Ouch, this is a very wide question.

Generally, when it comes to (male) homosexual sex, the vikings considered only the passive partner gay, and accusing someone of being the passive partner in a gay relationship was such a severe accusation that the accused had the right to challenge the accuser to a duel to the death, both in Swedish early medieval county laws and the Icelandic law. There were very few offences that allowed that.

The vikings raped both men and women, and to be the passive partner (raped or otherwise) in homosexual sex was seen as very shameful. It was a way to degrade men.

I have never seen any sources on how common anal sex were between men and women, so I cannot give you a reply that is p to the standards of this sub - the sagas, early medieval laws and runestones (which is what we have for sources on the viking age) does not mention anal sex as far as I know.

Likewise, I have not heard much about lesbians.

Thralls were expensive, and while hird members and the high ranked males of the houehold might very well have their way with female thralls and concubines and lovers were common for great men, women being dedicated sex slaves were a waste of resources - there were always duties to do outside pleasing a high-ranking male and women would tend to them, thralls or otherwise.

I have not heard of viking age sex toys in archelogical finds.

Viking era sex was rather uncomplicated. Young people had sex, and it was more or less accepted - you were supposed to marry the one you made pregnant, though. Failing to do so could have you be regarded as less than a man and thus fit for rape (remember, only the passsive part of homosexual sex, voluntary or otherwise was viewed as gay or less manly).

As far as I know neither marriage nor sex was acceptable before the girl ahd reached sexual maturity. The age of 12 or the first menstruation (whichever came last) was usually viewed as the age of sexual maturity, although it seems like it was very rare with marriages where the girl was less than 15 years of age, according to the few sources I can find.

The woman who runs the excellent Viking Answer Lady page wrote up the best piece I ever read about gay Scandinavians in the Viking era, which was included in a scholarly publication here along with its copious source citations.

I'd like to draw special attention to the concept of seiðr, a traditionally feminine form of magic that is portrayed as involving ritual sex. Men could practice this magic as seiðrmaðr, although it was feared that this would lead to unmanliness. They had a word for that -- seiðskratti were seiðr practitioners in the receptive ergi homosexual role. Viking era Scandinavians had a wide and colorful vocabulary for putting a fine point on all manner of homosexual insults, as that article illustrates in great detail.

Seiðr, however, remained a concept regarded with some amount of reverent fear, even being practiced by Óðinn himself. The article illustrates this by way of a quotation from Ynglingasaga:

Óðinn himself, the Allfather and King of the Gods, was justly accused of ergi or unmanliness because of his practice of seiðr or women's magic, as learned from the goddess Freyja. We are not certain what it is about seiðr that made it "unmanly" for a man to practice the art: it could be anything from the idea of cowardice as a result of being able to harm your enemies through magic rather than in open battle, to overt sexual rituals involving the seiðr-practitioner as the passive sexual partner, or even as the passive homosexual partner. Ynglingasaga explains: Oðinn kunni þa íþrótt, er mestr máttr fylgði, ok framði siálfr, er seiðr heitr, en af þuí mátti hannvita ørlog manna ok óorðna hluti, suá ok at gera monnum bana eða óhamingiu eða vanheilendi, suá ok at taka frá monnum vit eða afl ok geta oðrum. En þessi fiolkyngi, er framið er, fylgir suá mikil ergi, at eigi þoacute;tti karlmonnum skammlaust við at fara, ok var gyðiunum kend sú íþrótt. Óðinn had the skill which gives great power and which he practiced himself. It is called seiðr, and by means of it he could know the fate of men and predict events that had not yet come to pass; and by it he could also inflict death or misfortunes or sickness, or also deprive people of their wits or strength, and give them to others. But this sorcery is attended by such great ergi that men considered it shameful to practice it, and so it was taught to priestesses (Ynglingasaga 7).

This brief sample of historical Viking sex wizardry only scratches the surface of the topic, but that article will fill you chock full of good good stuff. Enjoy the read!

Hi there! You have a lot of very specific questions, but I'll do my best to answer each in turn. This is a very sticky issue, so I'll begin by directing you to the Gràgàs law codes of medieval Iceland. They have specific sections regarding marriage and sexuality.

Vikings, like all medieval people, followed the "one sex" theory, which essentially meant that men and women were placed on a dominant/submissive continuum, with women on the submissive side and men on the dominant side. This theory had its roots in classical Greek medical theory and saw women as imperfect men. Along these lines, men who took a submissive role during sex were branded "blaðr," which is really hard to translate but most guess somewhere around "sissy" or "bottom." To unjustly accuse a man of blaðr was a serious offense that could result in death, outlawry, or even inciting a blood feud. On the other hand, women who were too aggressive could be labeled hvartr, or "butch." the reasons for such an accusation could include cross-dressing (which was also grounds for divorce), among other things. To answer your questions on gay and lesbian relationships, they didn't really see sexuality the same way we do, so those labels don't hold up against Viking relationships. What you see in the sagas is accusations of blaðr against weak men and hvartr against domineering women. The problem lies in them failing to fulfill their proper roles along that spectrum. I haven't encountered an example of same-sex romantic relationships in any of the sagas I've read.

How freely discussed was sex? Actually pretty freely. Sex was important in determining the validity of a marriage, mostly because medieval people believed that both men and women needed to orgasm to conceive a child (this relates to that idea of women as imperfect men; they also have to provide "seed" for a baby). Although the Catholic church did not condone divorce, it seems the Icelanders may have bent the rules a little. In Njal's Saga, a woman named Unn divorces her husband for bad sex, and she describes the problem to her lawyer father in great detail: "he is not able to have sexual intercourse in a way that gives me pleasure . . . his penis is so large that he can't have any satisfaction from me, and yet we've both tried every possible way to enjoy each other, but nothing works." In a later chapter, two young boys reenact the divorce at play, and one of them says: "I'll be Mord and summon you to give up your wife for not screwing her." This event shows that sexual pleasure was crucial for a lawful marriage and for producing children, and the Vikings could and would divorce over problems in the bedroom. Remember that these people lived in close proximity; there was no privacy in a Viking village, and everyone knew everyone else' business.

On the topic of sexual enslavement: Unfortunately, this was a widespread practice in Viking culture, and a booming industry among the Swedish Rus in the Volga river basin in Russia. Female slaves were a hot commodity, and it has been speculated that Iceland was populated by Irish sex slaves as much as Norse immigrants. However, free women also lived as concubines, and the Norse words for "concubine" and "slave woman" are often interchangeable. The status of these women was kind of a moot point for them though; it was more of in issue for their children, as only legitimate children could inherit. The sagas are rife with cases of "bastard" children getting cut out of their father's estate by the children of his lawful wife. Concubines and legal wives could co-habitate, but this could breed hostility too. The Viking wife had absolute control of her home, and Laxdaela Saga includes one wife forcing her husband to send his Irish concubine to live on a different farm. The topic of concubinage and legal marriages also include questions of elopements, with the potential groom clashing with his bride's family in the absence of a proper betrothal.

Sex and children: Viking girls generally married in their teens, and sometimes to much older men. In Laxdaela Saga, a fifteen-year-old girl is given in marriage to a rich man well into his thirties (she divorces him for cross-dressing after just two years). It's not clear if pagan Vikings had a taboo against premarital sex, but there are examples of it in several sagas. In Gisli Sursson's Saga, Gisli murders his older sister's lover after he damages her reputation and then refuses to marry her, so this could suggest that it wasn't a problem as long as there was a plan for the couple to marry in the near future. I haven't seen any examples of straightforward pederasty in the sagas.

For better information, check out writings by Jenny Jochens, Carol J. Clover, and Ruth Mazo Karras. Ibn Fadlan wrote an eyewitness account of the Rus trade in Slavic girls. The sagas I mentioned also have good examples of the role sex could play in life and law. Hope this is helpful to you!

I can answer a few of these. Sex was apparently easily discussed enough that it comes up several times in the sagas. The plot of Volsungasaga actually includes a dude's sister using shape-shifting magic to trick him into having sex with her and getting her pregnant so she would have a better son than the shitty sons she was having. And these were the protagonists of the story. About the dildo thing, dildoes are pretty simple devices and we've found ancient dildoes so I don't see why some Norsewoman couldn't have come up with such a thing even independently.