The Viking Sexual World: A Literary Ethno-Vikingology of Norse Sex and Sexual Behaviours as a ‘Prolonged Cultural Stimulus’

Abstract

The image of a sexually aggressive Viking Age warrior raping and pillaging his way across Northern Europe is one that has long fascinated and remains a familiar depiction today, a thousand years after his demise. Yet despite the ongoing notoriety of the brutal activities that originated in ‘The Viking Sexual World’, the appeal of these marauding Norsemen in contemporary culture continues unabated, their apparent love of violence doing surprisingly little to assuage their revered status.

This Nordic sexual stereotype is supported by the historical evidence found in surviving manuscripts, runestones, and archaeological discoveries from the ‘Viking Age’. Further exploration of the ‘Medieval Period’ reveals significant details of sexual behaviours and attitudes towards sex in the Old Norse-Icelandic saga and eddic literature, mythologies, and law documents. Whilst our own ‘Modern Era’ reimagines sexually violent Viking characters graphically depicted both onscreen in film and television, in addition to similar narratives in literature, art, religion, media, pornography, and music.

However, there has been a notable lack of scholarly research into these Viking-related sexual practices and their ensuing impact on successive societies. Therefore, utilising a concept I have termed ‘Ethno-Vikingology’, this thesis seeks to rectify this absence of study via an in-depth analysis of the inter-relationships between Viking Age sexual behaviours and the resulting historic and contemporary cultural influences on literature, and other creative, text-based, or artistic expressions. The investigation focuses particularly on the manifestations of these sexual behaviours in each period, including sexual habits, sexual violence, and sexual intimacies, each considered within the contexts of both Viking society itself and their cultural impact on later centuries. The research encompasses all genders and sexualities, and includes possible evidence for transgendered and transexual individuals, and also those of a possible third gender.

The combined evidence gathered from these sources and their resulting evaluation, together with the varying reinterpretations and later adoptions of Viking culture and sexual influences, uncovers the existence of a constantly evolving Viking-inspired philosophy and sexual ethos. This ultimately establishes the presence of what I have termed a ‘Prolonged Cultural Stimulus’ detailing the continual effect and power of Viking sexual behaviours over the last one-thousand years which remains ongoing today.