a couple of years ago. That's got lots of this sort of stuff in there. Definitely got a page on the Fun Flugy. I am very quietly on Instagram now. I think it was like, we had a conversation where you were like, you know, are you at all? And I said, no, not at all. And I'm, I quietly lurk. So Eleanor Barraclough.

• 47:16Kate Lister?

  You're lurking.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  I lurk, I lurk. Yeah. So just one word, that's my name. And then you really want more of this stuff. I think there's some of it in my earlier book, which is Beyond the Northlands. So there you go. That's, that's three places you can find out more.

• 47:29Kate Lister?

  Well, thank you so much. You have been marvelous.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  It's such a pleasure. Thank you. And thank you to your Bulgari's.

• 47:40Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Eleanor for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like review and follow along wherever it is to get your podcasts. And don't forget that we are now available on YouTube for all your viewing pleasure as well. Coming up, we have got episodes on the scary history of fairies and ancient Rome's biggest sex scandal, all coming your way. And if you want us to explore a subject, or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Hannah Theodorov, produced by Stuart Beckwith, and the senior producer was Freddy Chick. Join me again on Betwixt the Sheets, History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.