Trigger Warning: includes some non-graphic conversations of rape
Discourse surrounding the relationship between masculine identity
and the body has always been dominated by the penis: the sex
organ serves as the primary differentiator between biological
males and females, and thus holds tremendous power over
depictions of maleness and masculinity throughout history.
The society
depicted by Old Icelandic literature is no different: conversations of “penile
problems,” as Carl Phelpstead labels them in his article “Size Matters: Penile
Problems in the Sagas of the Icelanders,” permeate many narratives in the
Íslendingasögur. Phelpstead cites a handful of sagas where the penis functions in
a non-normative way: Grettis saga, Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, and Brennu-Njáls saga. Through a Freudian reading, he strives to understand the relationship
“between the male genitals and men’s identities in medieval Iceland” (421). He
argues that because “psychoanalysis has become so thoroughly embedded in
contemporary discourse,” it naturally constructs the modern reader’s
perception of sex and sexuality (421). His study states that, using
psychoanalysis, we can connect modern notions of penile issues to medieval
ones, thereby constructing a reasonable idea of what the relationship between
the male body and masculine identity was in medieval Iceland. However, as
Phelpstead acknowledges, utilizing Freud to understand the relationship
between sexuality and gender in medieval Iceland is not an ideal theoretical
framework because Freud’s theories were not attuned to historical difference.
As the discourse of psychoanalysis did not exist in the medieval period, utilizing
Freud to analyze the role of the penis leads us to the dangerous practice of
projecting modern understandings of gender and sexuality backwards onto the
past. Phelpstead instead suggests, in his conclusion, that a Lacanian reading
might be more productive, as Lacan is more sensitive to the nuances of cultural
history.
Phelpstead’s article provides an interesting launching point for a different
theoretical approach: the intersection of disability studies and masculinity
studies, which I, along with other scholars, have labelled “disabled masculinity”
in previous works.
Disabled masculinity focuses on the social impact of a
disability within medieval Icelandic culture by combining the cultural model of
disability studies with the theory of hegemonic masculinity. This interrelated
social construction allows this study to analyze the ways men had to overcome
the societal constraints of both their disability as well as the interlinked
implications for their masculinity. The relationship between the two identity
categories coalesces in the overarching theory of disabled masculinity, which
will be used here to analyze the relationship between hegemonic masculinity
and the irregular penis. This study is an important piece of the broader
conversation on disabled masculinity within the medieval Icelandic world; it
will explore aberrant penises within the Old Norse corpus to determine whether
these irregular phalli can be constituted as instances of sexual disability. In this
study, the term “sexual disability” refers to instances where the genitals
function or are presented in a non-normative way, typically hindering the
person from engaging in normative intercourse.
Men who were physically disabled were also subjected to having their
masculine identity challenged because of their perceived lack of physical
ability.
Since the penis is the preeminent marker of masculinity, medieval men
who were afflicted with sexual disabilities sometimes committed violent acts of
hyper-aggressive masculinity in an attempt to “reclaim” their position of
masculine power within society. Additionally, men who were sterile or
otherwise unable to impregnate a woman also suffered a blow to their
masculinity. This study demonstrates that, once revealed to the society in which
the man lived, sexual disabilities were among the most culturally disabling for
men within the medieval Norse world because of the significance of the penis
and its power over the hegemonic masculine ideal.
Utilizing the Icelandic sagas as a historical witness to medieval disability
has obstacles: much ink has been spilled about the historical veracity of the
sagas and issues of dating further complicate the conversations. The narratives
found in the Íslendingasögur depict the medieval Icelandic world roughly
between the settlement of the country (870 CE) and the country’s conversion to
Christianity (1000 CE), yet they were not written down until the twelfth century
at the earliest (Clunies Ross 29, 53). From a historical perspective, scholars
consistently question how trustworthy this information is; however, from a
literary perspective, the texts are full of rich cultural information. The central
question here focuses on whose cultural information they are portraying: as
Crocker, Tirosh, and Ármann Jakobsson argue,
Whether the sagas should be viewed as historical, fictional, or some
combination of the two, they are first and foremost narratives. Even
if a given saga succeeds, to some degree, in correctly describing the
social reality it purports to represent, it also inevitably constitutes an
interpretation of that same reality (13).
Realistically, it is impossible for an Icelandic saga to reproduce the events and
social reality of the settlement period in Iceland entirely and faithfully; despite
this, the saga authors constructed narratives that reflect “certain prevailing
ideologies and mentalities . . . in the ways physical, mental, and sensory
differences were experienced, communicated, represented, and interpreted in
medieval Iceland” (Crocker, Tirosh, and Jakobsson 14).
Literary narratives have
long preserved information about individual cultures’ perspectives on identity
and depictions of disability are no different. Therefore, this study presumes that
the sagas, while not infallibly historically accurate, do present a realistic
depiction of disabled masculinity within medieval Iceland. This study also
argues that this depiction was influenced both by the original source material
of the sagas from the settlement period
and the perspective of the saga author
or authors. By assessing these sagas as narratives, we can utilize the concept of
narrative prosthesis, introduced by David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder, which
argues that literary narratives heavily rely on disabled characters as an
“opportunistic metaphorical device” to “differentiate the character from the
anonymous background of the ‘norm’” (222). As stated above, the Icelandic
sagas are rich with cultural information: the way disabled characters are
treated, discussed, and presented allows us as a modern audience to “assess
shifting values and norms imposed upon the body” in literature (Mitchell and
Snyder 224). The narrative examples of men with sexual disabilities
demonstrate what values and norms were imposed upon the male body, and
more specifically upon the penis. As Mitchell and Snyder argue, “disability
serves as an interruptive force that confronts cultural truisms” (223). By
analyzing the examples of medieval Icelandic men through the framework of
narrative prosthesis, we will be able to both uncover cultural information about
disability
and masculinity in the Icelandic sagas. The following literary
examples will demonstrate how meanings surrounding the functioning and
non-functioning penis change based on one’s historical and cultural context. By
analyzing the medieval Icelandic male through an intersectional theoretical
approach, we can develop an understanding of the key facets of masculine
identities, and the repercussions of threats to those identities, through these
examples of irregular phalli.
Cultural Constructions of Disability and Masculinity
The introduction of disability studies to the world of medieval studies
brought a variety of conceptual frameworks to be used in the analysis of
medieval disabilities: the most popular being the religious, social, and cultural
models.
As many scholars have noted in their work on disability, what is most
important for medievalists is the ability to resist projecting our own modern
definitions of disability and impairment backwards onto the medieval period.
As I have argued in previous work, the cultural model, also developed by
Mitchell and Snyder, provides the best opportunity to utilize the context
provided by the medieval source material to build an understanding of
disability. Created in response to the social model, which draws a distinction
between “disability” as the social exclusion that people with impairments
experience versus “impairment” as the physical or mental limitation
(Shakespeare 214), the cultural model does not distinguish between these two
concepts. Instead, the cultural model uses the term “disability” to “include both
the reality of corporeal differences as well as the effects of social
stigmatization” in the medieval world (Eyler 6). This is particularly important
for medieval scholars: by bypassing a system in which the medieval scholar is
forced to “sort” instances of disability, we can “take into account the entire
spectrum of experiences for people with disabilities and [it] does not force us to
focus on constructed perceptions of disability at the expense of real, bodily
phenomena” (Eyler 6). What is most important for this study is examining the
discourse around the instances of disability: how is the male body perceived to
be able or disabled within the social context of medieval Iceland? This type of
analysis also allows us to expand beyond modern disability categories (like
blindness, limb loss, chronic illness, etc.) to examine unique instances of
disabilities that may not qualify as a disability in our modern world. Similar to
my examination of the saga character Njáll’s inability to grow a beard in a
previous study, the cultural impairment of these irregular phalli constitutes a
disability because it disables the perceived masculinity of each man within the
patriarchal society in which they live (Morrow 24). Thus, an intersectional
reading of disability and masculinity is essential to uncover the cultural
understandings of phalli and their problems within the Old Norse world.
Like disability, masculinity should be understood as a cultural construction.
James Messerschmidt makes a crucial distinction when defining masculinity:
Masculinity is not a fixed entity embedded in the body or personality
traits of individuals. Masculinities are configurations of practice that
are accomplished in social action and, therefore, can differ according
to the gender relations in a particular social setting (21).
Thus, when we are discussing masculinity, we are discussing those
configurations of practice that are contingent on social and historical context.
Masculinity is an unfixed category if it is being studied in isolation: until it
interacts with historical, social, and cultural meaning, we cannot define the
concept. In his monograph
Female Masculinity, Jack Halberstam makes the
interesting claim that masculinity only becomes legible when “[it] leaves the
white male middle-class body” (2). Masculinity can only truly define itself
through interacting with other subordinated men, women, non-binary people,
or children. Halberstam’s point supports the need for intersectional readings of
masculinity, as masculinity is more often defined by what it is
not. This notion
appears in Preben Meulengracht Sørensen’s famous study on insults in saga
literature,
The Unmanly Man, which demonstrates how the insult trading
systems of the Icelandic sagas defined “what a man
must not be, since in that
case he is no man” (24). Men are inherently defined by what they are not: this
is the notion underpinning hegemonic masculinity.
I am not the only medieval scholar to utilize hegemonic masculinity to
understand the medieval Norse world: my use is directly inspired by Gareth
Lloyd Evans, who argues that hegemonic masculine ideal “can be considered as
the crystallization of the masculine ideal” (2019, 16). In other words, since the
hegemonic ideal is rarely attainable, there are multiple expressions of
masculinity that are deemed acceptable within society, and yet, all expressions
of masculinity are perceived to be deficient in relation to the hegemonic ideal.
Some masculinities are perceived to be more deficient than others, organizing
a hierarchy of acceptable masculine gender performance. Essential to this fact
is that hegemonic masculinity preserves patriarchal power over women. R.W.
Connell argues that “hegemonic masculinity is always constructed in relation
to various subordinated masculinities as well as in relation to women” (183).
Throughout the primary source examples of irregular phalli, we see women,
subordinated men, and children comment on the male character’s failures: this
consistently moves the male further from the hegemonic masculine ideal,
sometimes forcing him to reassert his masculinity violently upon them.
Evans poses his theory of hegemonic masculinity in response to Carol
Clover’s famous one-sex/one-gender model and argues that a framework of
hegemonic masculinity is a more productive lens for analyzing the multiple
masculinities present in the medieval Norse world.
The existence of multiple
masculinities is of the utmost importance for conversations of sexual disability.
Evans contends that hegemonic masculinity is contingent on the idea of a
hierarchy of masculinities; some masculinities are more acceptable than others,
but subverting that hierarchy does not equate to feminization (2019, 62).
Therefore, subversive masculinities are still identified as masculinities, and we
can discuss the disabled male body without erasing the masculine identity of
the disabled man. A male figure that is struggling with a sexual disability is still
a man: this will be explored in the discussion of Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar.
Evans also emphasizes that “masculinities, while often spoken of in abstraction,
cannot be regarded as isolated from the myriad of other factors which produce
subject positions and subjectivity,” so hegemonic masculine identity itself is
dependent on physical ability or disability (2019, 19).
Phallic Cults, Castration, and Defamation
Psychoanalytical theory was correct to suggest that the concept of the
phallus is more than biological: it is imbued with cultural significance. The
purpose of this section of the study is to examine contextual material to develop
a cohesive picture of the cultural ideals for both the penis and, more broadly,
male genitals in medieval Scandinavia before examining the moments of “lack”
that we encounter in the Íslendingasögur. There are a few sources that
explicitly discuss penises that are available to us for this endeavor: Vǫlsa þáttr
(a story about phallic worship from Ólafs saga helga), Grágás (the medieval
Icelandic law codes), as well as episodes of sexual defamation from the
Íslendingasögur and fornaldarsögur. While not all these narratives are exactly
contemporary to the Íslendingasögur, the topics discussed were part of the
cultural worldview within which the sagas themselves were composed. For
example, although some scholars have claimed that Vǫlsa þáttr “may well be so
heavily fictionalised that it can no longer be said to have any historical basis,”
Luke John Murphy instead argues that it undoubtedly reflects Christian
discourse about late forms of paganism, with the late-fourteenth century
Icelanders who transcribed what was presumably once an oral tale accepting its
(doubtless idealised) events as possible in their ancestors’ worldview (66–7).
In a similar vein, the narratives of the fornaldarsögur typically include
fantastical elements, but “the kind of world that they inhabit is half familiar in
terms of Icelandic social conventions, although in many cases it is distinctly
aristocratic and in that respect unlike Icelandic farm culture” (Clunies Ross
78).
When discussing broader cultural issues like castration, sexuality, and
disabled masculinity, both the Vǫlsa þáttr and the fornaldarsögur provide
relevant cultural information for assessing instances of irregular phalli in the
Íslendingasögur, especially when utilizing narrative prosthesis as a tool to
assess the meaning mapped onto disabled characters within the sagas.
Vǫlsa þáttr is a short tale found in Ólafs saga helga that tells the story of a
pre-Christian family engaging in phallus worship: after a horse is slaughtered
for meat, the son of the farmer takes the severed vingull [horse penis] and shakes
it at his mother, sister, and the female slave woman who lived with them.
Instead of discarding the penis, his mother wrapped it in herbs and preserved
it: it then became an object of worship in the farmer’s home and verses were
spoken over it every evening.
The verses are the most illuminating examples
for understanding the cultural significance of the penis: it is consistently
referred to as a blœti [a thing worshipped or a sacred object] (Zoëga 61) and the
verses focus on its potential to bring sexual pleasure. Despite not being a human
penis, the Vǫlsi is consistently referred to as an object to be used for human
sexual pleasure through penetration. For example, the farmer’s son speaks a
mocking verse to the slave woman: “Þér er, ambátt, / þessi Vǫlsi / allódauflegur
/ innan læra” [For you, [slave woman], this rod is not at all dull between the
thighs] and, later, the slave woman speaks her own verse while worshipping the
penis: “Víst eigi mættag / við of bindast / í mig að keyra, / ef við ein lægjum / í
andkætu” [Certainly I would not be able to resist driving [it] into myself, if we
two were lying alone in mutual pleasure] (1089).
The slave woman is the only
one that has sexually explicit remarks either directed at her or by her, which
indicates that there might be broader implications for studies of class and
sexuality here; despite this, the point remains that this specific phallic object is
defined by its role in sexual pleasure. The size of the phallus is also emphasized:
the farmer’s wife verse states that “aukinn ertu, Vǫlsi” [You are enlarged, Vǫlsi]
and the farmer’s son calls the vingull rǫskligr [powerful]. The emphasis on
sexual pleasure, power, and size for the horse phallus signify the importance of
those qualities for the female members of the house when it comes to
expectations of an ideal phallus. Although the phallus is clearly a horse phallus
rather than a human one, the way the women in the household discuss and
venerate it highlights their expectations for an ideal human phallus. Their
emphasis is primarily on its ability to provide sexual pleasure above all else. The
over-emphasis on sexual pleasure as the leading ideal quality for a penis is not
echoed everywhere in the corpus: other instances focus on issues of fertility and
reproduction.
In the Old Norse law codes, laws about castration focus strongly on the role
of conception. As Phelpstead notes, the word used for castration in Grágás is
gelda: “a Norse word borrowed into English as ‘to geld’ and retaining in English
its original meaning: to render infertile by excising or isolating the testicles”
(423). Episodes of castration in the law codes are primarily focused on
preventing certain non-ideal men from reproducing. We are told that: “Rett er
at gellda gongo menn oc varðar eigi við lög þoat þeir fae örkumbl af eða bana”
[It is lawful to castrate vagrants and there is no legal penalty even if they get
lasting injury or death from it] (Grágás 203, Dennis, Foote, and Perkins 219) and
“eigi ero menn scyldir at taca við eins manz bornom fleirom en tueim
lavngetnom þeim er anara brøðra ero nema gelldr se faðir barnana” [Men are
not required to take over more than two third cousins who are the illegitimate
children of the same man unless the father of the children is castrated] (Grágás
26, Dennis, Foote, and Perkins 50). As Dennis, Foote, and Perkins note, the legal
issues of castration are primarily preventative: it is the unlawful actions of a
man that lead to his forced inability to reproduce. Like other disabilities that
can sometimes be caused through punitive measures (e.g., losing a hand
because of stealing), a man who has been legally castrated is both physically
disabled—he cannot father children anymore—and socially disabled—he has
been deemed unfit to father children, and his castration serves as a signifier of
that fact. Men who have been castrated are subject to disabled masculinity, as
it is evident that both the inability to reproduce and the power of social
defamation work in tandem to remove them from the hegemonic masculine
ideal.
Thus, a physical impairment that prevents a man from reproducing
clearly constitutes itself as a disability in this cultural context.
Castration also carries a weight of
sexual defamation beyond the inability to
reproduce, as demonstrated by a conflict between two men, Án and Ketill, in the
fornaldarsaga
>Áns saga bogsveigis. After Ketill accuses Án of wanting to have sex
with another man at the king’s court, Án seeks out Ketill and: “Hann batt hann
ok rak af honum hárit ok bar i tjöru ok mælti, at svá skyldi hverr fljúga sem
fjaðraðr væri. Hann stakk ór honum annat augat, síðan geldi hann hann” [Án
tied him up and shaved the hair off him and smeared on tar, and said that any
creature that was feathered should be able to fly. He put out one of his eyes and
next he gelded him] (
Áns saga 384, Hughes 319). By removing Ketill’s testicles,
Án has rendered him infertile, physically disabling him. In conjunction, Án has
also dealt a crushing blow to Ketill’s masculinity: by gelding or castrating Ketill,
“Án has utterly emasculated him and marked him, in Sørensen’s schema, as a
níðingr” (Lawing 91). The stigma attached to Ketill’s new, visible disability also
disables his status as a man in the king’s court:
Ketill leitar til skipanna ok sagði konungi, ok báru honum vitni stafir
hans, at hann var stirðr orðinn, en sjón var sögu ríkari um augu hans
ok eistu, at á burt var hvárttveggja. "Afhendr ertu mér," sagði
konungr ok rak hann á burt frá sér.
[Ketill made his way to the ship and told the king and his staves bore
him witness that he had become crippled while the sight of him was
a more powerful tale concerning his eye and his testicles that both
were missing. ‘You’re unfit for me,’ said the king and drove him away
from him.]
(Áns saga 384, Hughes 319)
The king’s reaction to Ketill’s disabled masculinity emphasizes that male
genitals held significant social weight beyond their ability to impregnate a
woman. It is evident that castration and other phallic injuries were not just a
physical disability related to a man’s ability to reproduce: Ketill is marked as a
níðingr, and, through this, he is moved to the margins of society, no longer able
to hold the same type of male power as he did before. The fact that Án put out
one of Ketill’s eyes adds further insult to injury; as Christopher Crocker notes,
in medieval Icelandic saga literature, “the act of blinding was concurrently
regarded as a symbolic equivalent to the act of castration, particularly when
brought about through violence or torture” (272). Án’s partial blinding of Ketill
adds further stigma to Ketill’s disabled masculinity, serving as a visual marker
that signifies Ketill is now a níðingr. This example is one of many that
demonstrates that the concept of
níð was an extremely powerful one: Sørensen
argues that
níð was an “affront to honor” that usually had “sexual import” (11).
Being marked níðingr, as Án marks Ketill, is a serious issue. A níðingr is the man
who has this stigma attached to him: it is a charge loaded with social disgrace
and typically includes an accusation of irregular sexual behavior. Again, we
have an example of castration being inflicted in response to a man’s previous
actions, but this episode is significantly more violent than the hypothetical
examples described by
Grágás: medieval Norse men could enact terrible violence
against others when their masculinity was threatened. This episode further
indicates that castration as a form of sexual disability carried significant
symbolic weight: castration immediately removes men from the hegemonic
masculine ideal. This episode is not the only one that shows how fear of sexual
defamation weighed heavily on the minds of medieval Scandinavian men.
Another example of the power of níð that Sørensen begins his study with is
the famous conflict between Skarphéðinn and Flosi over a silk robe in Brennu-Njáls saga. During a negotiation for the murder of Hǫskuldr, Flosi’s son-in-law
and Njáll Þorgeirsson’s foster son, after he had been killed by Njáll’s sons, Njáll
adds a silk robe and a pair of boots onto the pile of silver that will be paid to
Flosi as settlement for Hǫskuldr’s death. Flosi perceives the silk robe as a
gender-based insult from Njáll, as the robe is gender-ambiguous. Flosi then
insults Njáll’s masculinity to his son Skarphéðinn.
Skarphéðinn responds that
Flosi is “brúðr Svínafellsáss...hverjan ina níundu nótt ok geri hann þik at konu”
[the sweetheart of the troll at Svínfell . . . [and] he uses you as a woman every
ninth night] (Brennu-Njáls saga 314, Cook 210). Flosi, affronted at both the silk
robe and Skarphéðinn’s comment that he is the passive receiver of homosexual
intercourse, breaks the fragile peace that the two sides had been trying to
achieve. Afterwards, Flosi burns Njáll’s entire family to death inside their home:
accusations of níð are clearly no joke in the Old Norse corpus. We will see this
pattern of violence, established by figures like Án and Flosi, continue with our
examples of disabled masculinity.
The social significance of normative sexuality in medieval Scandinavia is
clear from these examples: for men to achieve the hegemonic masculine ideal,
they must be able to reproduce, provide sexual satisfaction to their partners,
engage in acceptable sexual relationships, and have an adequately sized penis.
If their sexual prowess is slandered by any implication that it is non-normative,
they react violently. By establishing the masculine ideal in relation to the
functionality of the penis, we can now examine whether certain examples from
the Íslendingasögur qualify as examples of disabled masculinity.
Sexual Disability in the Íslendingasögur
There are multiple instances of irregular phalli within the Íslendingasögur,
including mentions of erectile disfunction, undersized penises, and an extra-large penis that hinders a man’s ability to consummate his marriage. While an
overlarge or undersized penis may not be constituted as a traditional disability,
the impact on an individual man’s societal perception within medieval
Scandinavia was inarguable. As noted earlier, Phelpstead’s argument that “a
penile problem such as erectile dysfunction compromised the ability of a man
to assert or maintain [a] dominant position” (433) is, in fact, an argument for
the fact that disabled masculinity is at play here: the man’s irregular phallus
negatively affects his social standing as a man, thus we can define these
moments as disabilities within medieval Iceland.
I begin this section with an analysis of Hrútr’s irregular phallus in Brennu-Njáls saga. His penile disability comes from a supernatural curse from the
Norwegian Queen Gunnhildr, with whom he was having a sexual relationship
during his time abroad in Norway, as a punishment for not telling her about his
betrothed back in Iceland. She states: “Ef ek á svá mikit vald á þér sem ek ætla,
þá legg ek þat á við þik, at þú megir engri munúð fram koma við konu þá, er þú
ætlar þér á Íslandi, en fremja skalt þú mega vilja þinn við aðrar konur” [If I have
as much power over you as I think I have, I cast this spell: you will not have
sexual pleasure with the woman you plan to marry in Iceland, though you’ll be
able to have your will with other women] (Brennu-Njáls saga 21, Cook 13;
emphasis added). In a previous study on disabled masculinity in the
Íslendingasögur, I have shown that many disabilities impair one’s masculinity
based on the origin of the disability; however, Hrútr’s situation is more complex
than losing a limb in battle or developing a disability due to old age (Morrow 7).
He is cursed, and while there is a plethora of arguments regarding the validity
of the supernatural within the sagas, I would instead draw attention to the exact
wording of Gunnhildr’s curse: “Ef ek á svá mikit vald á þér sem ek ætla ” [If I
have as much power over you as I think I have] (Brennu-Njáls saga 21, Cook 13).
Gunnhildr’s curse lies in her individual influence over Hrútr as opposed to an
inescapable supernatural malediction. The specificity of her curse is important,
too: the word munúð [pleasure; lust] (Zoëga 304) points again to the importance
of sexual pleasure. As we also saw with Vǫlsa þáttr, discourse surrounding the
ideal phallic object in medieval Scandinavia focuses on its ability to provide
sexual pleasure for its sexual partner—Gunnhildr is intentionally sexually
disabling Hrútr for his new wife when she performs her curse.
Once Hrútr returns to Iceland and marries his betrothed, Unnr, she appears
to be unhappy in her marriage and eventually confesses to her father that she
wants to divorce Hrútr. When her father, Mǫrðr, demands more details, she
states:
Ek vilda segja skilit við Hrút, ok má ek segja þér, hverja sǫk ek má
helzt gefa honum. Hann má ekki hjúskaparfar eiga við mik, svá at ek
mega njóta hans, en hann er at allri náttúru sinni annarri sem inir
vǫskustu menn [ . . . ]. Þegar hann kemr við mik, þá er hǫrund hans
svá mikit, at hann má ekki eptirlæti hafa við mik, en þó hǫfum vit
bæði breytni til þess á alla vega, at vit mættim njótask, en þat verðr
ekki. En þó áðr vit skilim, sýnir hann þat af sér, at hann er í œði sínu
rétt sem aðrir men.
[I want to divorce Hrut, and I can tell you what my main charge
against him is—he is not able to have sexual intercourse in a way that
gives me pleasure, though otherwise his nature is that of the manliest
man [ . . . ]. When he comes close to me 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. By the time we
part, however, he shows that he’s just like other men.]
(Brennu-Njáls saga 24, Cook 15–16).
Considering the relationship between Hrútr’s sexual disability and his
perceived masculinity is difficult here: according to Unnr, the issue is that
Hrútr’s penis gets so large that he is unable to satisfy her. From this, we can at
the very least infer that Hrútr is unable to ejaculate inside of Unnr, and most
likely that he is unable to penetrate her at all. The question of whether this
affects Hrútr’s perceived hegemonic masculinity within society would be much
easier if he had been cursed with erectile disfunction or a below-average penis.
We’ve seen that a larger penis size was seen as favourable in
Vǫlsa þáttr, and the
example from
Grettis saga will also highlight this fact; at first, one would think
that Hrútr’s masculinity could only be bolstered by this physical issue. Clearly,
it is not the
size that disables Hrútr’s masculinity—it is the inability to penetrate
his wife. Furthermore, if one looks closer at the specific language the two
women use to describe the implications of his problem, one might infer that
Hrútr’s inability to consummate his marriage with Unnr could be reflective of a
few different issues: his internal guilt for lying to Gunnhildr about his and
Unnr’s betrothal, his guilt regarding sleeping with Gunnhildr while he was
betrothed to Unnr, or perhaps his inability to overcome the power that
Gunnhildr has over him. Regardless of the reason, it’s evident that his physical
performance is subjugated by the power the two women have over him and
therefore should be deemed an instance of disabled masculinity within
patriarchal Icelandic society, because his ableness is affected by female
influence. Truly, the size of his penis is of no consequence—it is his inability to
correctly consummate his marriage with his wife that is the real issue.
Phelpstead reads this episode as an instance of Freud’s concept of “psychical
impotence,” and argues that Hrútr was perhaps actually suffering from
impotence that he was unable to mentally overcome because he truly believed
himself to be cursed by Gunnhildr (432). In addition to not being able to bring
sexual pleasure to his wife, he is also unable to impregnate her. Although I
disagree with utilizing Freud’s theoretical lens here, it does seem that Hrútr is
suffering from a non-traditional impotence. Thus, Hrútr’s irregular phallus is
doubly disabled: it cannot bring his wife sexual pleasure, and it cannot
impregnate her. This causes a negative social reaction to Hrútr’s masculinity,
and he is forced to take drastic measures.
Hrútr strives to reassert his masculinity against his father-in-law after
Mǫrðr attempts to reclaim Unnr’s dowry from him post-divorce settlement—he
challenges him to a duel for the dowry and, due to Mǫrðr’s old age, Mǫrðr is
forced to decline “ok hafði Mǫrðr af ina mestu svívirðing” [and Mord was much
disgraced] (
Brennu-Njáls saga 28, Cook 18). Hrútr is therefore able to maintain a
semblance of masculinity, despite the embarrassment he experiences
throughout the court proceedings. However, there is also an implication that
Hrútr has overstepped or acted dishonorably: by challenging an old man to an
unequal fight, Hrútr potentially strays from the hegemonic masculine ideal into
the realm of hypermasculinity.
This concept threatens the parameters set by
hegemonic masculinity: although Hrútr is
technically acting within the cultural
structure of medieval Icelandic masculinity by challenging Mǫrðr, his actions
are overly aggressive. Mǫrðr is told by his friends that this duel will inevitably
end in his death; thus, there is no real option for him—he must forfeit.
Furthermore, the challenge does not fully absolve Hrútr of his societal shame
surrounding his failed marriage: after the trial, two boys are playing when they
engage in a game:
Annarr þeira mælti: “Ek skal þér Mǫrðr vera ok stefna þér af konunni
ok finna þat til foráttu, at þú hafir ekki sorðit hana.” Annarr svaraði:
“Ek skal þér Hrútr vera; tel ek þik af allri fjárheimtunni, ef þú þorir
eigi at berjask við mik.” Þetta mæltu þeir nǫkkurum sinnum; þá
gerðisk hlátr mikill af heimamǫnnum.
[One of them said “I’ll be Mord and summon you to give up your wife
for not screwing her.” The other answered, “I’ll be Hrut, and I’ll say
that you must forfeit all property claims if you don’t dare to fight with
me.” They repeated this a few times, and much laughter arose among
the household.]
(Brennu-Njáls saga 29, Cook 18).
Although Hrútr responds gracefully to the mockery, the fact that the saga
included this episode at all clearly demonstrates Hrútr’s fall from the
hegemonic masculine ideal: being mocked by children exposes his disabled
masculinity. His hypermasculinity in the face of his irregular phallus is unable
to fully repair his masculine identity.
Another instance of an irregular phallus belongs to the saga hero Grettir,
whose penis size is mocked by a servant woman for being too small:
Þá mælti griðkona: “Svá vil ek heil, systir, hér er kominn Grettir
Ásmundarson, ok þykki mér raunar skammrifjamikill vera, ok liggr
berr. En þat þykki mér fádœmi, hversu lítt hann er vaxinn niðri, ok
ferr þetta eigi eptir gildleika hans ǫðrum.”
[Then the serving woman said, “Upon my word, sister, Grettir
Asmundarson is here, lying naked. He looks big-framed to me all
right, but I’m astonished to see how poorly endowed he is between
the legs. It’s not in proportion to the rest of him.”]
(Grettis saga 240, Scudder 165).
Grettir, in some senses, clearly aligns with the hegemonic masculine ideal—the
servant woman is shocked to see that he is
lítt vaxinn down there, and his penis
size is placed in a contrast with his striking physical figure. Grettir’s physicality
is highlighted earlier in the saga as far surpassing all other men in Iceland.
This episode once again shows that there was a clear relationship between penis
size and perceived masculinity within Icelandic society—information we could
not absolutely confirm within the story of Hrútr, but between the maidservant’s
surprise, as well as Grettir’s response to the accusation, it is evident that his
undersize penis is a detriment to Grettir’s masculinity. He speaks two stanzas
in retribution, but the second stanza more adequately displays Grettir’s rage at
the insult:
Sverðlítinn kvað sæta,
Saumskorða, mik orðinn;
Hrist hefir hreðja kvista
hœlin satt at mæla;
alllengi má ungum,
eyleggjar bíð Freyja,
lágr í læra skógi,
lotu, faxi mér vaxa.
[The seamstress sitting at home,
short-sworded she calls me;
maybe the boastful hand-maiden
of ball-trunks is telling the truth.
But a young man like me
can expect sprouts to grow
in the groin-forest: Get ready
for action, splay-legged goddess.]
(Grettis saga 240–41, Scudder 166).
After this statement, Grettir physically “reclaims” his masculinity from the
maidservant that insulted his size in the first place: we are told that Grettir
seized the servant-woman and “Griðka œpði hástǫfum, en svá skilðu þau, at hon
fryði eigi á Gretti, um þat er lauk” [The servant-woman shouted out at the top
of her voice, but when she left Grettir she did not taunt him again] (
Grettis saga
241, Scudder 166). It is evident that Grettir performs a violent, non-consensual
sex act to reclaim his masculinity: the stanza above indicates that Grettir’s rape
of the servant-woman is instigated solely by her insult about his penis size. Rape
was motivated by a variety of factors in the Old Norse world, but here we see
that it is “used as a tool to show who was the other’s superior” (Ljungqvist 436).
In part, Grettir’s action does succeed: we cannot constitute Grettir’s perceived
small penis as a physical disability, because he clearly demonstrates that his
penis can be effective in sexual penetration while erect, despite being
lítt vaxinn
while flaccid. However, Grettir’s violent response to a comment from a servant-woman, a member of the lower class, indicates an anxiety about the social
implications of his perceived lack of size, and therefore this
does qualify his
undersized flaccid penis as an instance of disabled masculinity, one that he
attempts to compensate for with a heinous sexual crime. The fact that Grettir
resorts to rape here is particularly important: “the fear created by rape has . . .
acted historically and cross-culturally as a means of social control”
(Messerschmidt 11) for men, and this demonstrates the real threat posed to
women who challenge a man’s embodied masculinity during this historical
period. This also has implications for the modern day: the fact that Grettir
reclaims his masculinity by force in a way that is both sadistic and violent
against women points towards a still-present issue of patriarchal power being
linked to sexual prowess and violence. Grettir’s toxic violence almost
overshadows the implication that he has a small penis, revealing the dangers of
a man’s perceived sexual ability in relation to hypermasculinity.
We also know
that, despite rape being illegal in medieval Iceland, Grettir is never punished for
his crime.
The last example of penile disability within the sagas comes from
Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar. As Egill ages he develops a variety of disabilities: impaired
eyesight bordering on blindness, an ambulatory disability that affects his ability
to walk, and finally, erectile dysfunction.
After being insulted by some women
after falling over, Egill laments the state of his “bergis fótar borr” [middle leg]
and states:
Vals hefk vǫ́fur helsis;
váfallr em ek skalla;
blautr erum bergis fótar borr,
en hlust es þorrin.
[My head bobs like a bridled horse
it plunges baldly into woe
my middle leg both droops and drips
while both my ears are dry.]
(Egils saga 294, Scrudder 181).
Considering erectile disfunction alongside disabled masculinity is
straightforward in comparison to other instances of disability within the
corpus: one’s masculinity is inherently disabled if one’s penis is not functioning.
However, Clover and Phelpstead’s reading of Egill’s
blautr penis through the
one-sex/one-gender model attempts to erase the relationship between penile
function and masculinity. Phelpstead is correct in asserting that “for [Egill] this
is not merely a medical problem or an unfortunate constraint on his sex life: it
is also integral to his (and presumably other people’s) sense of his identity”
(426). However, Phelpstead argues that through the deterioration of Egill’s
penile function, he essentially
becomes a woman because he aligns more with
the
blauðr end of the gender spectrum (427). Evans directly addresses this
argument and highlights the difference between one’s masculinity being
diminished from a physical impairment versus vanishing entirely: Egill sees his
inability to achieve an erection as a detriment to his existing masculinity, and
“so too this verse illustrates Egill’s consideration of the fact that his body now
acts as an obstacle to his attaining the status of hegemonic masculinity” (2019,
82). It is important to consider Egill’s status as a man in tandem with the
disability of being unable to obtain an erection without erasing his manhood.
Disabled masculinity does not connotate femininity, and Egill’s example of the
downfalls of old age overarchingly show that despite his deteriorating
masculinity, he is never perceived to be feminine. While impotence is certainly
a sexual disability, it does not negate Egill’s male identity; however, it does
diminish it. Once again, we see the importance of mockery at play with these
three examples: we know that Egill has fallen from the hegemonic masculine
ideal because we are told by the women in the narrative, just as we are
told by
the children who mocked Hrútr and the servant woman who mocked Grettir.
The social reaction to each man’s irregular phallus, alongside that man’s
individual response to that reaction, allows us to develop a nuanced
understanding of the severity of a sexual disability in medieval Iceland.
Conclusion
Based on these examples, one can infer that anything other than a
normative penis does qualify as a sexual disability within medieval Iceland. That
sexual disability, in turn, negatively affects the individual man’s societal power,
thus disabling his masculinity. The intersection of disability and masculinity
shows itself prominently in issues of irregular phalli: whether the more obvious
cases, such as erectile disfunction or having a small penis, or the less obvious
cases, such as having an overlarge penis that is unable to penetrate one’s wife,
the relationship between penile problems and men is a particularly aggressive
one. Furthermore, the stakes appear much higher for the men in question’s
ability to achieve the hegemonic masculine ideal if they have irregular penises,
and, therefore, some of them must reclaim their masculinity through violent or
illegal instances of aggressive hypermasculinity. We see many issues of
hypermasculinity at play in medieval Iceland that have modern day
implications: violence and rape are tied to challenges of a man’s ability to
sexually perform in both medieval and modern cultures. Utilizing the
framework of disabled masculinity exposes the fragility of the hegemonic
masculine ideal in medieval Scandinavia and demonstrates how powerfully the
functioning penis dictated one’s position to that ideal. Finally, by moving away
from a psychoanalytical lens of analysis, we can better understand the way
historical context shaped individual perceptions of the “ideal” versus “non-ideal” phallus in the medieval Icelandic world, and how these perceptions
intersected with other aspects of the hegemonic masculine ideal, such as
physical prowess or honorable actions. This study sheds light on just one of
many different forms of disabled masculinity in the medieval Icelandic world,
with the hope that scholars will continue to explore the various ways disability
and masculinity intersect to uncover significant cultural information from the
period in the future.