Got into an argument with someone about this. He claims they were always actively persecuted and killed, whether they be dominant or receiving homosexuals.
I argued that dominant homosexuals were totally fine, and only receivers were shunned, sometimes exiled, almost never killed. I based this mainly on Sorensen, a Norwegian historian, and the fact I've read Ibn Fadlan's account of the Rus Norsemen.
Which is correct, or is it in the middle?
So OP, if you've read Sorensen, you know he says two things that are directly relevant to your question. First, basically all our written evidence comes from the thirteenth century, after Christianization. In fact, the Icelandic Homily Book and the penitentials (lists of sins and prescribed penances) that come down very harshly on homosexual behavior altogether, in exactly the same way it is being condemned in continental pastoral sources at the same time, predate the sagas. Then there is some interesting linguistic evidence from the Gulathing Law, which is a bit older probably still post-dates Christianization in its first transcription.
Second, Sorensen responds to your point--for thirteenth-century, Christian Iceland--directly:
One of the questions that will be raised in what follows is the extent to which it was only the passive role that was contemptible; or whether homosexuality as such was condemned, in accordance with Christian moral teaching. It can be said at once that the answer is both/and...The active part must also have been condemned, not only from a Christian point of view. (27-28)
I don't think it's possible to give a definitive answer about pre-Christian Norse society based on the later evidence. However, comparing standard medieval Christian teaching (as expressed in the Homily Book and "Bishop Thorlack's" penitential from the late 12C) to the secular law and saga evidence can give us an idea of what we might call the extra-Christian, if not pre-Christian, culture of high medieval Iceland.
In the penitential, the very first of the "cardinal sins" listed is the sin against nature. It prescribes 9 or 10 years of penance for men who commit illicit sex (the word is adultery) with other men, or with four-footed animals. As John Boswell points out, this penance is exactly the same prescribed for men who rape women. One of the Homily Book's sermons agrees, cagily referring to "those appalling secret sins perpetrated by men who respect men no more than women, or four-footed animals."
This is solid high/late medieval Christian teaching. Any non-procreative sex act is "against nature," with sodomy and bestiality accounted the worst. All parties involved are to blame (it was common practice into the early modern era to also slaughter the animal--including, by the way, in colonial America). The emphasis, basically, is on sex.
Whereas Christian theologians tried desperately to talk around sodomy, Old Norse gives us several words that circle around a semantic field of male-male sexual behavior. I want to talk especially about argr or ragr. Its primary meaning is "cowardly, unmanly, effeminate, with regard to morals or character" (Sorensen 20). A secondary meaning is, essentially, a man who is inclined to take the passive role in sex with other man.
So you can see a couple of things. First of all, that being the receiving partner in a male-male sexual encounter is considered the height of unmanliness. It is the same word as "effeminate;" it's equated with cowardice. There's no question that there was a massive stigma attached to that status; that this was a phrase slung at people rather than claimed proudly or even used neutrally. But what kind of stigma? The application of the feminine form, org, to women can start to clue us in. Rather than referring to lesbianism, or to having PIV sex with a man, it's roughly equivalent to modern "slutty"--including the derogatory nature. We're dealing with violations of muscular masculinity and chaste femininity, of course, but at the same time--and inseparable from the gender roles--these acts are violations of fundamental personal honor.
The transgression of masculinity and of honor comes across quite strongly in the legal texts. The Gulathing Law, which has its roots in Norway before Iceland, links three offenses:
One is if a man says to another that he has given birth to a child. A second is if a man says of another that he was demonstrably [f--ed] by another man. The third is if he compares him to a mare, or calls him a bitch or a harlot, or compares him with the female of any kind of animal.
Couched between the two very clear insults of effeminacy by proxy, the implication of being the receiving partner in homosexual male sex is that it turns the man into a woman from the viewpoint of social standards. It is a violation of gender roles. This is rather different than the Christian theological view that hinges on procreation.
High medieval Icelanders, therefore, placed a premium on the sharply delineated gender roles and morals of their society. Mark Jordan points out that on the European continent, the rise of concern over sodomy from the eleventh century comes out of the need to impose social order, especially through marriage. So when Sorensen talks about how strictly gendered Icelandic society was and Auður Magnusdottir emphasizes the importance of marriage as a political act, it seems that disgust with the passive partner in male homosexual behavior involves his perceived threat to social order.
So all this seems to point to a lack of concern for the "active" man in the partnership. Well, as quoted above, Sorensen says not so fast, and I'm inclined to agree.
You'll notice that this passage doesn't actually involve a sex act at all! (In fact, it's rare to see persecution for actual sodomy acts before the late Middle Ages on the continent, even). Rather, it describes the accusation against someone else. The word I translated above as f--ed is sorðinn (or sannsorðinn), but there is another less coarse and more complex ring of words based on nið. nið can mean degrading slander, although, with the close relationship of gender and honor in Icelandic society, there is usually a connotation of sexual depravity involved in the accusation. In the sagas, nið can be a threat as well as an action; it can be physical (erecting a monument to a man's unmasculine behavior, especially cowardice) as well as verbal.
And, in the thirteenth century law codes, nið can be a crime. If it explicitly involves the words argr or sorðinn, the slandered man has the right to kill his slanderer in retaliation. It is, the laws clarify, exactly the way a man has the right to kill on behalf of a female relative whose honor has been violated.
The point here is that violating someone's honor is a despicable offense--meriting a fine, meriting outlawry, meriting a duel, meriting the death penalty. True, the laws concern verbal or monumental accusations. But as we saw earlier, to be the more passive partner in a male homosexual encounter was to have one's honor as a male violated. Thus, to be the more active partner is to violate the other person's honor. This, the laws concerning slander make clear, was utterly unacceptable to medieval Icelanders.
So it's not a surprise to see, in the sagas, not so judgmental references to castrating one's enemies, or to raping both women and men subjugated in war. The conquered--whether it's an opposing army or your son-in-law's family--already have no honor to violate. But two men in the same village? That was a different story.
Further Reading:
Follow-up question: Was homosexuality in women viewed differently than homosexuality in men?
Ninja Edit: Men sounds better than males
Could you please provide a link or similar, like a full name, regarding "Soreson"? I can't find anybody with that name in Norway, historian or not. I would really like to know more about the topic (I've read the same thing as you said in popular history publications), but without a proper name to go on I've got nothing.
Hello everyone,
In this thread, there have been a large number of incorrect, speculative, or otherwise disallowed comments, including many asking about the deleted comments, which merely compounds the issue. As such, they were removed by the mod-team. Please, before you attempt to answer the question, keep in mind our rules concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. Answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed, and posters who break the rules of the subreddit admonished as applicable.
This thread is trending high in the subreddit, but those upvotes represent interest in the question itself, and it can often take time for a good answer to be written. We know that it can be frustrating to come in here from your front page and see only [removed] and this post, but we ask for your patience and understanding. If you are looking for some interesting content in the mean time, we hope you will check out our Twitter, the Sunday Digest, or the Monthly "Best Of" feature. It is very rare that a decent answer doesn't result in due time, so please do come check into the thread in a few hours. A Private Message to the Remind Me bot is a good way to remember.
Additionally, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with off topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to modmail, or a META thread. Thank you!
I've read that in old English, there was a word akin to "neath-er." (There is no modern English equivalent; this is my attempt at modernizing the spelling. Should be spelled with the "thorn" character or the voiced letter variant and Old English vowel rules.) Basically the definition was along the lines of "one who is bottom" particularly in a sexual context. Anyway it was a apparently pretty bad curse word to direct at a man. Imagine if you were to call a random guy on the street today the c-word; I think it was supposed to be that bad.
In Anglo-saxon societies, if you were a man accused of this label and you didn't defend your honor, you'd be pretty much totally defamed in your community. You might possibly even be forced into exile, auto-divorced, & lose all property. Basically, if you were slurred with this label, you'd have to challenge the offender to holmgang (trial by combat) to retain your honor as a man. To be considered a "neath-er" was as bad as being considered a sorcerer in Anglo-Saxon society.
In fact, as I understand it, if there were some individual you didn't like, the go-to way to challenge such a man to holmgang seemed to be to call him a "neath-er." I don't remember where I read this, but you should be able to find it easily if you look up the etymological history of the word "beneath" or "underneath."
I hope Anglo-Saxon culture is compatible enough with the Nordic model your focused on. I generally consider pre-Norman English close in relation to the Nordic German culture of the period (though there are reasonable enough differences to be pointed out.)
I am also compelled to point out I see this as very much in line with Roman concept of homosexuality. A Roman man would not have lost honor for being a penetrator, but to be regarded as one who is penetrated had taint to his honor as Roman man. Latin had various words that can describe a receptive homosexual man, with varying connotations but mostly negative. A real man in Ancient Rome was a penetrator & was to have the respect of a man. Those who were penetrated were pretty much regarded on the same level.
However from what I've read, Anglo-Saxon society respected women in their society more than Romans did their women. In Anglo-Saxon society, a woman was better respected than a man who was considered a coward/fake/liar/etc. You could be these things in Rome, but I see the concept is more along the idea of being an "infame." (Though I'm not quite sure that a passive homosexual Roman would quite have that status and the revocation of rights thusly entailed, but he'd be closer to infame than a man of full respect yet I believe you'd be afforded opportunity to gradually improve upon your standing as a citizen.) In Anglo-Saxon society, to be considered guilty of homosexual passivity would give the status along the line of the Roman status "homo sacer" or a man without rights or outlaw.
To summarize, Roman & Anglo-Saxon societies recognized sexuality models more similar to each-other than to our own models of sexuality recognition, however Rome reacted to the concept of penetrated man moreso with ridicule & shame upon him, whereas Anglo-Saxons reacted to the man by vilifying him as a coward, liar, or fake unworthy of status in the community.
What I do not know is if this concept in Anglo-Saxon society was present before Germanic cultures were exposed to Roman culture. Much of recorded Anglo-Saxon society is well exposed culturally with Roman conventions, particularly Christianized Roman conventions.
What I've thus described has mostly classical era Roman culture which would be before Constantine began Christianity on the path for mainstream Roman culture (actions which have crucially affected our perceptions of sexuality today.) These concepts of pagan Rome would begin to morph in the coming centuries, which is when we begin to have our more authoritative sources on Germanic cultures, whom are already losing their ways of life to Romanization & with that Christianization. I suspect Germanics who lived ways of life less affected by Roman thinking, may have held a different cultural recognition of what we would today describe with "homosexuality" but I haven't gleaned an material that could describe what such could be.
Do let me know if I need to articulate these concepts better. It's not always easy to find the right words to explain the concepts of others who use different definitions than we.
As for female homosexuality, what little there seems to be of Roman writing on the subject seems to write it off as an absurdity or an unnaturalness. (In fact, I've read it's uncommon for extant classical poets besides Ovid, to have bothered to write on what heterosexual sex with women was like. Ultimately having a family was however a testament to virility and family life had a crucial role in Roman society and families cannot be had without women. Poets whose works have survived aren't exactly a normalized sample group of Roman countrymen anyway.)
If not quickly written off with incredulity, there seems to be an air of taboo in regarding female homosexuality by Roman writers, possibly because it involves women violating Roman conventions of womanhood. Christianization made matters of womanhood & sexuality even more complicated, but writers didn't seem any more eager to paint the whole picture after being Christianized. I can't say I've encountered any Norse or Anglo-Saxon accounts of female homosexuality though it would be interesting to see. As others have said, it is an oft-unwritten about subject.
Literature:
"Neather" and Germanic disgrace (Nith is spelled with eth.) : Folke Stroem. Nith, Ergi, and Old Norse Moral Attitudes. http://vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/Nid,%20ergi%20and%20Old%20Norse%20moral%20attitudes.pdf
Anglo-saxon lexicon (most words with the old "neath" stem are in general negative.): A Handy Anglo-Saxon Dictionary.
Roman civil terms: William Smith (1875). A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities
Legal standing of a Homo Sacer (A poor source I can't find what I've read before & every other source seems to come up in Italian or French): Dictionary. http://www.classics.upenn.edu/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php?method=did®exp=1313&setcard=0&link=0&media=0
Other Classical Latin thinking: Frederic M. Wheelock and Richard A. Lafleur. Wheelock's Latin 7th Edition.
