Okay Boomer… er, Odin

Othen, one of the most well-known gods of Norse mythology, the God of Death, War, Poetry, Magic, in charge of the Valkyries. By all accounts, he seems pretty manly, right? You might be picturing Othen from the Marvel films or American gods, these wise old men acting as patriarchs. But how accurate are these images of him? Othen is an interesting god with a very complex mythology. His gender was the topic of my master's thesis, and I've given talks and published articles on it since then. It's fair to say that I've got to know the boy pretty bloody well. So let's start with his name. The Old Icelandic pronunciation is Othen, but this can be traced back to Walden in Germanic languages such as Old English. The name appears as parts of many words still, such as the word Wednesday, Walden's day, and in lots of place names throughout Scandinavia, such as Odensei, Othen's island, in Denmark. And for any day in listening, I'm very sorry for my pronunciation, I cannot do the soft D for the life of me. There are a number of key elements associated with Othen. He has one eye, and is often in disguise, and is therefore known by over 200 names. He has two ravens, Huyin and Munin, which mean thought and memory, and two wolves, Gary and Frecki, which mean the ravenous or greedy ones. He rides an eight-legged horse called Sleipnir, who will talk about more in a couple of episodes time. Othen is presented as being the son of Bessla and Bar, and had two brothers, Ville and Vie. It's possible that these two names changed much less than Othen's. These earlier than our texts, he may be known as Walden, to fit into the eliteration of Walden, Ville and Vie. Going through Othen's names gives us a bit more insight into who he was in mythology. Here's just some of them, Alpharder, all father, Angan Frickia, the delight of Frick, Alphsagrim, the Lord of the Isir, Biflindi, Spearsheika, Blinder, Blind. Dhrigadrohtin, Lord of the Undead, Fielnir, the wise one, Gangraudir, Advantage Council, Gangari, Wanderer, Omi, Boomer, and yes, we can and should make okay Boomer jokes about Othen. Hangadrohtin, Lord of the Hanged, Siktir, the victory God, Valkhiosandhi, Chooser of the Slain, and Lervenger, Shaggy Klukwera. Othen is normally associated with the warrior culture and the upper classes. In the prose Edda, Medieval Icelandic writer Snorri Stuttlason tells us, there is a place called Lidskjalfe and Othen sits himself there in the high seat from which he can see all over the world and all men's conduct and knows all things. Snorri also tells us, you say that all these men who have fallen in battle from this world beginning are now coming to Othen in Valhattla. Being greeted by Othen in Valhattla is the ultimate honour for the Vikings. Othen is in charge of the army of the dead that he amasses and he is the leader of the great warrior culture the Vikings are so well known for. Othen was also known for only having one eye as he gave up one of them in order to gain knowledge. In the Eddick poem Verlisbau, it says, "Ensad høn uti, sauer in aldnik homm, ik junger aussa, og i ojje leit, vers fregne mig, kvifresne min, altfet jeig oden, kvar du ojje talt, i ilne meire mimes brunni, rekrmjøð mimir, morgin færiann, aveði valføders, výtð er en eddick fad. Alone she sat outside when the old man came, the terrible one of the isir and he looked in her eyes. Why do you question me? Why do you test me? I know all about it Othen, why you hid your eye in mimir's famous well. Mimir drinks mead every morning, from father of the slain's pledge. Do you want to know more? And what?" She asks Othen why he questions her. She knows all about him and how he gave his eye to mimir. So mimir is another mythological being that we know from earlier in this poem and another poem called Seekdryfumau. Mimir is known for being very wise and knowledgeable, but was beheaded in the first war between the two factions of the gods, the isir and the varnir. Mimir's head is preserved with herbs and then, as demonstrated in the stands that we just looked at, comes into the possession of Othen, which he uses to gain more knowledge about the universe. So you now might be wondering why on earth am talking about Othen and Vikings are gay? I mean, he seems a classic old white straight man, right? This is Vikings are gay, it's not going to be that easy. We have a number of sources that are looted to Othen's gender being a little bit weird. I'd love to use a better word here than that, but it's just a bit weird. So to talk about this, we need to cast our minds back to our last episode about Seder and Ergi. We're going to be all over these topics now. As a quick recap, Seder is a form of ritualized magic that was performed in the Viking Age. We know very little about it, but one of the key things we do know is that it was mostly practiced by women, and when men did practice it, it was considered to be very shameful and they were accused of being Ergi. This word seems to have implications of being unmanly, and it was one of the worst insults of the Viking Age. It basically seems to be bottom-shaming from the Viking Age, as in passive male homosexuality, as we call it, sometimes in scholarship. So back to Othen. There's a few instances in which Othen seems to be accused of being queer through these words. Our first occurrence of this is in Locke Center or Lucky's Quarrel. This is one of our edit poems that was preserved in the manuscript known as the Codex Regius or Kings Book from around 1270, written in Iceland. This poem was probably passed down through oral storytelling for a number of centuries before being written down. Locke's Quarrel is set at a feast being hosted by the mythical being Aigir, which is attended by many of the gods. Lucky barges in despite being unwelcome, and is angry at being left out. He then starts throwing insults at the gods one after one. He turns to Othen and says. Which in English is, "And do you practice saider in samseh and struck on a drum like a sorceress?" In a wizard's form, you traveled over mankind, and I thought that was queer in nature. So in this poem, we are seeing Othen being accused of being ergy because he practiced saider, which falls in line with a lot of what we know about saider. But this isn't the only occasion when Othen is called queer. In Harbad's Lyoth or Harbad's song, we see Othen in disguise, as always, this time as a ferryman could Harbad, who is refusing to let Thor or Thor cross a river, Thor eventually exasperatedly cries, "Harbad in Rahi." The translation of Rahi has been debated a lot. As another form of the word "ergy," Caroline Larrington's translation of the poetic header presents his phrase as Harbad you pervert, or I would translate it as Harbad you queer. So why is Harbad, or Othen in disguise, being called queer by Thor in Harbad's song? And once that, we seem to need to go back a few stanzas to see where Harbad recounts what he has been doing. Miklar Manvielar, "I have that with me krither." Thou art jeg velte, Thair frau veren. Harvan Jöten, jeg hudza, kljebad vera. Gavhan mere gambantain, en jeg velte, han orvitti. Great love tricks I have used on witches that I have betrayed from their men. I thought Lébad was a strong giant. He gave to me a gambantain, and I betrayed him out of his wits. So the first two lines here seem to be Harbad, or Othen, boasting about having large amounts of sex with various women. While the gambantain in the second half refers to some kind of magic staff, possibly referring back to Othen as practising saithert. It seems that in this poem Othen is being accused of being queer, both as a man and as a woman. He seems to be practising saithert, which makes him a bad queer man, but he's also been rather promiscuous with women, and only women are called Argi for doing this, which suggests that he is also being called a bad woman here. A third text accuses Othen of being queer. Inninger saga is the opening saga from a compilation known as Hemskringler, which recounts the early mythology of Norway. This is where we're told. Othen, Kuni, saithert, is for a master amount of filthy, and from the sial of her, her saither hate her. In this poem, Othen, Kuni, saithert, is for a master amount of filthy, and from the sial of her, her saither hate her. In the sial of her, her saither hate her. In the sial of her, her saithert, is for a master, and from the sial of her, her saither hate her. Othen knew and practiced that skill that was followed by the greatest strength, called saither, and from it he knew the fortunes of men and things that had not yet come to be, and also cause the deaths of men or bad luck or ill-health, and also took from men wit or strength and gave it to others. And this magic, when it is practiced, comes with such greatness that it is shameful for a man to practice it, and the skill was taught to the goddesses. Another piece of text to evidence we have comes from another edit poem, Greenness Melt, and from the prose edder, relating the same information. In these contexts, Othen's names are being discussed. In the prose edder, we are told, 12th Yalk is a Yalkur, 12th is Gilding. Similarly, two different stanzas of Greenness Melt give us the same name. Greenni Michietu at Gheerudar, in Yalk at Aus Mundar. Master one I call myself to Gheerudar, and Gilding to Aus Mundar. The stanzas says, "I call myself to Gheerudar, and Gheerudar, and Gilding, and Gilding with the gods." This name Yalkur, or Gilding, appears in multiple times here. A Gilding is a castrated male horse, which carries the implications around Othen's gender and sexuality of unmanliness, and failure to live up to cis-heteronormative values. But there's more than just textual evidence to tell us that Othen may have been seen as queer. In 2009, a tiny and highly controversial find was excavated from the site of a cultic call in Liver in Denmark. Just being a cultic call from around 900 to 950 AD, we know that it was a place where an important shift and ruled from, and it was a central meeting point for people from miles around. It would have been very important and very rich. The find itself was tiny. It is a miniature figure, less than two centimetres tall, and weighing around nine grams, and it's made of silver. And it shows in remarkable detail a human figure in what appears to be a long dress, possibly with a moustache, seated on a chair with carved head posts and a bird on each armrest. The identification of this figure has been very controversial. Some believe it is Othen, others argue it is another male ruler from Liver, and others suggest it could be a woman, perhaps a vulver, so a woman who practices seither. So this person is wearing a jacket, a long dress of some kind, jewelry and a hat or helmet. And this is clothing that is normally associated with women at this time. But when we look at other elements of this figure, it gets a bit more weird. The throne that this person is sitting on is very ornate, with what appears to be beast heads. This seems to remind us a bit of fleet's galf, the chair that Othen sits on to watch the world. Alternatively, it could be a normal throne for a ruler. On the two armrests, we see two birds, reminding us of Othen's ravens, Hugen and Moonin. This is more significant when we remember that Liver was a central site for the elite, and Othen was very closely linked with this elite. Another interesting factor is that Othen's eye appears to have been scratched away and might only have one pupil. We have to remember that this tiny piece of silver was buried underground for around a thousand years, so it's totally possible that this is accidental damage that happened in this time. But this is particularly interesting when we look at some wider context of Odenic imagery from this time. The Sutton Who helmet is a very famous piece of Anglo-Saxon history, so the early Germanic peoples in England that had strong cultural links to the Vikings. A few years ago, some reenactors gained permission from the British Museum with the helmet lives, to study it closely to make a recreation. When doing this, they found that behind one eyebrow the helmet had gold foil underneath the red gems, but the other I didn't. They assumed that this was a mistake or damage, but decided to recreate the piece like this anyway. When they went to use their recreated helmet in a recreated Viking Hall in front of a fire, they realised something incredible. The gold foil under one eyebrow lit up, making the eye shine and glow while the other eyebrow was dull. It looked like there was only one eye. So what does this have to do with a little Oden figure from Lyra? Well, we're seeing the same element of only one eye, which reflects this mythology about Oden. We can't really know for sure if this figure is meant to be Oden or not, but the evidence is there to suggest that it's pretty likely. It appears to be Oden in women's clothes, breaking the boundaries of gendered expectations at the time. So as you can probably tell by now, Oden himself is a very complicated figure. His mythology is a rich tapestry of elements surrounding knowledge, warriors, and rulership. But his gender and sexuality are also very complicated. He breaks the rules and boundaries of North Society by not only performing, but being the God of Seyther, magic reserved for women. He's known as Unmanly, and he seems to be depicted as wearing feminine clothing. He is accused of being ergy on multiplications, but appears to be considered so for being a queer man and a queer woman at the same time. This bending and breaking of boundaries is most certainly queer by North Standards. This interpretation isn't clearly obvious when you look at the myths of Oden. You have to understand the societal context and look into the myths. But this suggests that this queerness was quite an integral part of his being and wasn't really worth making a big show and dance about. Not all scholars agree with this interpretation. There are a number that do, but also a number who resist this idea and argue that Oden is the manly God of scholarship past. It is important to have these scholarly debates, particularly when we are looking at a past mythology, as it reminds us that the narratives that were important to the believers would have changed and shifted between the people and the groups. So this next bit of the conversation needs a bit of a content warning, as I will be discussing neo-nancies and racism. So feel free to just end the episode here if this is material you don't want to engage in. It is also important to highlight another group that resist this idea though. My work has provoked angry responses from neo-nancies. They are angry that I would argue that Oden is queer, as they see him as the ultimate God of masculinity, which is the value they hold up as an integral part of whiteness. They see my argument as offensive to them and their God, and they wrongly view racial purity to be defined through what they see as this native European heritage of the master race. As far as I'm concerned, if I'm making neo-nancies angry, I'm doing something right. And we'll discuss the Nazi heritage of Viking studies in a few episodes' time, but we have to remember this at all times when we study the Vikings. Challenging old ideas and proposing new ideas is such an important part of scholarship, and reminds us that our interpretations are subjective. This interpretation is no more or less subjective than any other scholarly reading of the past. Thank you for listening to this episode of Vikings Our Gay. Find Vikings Our Gay on Twitter and Facebook. If you have any questions about the Vikings, tweet them using the hashtag #VikingsOurQ&A, and I'll be answering all your burning questions at the end of the series. I've been Amy Jeffer-Franx, you've made it to the end of this podcast, and I can't wait to tell you more. Be sure to tell your friends that the Vikings are gay.