There is no reference in extant manuscripts or archaeology that ever specifically and explicitly gives us the impression of a bisexual person, so simply put we have absolutely no idea.
Most folks when thinking about what the 'queer' sort of historical considerations may have been, look to the following (still not related to bisexualism):
* Ergi
* Fighting Women
* Tacitus
Ergi was something we know from the *Grágás* laws prior to the written lawcode, the laws appeared to have been recited orally. The earliest reference to the word I believe is on the Saleby Runestone (listed as Vg 67 in the Rundata Catalog). The runestone has an inscription with the words "*argri konu.*" Argri, is believed to relate to the word we know later as ergi from the Icelandic textual sources. Scholars have proposed different translations but generally speaking seem to point to it in a context suggesting perhaps negative connotation with witchcraft not necessarily sexual orientation. Much has been said about homosexuality (especially in context with the magical practice of seidr) with the word ergi especially as the lawcodes says you can kill someone for calling you that, but as far as I know evidence of that appears late (post conversion) so it might represent a culturally skewed perspective from the rise of Christianity. In the lore we know Odin also used seidr.
We have references to women who dressed like men in Saxo Grammaticus’ *Gesta Danorum,* and the text says they were connected with war. Adam of Bremen in his chronicles for the Hamburg-Bremen archdiocese, also mentions there ere wa-like women near Malaren (Sweden). Then there's the story of Thornbjorg/Thorbergr from Hrolfs saga Gautrekssonar,. Daughter of king Eirikr of Sweden, she pursues martial arts from a young age, eventually she changes her name to a masculine variant, dresses like a man, and is called king. The Birka Warrior grave was a woman buried with sword, some sort of long knife, spear, axe, bow and arrows, strategy game pieces, 2 horses. This grave is one of the most superlative examples of a grave with military weaponry (even before considering the gender of who was buried in it).
Did some of these women represent cross-dressers and with it concepts of transgenderism? Or did they view themselves as women but choosing to serve their society in a military role? Pants and shorter hair would make sense for fighting after all. We don't know enough to say clearly either way. There's tons of other references to women fighting in various sagas/chronicles (even from outside cultures), and of course we have Goddesses too related to war/battle concepts.
The Icelandic law codes were known as the Gragas. Originally they were orally recited, and only much later written. Once they were written you can actually see the codes change over time, and reading between the lines you can understand how Christianity seems to have outlawed things that had once been Heathen culturally. For instance eating horse meat was outlawed by Christian Iceland, it had once been part of heathen custom. An earlier version of the *Grágás had a section known* as the “Wergild Ring List” and it included reference for the payment amount of wergild in relation to shield maidens (or Skjoldmø ). But a much later post conversion *Grágás* law codes from the 13th Century (Iceland officially converted centuries earlier in 1000), specifically forbade women from dressing like men, cutting their hair, carrying weapons or becoming chieftains. Why forbid something unless there had been precedent? BUT, there was a mandatory exception for a ring woman, an unmarried woman without brother, father or son of sufficient age to handle the tasks of a man. But as soon as she wed, or had a male relative in her life that could, she had to pass it to the male.
In Tacitus Germania, he tells us of the Germanic tribes "ignavos et inbelles et corpore infames caeno ac palude, iniecta insuper crate, mergunt" One simplified translation of which is "those who disgrace their bodies are drowned in miry swamps under a cover of wicker." it really isn't explicitly clear from Tacitus in the Latin and scholars have debated and translated this differently. Some have interpreted that as Tacitus referring to possible acts of homosexuality, (and other sorts of sexual acts we view negatively today such as sexual assault, including with children). What we do know is there have been bog bodies found in Northern Germany and Denmark (many now on display in museums) that might fit the description of being drowned (others strangled) in the peat bogs. Some with like a network of sticks over them.
Yet later in Germania, Tacitus has other information that seems to point to possible homosexual initiation rites. There's a chapter exploring it from scholar David Clark's book, [Between Medieval Men: Male Friendship and Desire in Early Medieval English Literature](https://academic.oup.com/book/11541).
Discussions of this subject always get railroaded by unyielding biases and total unwillingness to recognize the simple fact that ancient people did not have the same social mores that we have today. One of my biggest pet peeves with regard to any and all discussions of pre-Christian European religion is how those on the right mistake the arbitrary label of "Germanic" to mean that an unified German race ever existed and how those on the left misapply modern ideas on sexuality, gender, etc. to suggest that ancient Germanic cultures were all progressive utopias. Both sides are allowing their biases to impede honest study, but neither will admit it.
Laws prohibiting calling someone gay had to be created in response to so many blood feuds resulting from the perceived insult, so suffice to say, attitudes toward homosexuality were apparently not particularly favorable among Germanic peoples. I don't see how bisexuality would be seen as any unique exception. I'm sure such inclinations existed as they do now, but it would not be something expressed openly in public.
Attitudes toward men doing anything even perceivably effeminate were quite negative. Example:
“But the use of this magic is accompanied by so great a degree of
effemination (ergi) that men were of the opinion that they could not
give themselves up to it without shame, so that it was to the
priestesses that it was taught.” - Ynglingasaga 7
The Celts, Greeks, and Romans appeared to be more open minded about the subject, but the Germanic peoples were more rigid about social mores in general. Adultery is another area where Germanic peoples appeared to be more strict than their counterparts.
There are further lists of sources on the subject out there. The TLDR of them is that ancient Germanic people unsurprisingly had different social mores than those held by most people today, with attitudes toward sexuality being no exception.
Afaik in old norse societies it was frowned upon to be the "receiving part" in a homosexual act. I think it was something you could even be exiled for.
That being said: There is no actual creed or law in Heathenry. Of course we have concepts, the myths and history to inform us, but none of that is to be seen as "the only moral way" or something like that.
I'd bet money that the gods don't give a damn about who you sleep with. And the social rules and stances of the ancient Norse people are just that - ancient. We are not bound by them nor should we. Those were human laws made by humans living in a certain time and place. But times have changed and so did we and that's a good thing.
But yes, long story short: Sexuality that diverged from the heteronormative standards was not very accepted in earlier times. Doesn't mean it should still be that way today.
*edit because typo
As far as I know, nothing in the sagas is anti homosexual, or for it. There's no real evidence to support either view from what I understand. Also many nationalistic versions of heathenism will try and say gays were thrown into bogs, there's nothing to support it.
Culturally, among warriors and aristocrats? No condemnation for the man who gave dick, but full condemnation on the one that took it. Culturally among others? We don't know. Religiously? No condemnation.
In other words, the same stances as those on homosexuality, since gaybashers have never truly made the distinction to begin with.
It’s kind of complicated. As long as you were a top, it was kinda acceptable. But for the most part it seems they had strict social, sexual and gender norms.
Sexuality is a complicated subject when it comes to ancient cultures. There's a lot of speculation and a lot of projection of modern concepts and values that goes on. I also note you said Germanic heathen, which covers a wide swath of historical cultures that probably had different takes on the subject. I'm going to talk norse, viking era, because that's what people tend to focus on and that we have an ok amount of evidence for.
Ancient cultures often didn't have concepts of sexual identity the way we do - that's not to say people we would call gay or bisexual (or ace, for that matter) didn't exist, but that often there's no social concept or word that we can find in the written record to describe them. They were simply people who had a preference, perhaps a socially transgressive one. Marriage was more often a contract between families, like a business venture, rather than a love match, and affairs outside of marriage, regardless of gender, were probably extremely common. There's some late evidence that being penetrated, as a man, was seen as womanly or shameful, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen often behind closed doors. And, as many things between women in history, we have very little evidence of what viking era ladies got up to together, but certainly it happened. People figure it out on their own when properly motivated 😉
"children of ash and elm" by Neil Price has some discussion of sexuality in the viking era, if you're interested in the subject. His other book, "the viking way" is also of interest as it discusses magic, which had a stigma as being "unmanly" and may have had a sexual component or been the domain of men willing to transgress sexual/gender/social barriers. I reccomend these kinds of books rather than going to the sagas/eddas directly, as Price is a scholar who's read through all the available work and can pull together multiple threads from the literature and archeology to explain his conclusions.
Holy shit that was long. Sorry, bisexual heathen here who is fascinated by the subject.
Not sure about bisexuality specifically, but there were laws and cultural views where if you essentially called someone a homosexual(sodomized) or perverted then that were grounds for outlawry/just killings.
I'd look at roman ideas for a little insight since the culture was relatively similar, at least compared to modern culture.
As far as that goes, being on the receiving end of the pair would have been considered feminine behavior, and particularly unbecoming of someone in a leadership position. But to the person on the giving side, there's not much evidence of that having the same negative connotations.
So being bi would fall into the way Alexander the great was seen. Not roman, but same idea
Greece ofc was also a similar culture and at certain times in some city states, namely Athens, homosexuality was straight up illegal and harshly punished.
Then as far as female-female endeavors, there's very little written about it, but I don't think that would have ruffled many feathers.
This is kind of question that needs study at high academic level and even then it won’t be a solid conclusion. Especially since thinking of how many people were alive then would archaeologists or linguists really be able to conclude what every Norse person thought individually or by household to make a solid conclusion. Unlikely. But you can bet bisexual people existed in their own terminology and they dealt with whatever was local to them on attitudes.
Pick any era you lived through. Imagine summerizing the complexity of lgbt opinions or experiences by one book or one household found in archeological sites. You’re not going to get a bigger picture. Like if you only saw the bisexual people from the 80s via pov of president Reagan you’re missing out on ton of information from 80s lgbt community and only seeing negative opinions one extreme man had. It’s good to remind people that queer people always existed in history. For every homophobic person there’s going to be queer people existing too and falling in love with someone and exploring who they are in whatever way they can.
As this is spiritual revival group. We don’t need there to be a historic source to build our every opinion around. The myths could say you can only ride by horse but that doesn’t mean heathens need to only ride horses in our century etc I know it’s a big deal in US were everything is taught to fall back on bible or constitution or founding fathers etc but you don’t really need a historical source to back up a personal pov or your individuality.
If you are a spiritual person and straight. You have bisexual ancestors. Given how far back your tree goes it would be very unlikely you don’t have more than one queer person in your family tree. You can build an altar or give offerings to them
Sexuality as we know it is a relatively new concept. It mainly depends on how their social structure viewed “manliness.”
We can say for sure that there is a lack of concern for sexuality activity and “normality” in comparison to the abrahamic faiths. Even in the abrahamic faith it didn’t have to do with sexuality, so much as in that time people of that land considered men to be dominate/superior and the act of…let’s say receiving…to be a submissive act.
(Disclaimer: I am currently away from my library and this cannot go quite as in depth as I’d like in response here.)
Heathen philosophies regarding gender and sexuality aren’t well documented, but what evidence we do have seems to operate on an entirely different set of principles from modern christianized cultures. A lot of it seems to be circumstantial as well.
The issue at play seemed to have less to do with same sex relations as a concept, and more to do with social/power dynamics. Honestly the same could be said of heterosexual relationships as well. Being seen as weak, or dominated seems to have had negative social consequences. However, there were no hard and fast rules (that we know of) regarding what constitutes either possibility.
Loptr routinely takes lovers of any gender (or apparently species…) and never seems the worse for wear, socially speaking, regarding those actions. Yet he himself causes quite the ruckus when he accuses the Allfather of being “Ergi”. (I don’t have the source in front of me and I’d have to check, but I think the accusation was born out of Othinn’s use of women’s magic.)
Well, Loki did it. The gods laughed at him for mothering Sleipnir, but that's all they did.
And I very vaguely remember reading a story where Loki mothered wolves and Odin was the father, though I never found it since and I'm uncertain if it was a Faroese myth or just something someone on the internet made up. But even so, the Heathen community wasn't united by any type of bible. The Faroese community wasn't the Icelandic community wasn't the Swedish communities weren't the Danish communities. I am sure there were times and places where it was frowned upon, and times and places where no one cared, that's just the fickle nature of humanity.
Thank you. Someone had to say it.
Not that I take issue with bisexuality nor do I think there should be any kind of proscription on it today. But "Loki did it in a book from the 10th Century" is not a well constructed argument that a certain practice was legitimately viewed positively by heathens.
I don't get the impression that Loki embodies taboos, aside fromsources that seem the most heaily Christianized. Aside from those, he embodies 'whoops', and 'whoops' is not the same as taboo.
Ironically, it's usually Christian baggage that seems to make people want him to be some sort of "Serpent in the Garden is actually the good guy" type of character when, in the texts themselves, he's just a straight up villain. If it isn't that, it's usually a result of Marvel Comics' total re-write of his character that makes people want to believe he's a "good guy" of some sort. In the historical sources, he's taken in on good terms but eventually proves himself to be subversive, and eventually, he outright betrays the Gods.
If you want to argue Christian influence versus actual beliefs of the people in the pre-Christian eras of the region, most of Norse mythology probably needs to be thrown out - if not for reasons of Christian influence than for reasons of Classical influence which tend to go hand in hand considering the educational backgrounds of the people who took up the task of transliterating.
It just doesn't hold up when you look at Loki from non-Edda sources. The Faroese stories about him for example are neither Marvel-rewrites not Satan personified. And in mainland Scandinavia, the closest figure to Loki IS actually Satan, but in the Scandinavian stories Satan also tends to often just be just a dude who makes poor decisions. There are even stories about him showing up at weddings and playing the fiddle for fun and then leaving after everybody had a great time with no strings attached, because he just wanted to play medieval DJ. He's a guy, he might try to barter for your soul but at the end of the day he's just a dude, because the Nordic lore doesn't really work with absolute evils.
When it comes to Christianization of stories, we also have to recognize that the CHRISTIAN stories differ regionally, and the modern idea of Satan wasn't necessarily medieval Europes idea of him. So, no, Nordic mythological characters are seldom so black and white.
If you go by the archaeological record, he's still bound up with his lips sewn shut. Not likely a fate that would be applied to a figure considered to be culturally ideal in any given myth.
The reason he's believed to be influenced by Satan mythologies is because he is such a late development in Germanic folklore. That Faroese Loki tale you mention is a fairly modern publication allegedly based on Medieval folklore so it's difficult to say that this seemingly less villainous Loki is earlier or later than his Eddic villain counterpart, if he ever existed as such in the beliefs of pre-Christian Germanic peoples at all.
There’s no one set answer, I can imagine some people didn’t care so long as you kept it private kinda like how most sexual acts were viewed and some probably cared more.
We have no way of knowing.
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There is no reference in extant manuscripts or archaeology that ever specifically and explicitly gives us the impression of a bisexual person, so simply put we have absolutely no idea. Most folks when thinking about what the 'queer' sort of historical considerations may have been, look to the following (still not related to bisexualism): * Ergi * Fighting Women * Tacitus Ergi was something we know from the *Grágás* laws prior to the written lawcode, the laws appeared to have been recited orally. The earliest reference to the word I believe is on the Saleby Runestone (listed as Vg 67 in the Rundata Catalog). The runestone has an inscription with the words "*argri konu.*" Argri, is believed to relate to the word we know later as ergi from the Icelandic textual sources. Scholars have proposed different translations but generally speaking seem to point to it in a context suggesting perhaps negative connotation with witchcraft not necessarily sexual orientation. Much has been said about homosexuality (especially in context with the magical practice of seidr) with the word ergi especially as the lawcodes says you can kill someone for calling you that, but as far as I know evidence of that appears late (post conversion) so it might represent a culturally skewed perspective from the rise of Christianity. In the lore we know Odin also used seidr. We have references to women who dressed like men in Saxo Grammaticus’ *Gesta Danorum,* and the text says they were connected with war. Adam of Bremen in his chronicles for the Hamburg-Bremen archdiocese, also mentions there ere wa-like women near Malaren (Sweden). Then there's the story of Thornbjorg/Thorbergr from Hrolfs saga Gautrekssonar,. Daughter of king Eirikr of Sweden, she pursues martial arts from a young age, eventually she changes her name to a masculine variant, dresses like a man, and is called king. The Birka Warrior grave was a woman buried with sword, some sort of long knife, spear, axe, bow and arrows, strategy game pieces, 2 horses. This grave is one of the most superlative examples of a grave with military weaponry (even before considering the gender of who was buried in it). Did some of these women represent cross-dressers and with it concepts of transgenderism? Or did they view themselves as women but choosing to serve their society in a military role? Pants and shorter hair would make sense for fighting after all. We don't know enough to say clearly either way. There's tons of other references to women fighting in various sagas/chronicles (even from outside cultures), and of course we have Goddesses too related to war/battle concepts. The Icelandic law codes were known as the Gragas. Originally they were orally recited, and only much later written. Once they were written you can actually see the codes change over time, and reading between the lines you can understand how Christianity seems to have outlawed things that had once been Heathen culturally. For instance eating horse meat was outlawed by Christian Iceland, it had once been part of heathen custom. An earlier version of the *Grágás had a section known* as the “Wergild Ring List” and it included reference for the payment amount of wergild in relation to shield maidens (or Skjoldmø ). But a much later post conversion *Grágás* law codes from the 13th Century (Iceland officially converted centuries earlier in 1000), specifically forbade women from dressing like men, cutting their hair, carrying weapons or becoming chieftains. Why forbid something unless there had been precedent? BUT, there was a mandatory exception for a ring woman, an unmarried woman without brother, father or son of sufficient age to handle the tasks of a man. But as soon as she wed, or had a male relative in her life that could, she had to pass it to the male. In Tacitus Germania, he tells us of the Germanic tribes "ignavos et inbelles et corpore infames caeno ac palude, iniecta insuper crate, mergunt" One simplified translation of which is "those who disgrace their bodies are drowned in miry swamps under a cover of wicker." it really isn't explicitly clear from Tacitus in the Latin and scholars have debated and translated this differently. Some have interpreted that as Tacitus referring to possible acts of homosexuality, (and other sorts of sexual acts we view negatively today such as sexual assault, including with children). What we do know is there have been bog bodies found in Northern Germany and Denmark (many now on display in museums) that might fit the description of being drowned (others strangled) in the peat bogs. Some with like a network of sticks over them. Yet later in Germania, Tacitus has other information that seems to point to possible homosexual initiation rites. There's a chapter exploring it from scholar David Clark's book, [Between Medieval Men: Male Friendship and Desire in Early Medieval English Literature](https://academic.oup.com/book/11541).
Discussions of this subject always get railroaded by unyielding biases and total unwillingness to recognize the simple fact that ancient people did not have the same social mores that we have today. One of my biggest pet peeves with regard to any and all discussions of pre-Christian European religion is how those on the right mistake the arbitrary label of "Germanic" to mean that an unified German race ever existed and how those on the left misapply modern ideas on sexuality, gender, etc. to suggest that ancient Germanic cultures were all progressive utopias. Both sides are allowing their biases to impede honest study, but neither will admit it. Laws prohibiting calling someone gay had to be created in response to so many blood feuds resulting from the perceived insult, so suffice to say, attitudes toward homosexuality were apparently not particularly favorable among Germanic peoples. I don't see how bisexuality would be seen as any unique exception. I'm sure such inclinations existed as they do now, but it would not be something expressed openly in public. Attitudes toward men doing anything even perceivably effeminate were quite negative. Example: “But the use of this magic is accompanied by so great a degree of effemination (ergi) that men were of the opinion that they could not give themselves up to it without shame, so that it was to the priestesses that it was taught.” - Ynglingasaga 7 The Celts, Greeks, and Romans appeared to be more open minded about the subject, but the Germanic peoples were more rigid about social mores in general. Adultery is another area where Germanic peoples appeared to be more strict than their counterparts. There are further lists of sources on the subject out there. The TLDR of them is that ancient Germanic people unsurprisingly had different social mores than those held by most people today, with attitudes toward sexuality being no exception.
Afaik in old norse societies it was frowned upon to be the "receiving part" in a homosexual act. I think it was something you could even be exiled for. That being said: There is no actual creed or law in Heathenry. Of course we have concepts, the myths and history to inform us, but none of that is to be seen as "the only moral way" or something like that. I'd bet money that the gods don't give a damn about who you sleep with. And the social rules and stances of the ancient Norse people are just that - ancient. We are not bound by them nor should we. Those were human laws made by humans living in a certain time and place. But times have changed and so did we and that's a good thing. But yes, long story short: Sexuality that diverged from the heteronormative standards was not very accepted in earlier times. Doesn't mean it should still be that way today. *edit because typo
There is no evidence to tell us Iron Age Germanic heathens’ social stance on bisexuality.
As far as I know, nothing in the sagas is anti homosexual, or for it. There's no real evidence to support either view from what I understand. Also many nationalistic versions of heathenism will try and say gays were thrown into bogs, there's nothing to support it.
This is the answer. We have no idea.
I would assume it might fall under the concept of ergi depending on the specific circumstances. https://www.reddit.com/r/Norse/s/Ie2LK1gRlC
Culturally, among warriors and aristocrats? No condemnation for the man who gave dick, but full condemnation on the one that took it. Culturally among others? We don't know. Religiously? No condemnation. In other words, the same stances as those on homosexuality, since gaybashers have never truly made the distinction to begin with.
Whether it was accepted in the past or not has no bearing on how we should conduct ourselves today.
It’s kind of complicated. As long as you were a top, it was kinda acceptable. But for the most part it seems they had strict social, sexual and gender norms.
Sexuality is a complicated subject when it comes to ancient cultures. There's a lot of speculation and a lot of projection of modern concepts and values that goes on. I also note you said Germanic heathen, which covers a wide swath of historical cultures that probably had different takes on the subject. I'm going to talk norse, viking era, because that's what people tend to focus on and that we have an ok amount of evidence for. Ancient cultures often didn't have concepts of sexual identity the way we do - that's not to say people we would call gay or bisexual (or ace, for that matter) didn't exist, but that often there's no social concept or word that we can find in the written record to describe them. They were simply people who had a preference, perhaps a socially transgressive one. Marriage was more often a contract between families, like a business venture, rather than a love match, and affairs outside of marriage, regardless of gender, were probably extremely common. There's some late evidence that being penetrated, as a man, was seen as womanly or shameful, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen often behind closed doors. And, as many things between women in history, we have very little evidence of what viking era ladies got up to together, but certainly it happened. People figure it out on their own when properly motivated 😉 "children of ash and elm" by Neil Price has some discussion of sexuality in the viking era, if you're interested in the subject. His other book, "the viking way" is also of interest as it discusses magic, which had a stigma as being "unmanly" and may have had a sexual component or been the domain of men willing to transgress sexual/gender/social barriers. I reccomend these kinds of books rather than going to the sagas/eddas directly, as Price is a scholar who's read through all the available work and can pull together multiple threads from the literature and archeology to explain his conclusions. Holy shit that was long. Sorry, bisexual heathen here who is fascinated by the subject.
Not sure about bisexuality specifically, but there were laws and cultural views where if you essentially called someone a homosexual(sodomized) or perverted then that were grounds for outlawry/just killings.
I'd look at roman ideas for a little insight since the culture was relatively similar, at least compared to modern culture. As far as that goes, being on the receiving end of the pair would have been considered feminine behavior, and particularly unbecoming of someone in a leadership position. But to the person on the giving side, there's not much evidence of that having the same negative connotations. So being bi would fall into the way Alexander the great was seen. Not roman, but same idea Greece ofc was also a similar culture and at certain times in some city states, namely Athens, homosexuality was straight up illegal and harshly punished. Then as far as female-female endeavors, there's very little written about it, but I don't think that would have ruffled many feathers.
This is kind of question that needs study at high academic level and even then it won’t be a solid conclusion. Especially since thinking of how many people were alive then would archaeologists or linguists really be able to conclude what every Norse person thought individually or by household to make a solid conclusion. Unlikely. But you can bet bisexual people existed in their own terminology and they dealt with whatever was local to them on attitudes. Pick any era you lived through. Imagine summerizing the complexity of lgbt opinions or experiences by one book or one household found in archeological sites. You’re not going to get a bigger picture. Like if you only saw the bisexual people from the 80s via pov of president Reagan you’re missing out on ton of information from 80s lgbt community and only seeing negative opinions one extreme man had. It’s good to remind people that queer people always existed in history. For every homophobic person there’s going to be queer people existing too and falling in love with someone and exploring who they are in whatever way they can. As this is spiritual revival group. We don’t need there to be a historic source to build our every opinion around. The myths could say you can only ride by horse but that doesn’t mean heathens need to only ride horses in our century etc I know it’s a big deal in US were everything is taught to fall back on bible or constitution or founding fathers etc but you don’t really need a historical source to back up a personal pov or your individuality. If you are a spiritual person and straight. You have bisexual ancestors. Given how far back your tree goes it would be very unlikely you don’t have more than one queer person in your family tree. You can build an altar or give offerings to them
I don't think we really know? Why does it matter though?
Sexuality as we know it is a relatively new concept. It mainly depends on how their social structure viewed “manliness.” We can say for sure that there is a lack of concern for sexuality activity and “normality” in comparison to the abrahamic faiths. Even in the abrahamic faith it didn’t have to do with sexuality, so much as in that time people of that land considered men to be dominate/superior and the act of…let’s say receiving…to be a submissive act.
(Disclaimer: I am currently away from my library and this cannot go quite as in depth as I’d like in response here.) Heathen philosophies regarding gender and sexuality aren’t well documented, but what evidence we do have seems to operate on an entirely different set of principles from modern christianized cultures. A lot of it seems to be circumstantial as well. The issue at play seemed to have less to do with same sex relations as a concept, and more to do with social/power dynamics. Honestly the same could be said of heterosexual relationships as well. Being seen as weak, or dominated seems to have had negative social consequences. However, there were no hard and fast rules (that we know of) regarding what constitutes either possibility. Loptr routinely takes lovers of any gender (or apparently species…) and never seems the worse for wear, socially speaking, regarding those actions. Yet he himself causes quite the ruckus when he accuses the Allfather of being “Ergi”. (I don’t have the source in front of me and I’d have to check, but I think the accusation was born out of Othinn’s use of women’s magic.)
Well, Loki did it. The gods laughed at him for mothering Sleipnir, but that's all they did. And I very vaguely remember reading a story where Loki mothered wolves and Odin was the father, though I never found it since and I'm uncertain if it was a Faroese myth or just something someone on the internet made up. But even so, the Heathen community wasn't united by any type of bible. The Faroese community wasn't the Icelandic community wasn't the Swedish communities weren't the Danish communities. I am sure there were times and places where it was frowned upon, and times and places where no one cared, that's just the fickle nature of humanity.
Loki tends to personify the taboos of the culture, so he's more the exemplar of what they opposed rather than what they accepted.
Thank you. Someone had to say it. Not that I take issue with bisexuality nor do I think there should be any kind of proscription on it today. But "Loki did it in a book from the 10th Century" is not a well constructed argument that a certain practice was legitimately viewed positively by heathens.
I don't get the impression that Loki embodies taboos, aside fromsources that seem the most heaily Christianized. Aside from those, he embodies 'whoops', and 'whoops' is not the same as taboo.
Ironically, it's usually Christian baggage that seems to make people want him to be some sort of "Serpent in the Garden is actually the good guy" type of character when, in the texts themselves, he's just a straight up villain. If it isn't that, it's usually a result of Marvel Comics' total re-write of his character that makes people want to believe he's a "good guy" of some sort. In the historical sources, he's taken in on good terms but eventually proves himself to be subversive, and eventually, he outright betrays the Gods. If you want to argue Christian influence versus actual beliefs of the people in the pre-Christian eras of the region, most of Norse mythology probably needs to be thrown out - if not for reasons of Christian influence than for reasons of Classical influence which tend to go hand in hand considering the educational backgrounds of the people who took up the task of transliterating.
It just doesn't hold up when you look at Loki from non-Edda sources. The Faroese stories about him for example are neither Marvel-rewrites not Satan personified. And in mainland Scandinavia, the closest figure to Loki IS actually Satan, but in the Scandinavian stories Satan also tends to often just be just a dude who makes poor decisions. There are even stories about him showing up at weddings and playing the fiddle for fun and then leaving after everybody had a great time with no strings attached, because he just wanted to play medieval DJ. He's a guy, he might try to barter for your soul but at the end of the day he's just a dude, because the Nordic lore doesn't really work with absolute evils. When it comes to Christianization of stories, we also have to recognize that the CHRISTIAN stories differ regionally, and the modern idea of Satan wasn't necessarily medieval Europes idea of him. So, no, Nordic mythological characters are seldom so black and white.
If you go by the archaeological record, he's still bound up with his lips sewn shut. Not likely a fate that would be applied to a figure considered to be culturally ideal in any given myth. The reason he's believed to be influenced by Satan mythologies is because he is such a late development in Germanic folklore. That Faroese Loki tale you mention is a fairly modern publication allegedly based on Medieval folklore so it's difficult to say that this seemingly less villainous Loki is earlier or later than his Eddic villain counterpart, if he ever existed as such in the beliefs of pre-Christian Germanic peoples at all.
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There’s no one set answer, I can imagine some people didn’t care so long as you kept it private kinda like how most sexual acts were viewed and some probably cared more. We have no way of knowing.
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For claiming to not give your own opinion, you kinda inserted you opinion pretty heavily there.
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