Transexual Vikings

[Loddfafner]

This is probably only relevant to heathenry as evidence against tendencies to use heathenry to enforce gender norms in imitation of Christian practice. When I visited the Swedish island of Birka with extensive Viking-age remnants, the guide who was an archaeologist pointed out that in certain of the gravesites, the sex of the skeletons did not match what one would expect based on the artifacts they were buried with. I could not find any published research to confirm this.

Recently, I stumbled on a short article originally published in Viking Heritage Magazine (http://www.idavallen.org/artiklar/transvikings.html) that summarized evidence that:


A number of prehistoric graves from Scandinavia, Holland and England challenge traditional assumptions about gender roles in the Viking Age. These prehistoric graves contain men buried in women's clothes and with what we perceive as typical female grave goods; and in death women have been supplied with weapons for their journey to the other side.

[Brännvin]

Give me break to relate Viking era with homosexualism :mad: . This is pure cultural relativism nonsense of a wrong interpretation of history supported by liberal movements openly insulting the Scandinavian/Northern European heritage and its people.

[Nodens]

Transvestism does not automatically entail transsexualism. And the find is certainly open to other (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sei%C3%B0r) interpretations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism#Gender_and_sexuality).

[Matritensis]

http://thenoiseboy.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/swedish-dance-bands-023.jpg

Now this finally makes sense!

[Osweo]

Sam Lucy of the University of Durham wrote about similar things in English heathen burials, if you can look her up. I haven't read her relevant works, and don't know what to make of the mere hearsay I've heard so far. :shrug:

[Óttar]

Transvestism does not automatically entail transsexualism.
Nor does it necessarily mean homosexuality, though there were homosexuals in every culture and era of course.

[Brännvin]

Nor does it necessarily mean homosexuality, though there were homosexuals in every culture and era of course.

Of course, only a small insignificantly tiny minority, but there is no reason for personal and relativistic interpretation of history as the OP. :rolleyes:

By the way, homosexual acts was considered crimes in Sweden until 1944, the acceptance of homosexuality is generally product of a decadent degenerate society.

[Óttar]

By the way, homosexual acts was considered crimes in Sweden until 1944, the acceptance of homosexuality is generally product of a decadent degenerate society.
Wrong. Homophobia is a product of Abrahamism.

[Brännvin]

Wrong. Homophobia is a product of Abrahamism.

Wrong. To interpret Scandinavia Viking age just based on post-modern liberalism is ignorance, in better words relativism.

By the way, the article put a interrogation, the authors not confirm anything other than just speculation, different from the OP already confirming.

[Jarl]

Give me break to relate Viking era with homosexualism :mad: . This is pure cultural relativism nonsense of a wrong interpretation of history supported by liberal movements openly insulting the Scandinavian/Northern European heritage and its people.

LoooooL! By Tina Lauritsen and Ole Thirup Kastholm Hansen??? Those pervy, jokey Danes! Greek homos, Police homos, Nazi homos... now its Viking homos! When will the bullshit end??? ;)

[Loxias]

Homosexuality has always been present, it wasn't considered a sexual orientation or an identity in the past. There were homosexual acts, which were either shunned, banned or accepted (with conditions or not) in different societies. I don't really now what was the main views towards it among the vikings though.
As of sexual identities that don't match physiological sex and transexualism, which seems to be more of the topic here, it has been present in many premodern society, but under a more ritual form, again with conditions and levels of acceptance, which Nodens' links quite explain.

Considering homosexuality a modern problem is very misguided. What has changed is the classification of homosexuality as an identity and a lifestyle instead of acts.

[Jarl]

By the way, the article put a interrogation, the authors not confirm anything other than just speculation, different from the OP already confirming.

By the way, your avatar:

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/image.php?u=52&dateline=1260307631

....looks dodgy, Balder ;)

[The Black Prince]

According to most authors who wrote about proto-historic Northern Europe: Sexual deviations were not common in this area, atleast it was never seen. However f.i. Tacitus mentions the difference between a 'normal' crime and a 'shamefull' crime. The first were punished in the open the last were punished hidded, since their crime lied in shame and their punishment would lie in shame. And so heavy crimes were punished by death in the open while shamefull (sexual deviations) heavy delicts were punished by death were it was not seen, that is by wet depositing (in a bog f.i.).

In the assembly it is allowed to present accusations, and to prosecute capital offences. Punishments vary according to the quality of the crime. Traitors and deserters they hang upon trees. Cowards, and sluggards, and unnatural prostitutes they smother in mud and bogs under an heap of hurdles. Such diversity in their executions has this view, that in punishing of glaring iniquities, it behoves likewise to display them to sight; but effeminacy and pollution must be buried and concealed. In lighter transgressions too the penalty is measured by the fault, and the delinquents upon conviction are condemned to pay a certain number of horses or cattle. -- Tacitus, Germania (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/tacitus-germanygord.html)

An example of this is probably the "Weerdinge Men" a pair of men thrown in the peatmarsh near the Dutch village of Weerdinge around the 1st century CE. They were bound together with leather straps and there genitals were missing also one of the man his guts were hanging out.
Earlier scholars though it were man and woman, relative recent work has shown both were both men...;)
A still common theory about the men is that they were father and son, and that the intestants hanging out were of some ritual purpose so a shaman could tell the future..
However recently in 2008 a DNA study has confirmed something. DNA testing was not possible since the bogs acid would have damaged the DNA to much..:


However, the latest evidence is beginning to show that the two men were not brothers, were not closely related. On January 28, 2004, I received an email from Dr. Carney Matheson, director of the Paleo-DNA Laboratory in Canada. He led a team in 2002 which had done more genetic testing of the two bodies. Four sets were run on Body 1 and all four came out conclusively male. Two were run on Body 2 but while one test made a male identification, the second remained questionable. DNA experts at the Hebrew University in Israel are currently extracting DNA from tissue samples, trying to obtain more information about these two bog mummies. Dr. Matheson informed me that Hebrew University has concluded that both are indeed male. And furthermore, mitochondrial DNA (which is inherited only through one's mother) has shown that while they are of "the same ethnic group", the two men are NOT related maternally. Unfortunately, Y chromosonal testing (to determine paternal relationships) is much more difficult to do, especially on such ancient tissue that has lain in swampy goo for some 2000 years. Yet efforts are currently underway to try to extract this information to find out if the men might be paternally related (i.e. half-brothers).

If it would prove that they were not even half brothers, they would be two unrelated men bound together with their genitals removed in a shameless grave.. In that case needless to say that open homosexuality was not tolerated in early Germanic society.

[Brännvin]

LoooooL! By Tina Lauritsen and Ole Thirup Kastholm Hansen??? Those pervy, jokey Danes! Greek homos, Police homos, Nazi homos... now its Viking homos! When will the bullshit end??? ;)

Check this part of article, Jarl;

We must seek to explain why some people cross-dressed or were buried with mixed grave goods during the Viking Age. Women buried with weapons might be "masculine women" - women interested in traditional male activities and therefore having the opportunity to become female warriors.

Likewise "feminine men" could be an explanation: men with special skills for traditional female handicrafts. Physical disabilities, like blindness, could be a reason, too.

-----

What a feminist post-modern loads of bullshit! :loco:

[Loddfafner]

Reliable knowledge of sexuality and gender in ancient times may be impossible as written records are highly selective, but archaeological finds may at least provide some more data. My guess is that Viking age practices neither fit into the modern sexual liberal narrative nor into that derived from nineteenth-century Germanic nationalism.

[Jarl]

Check this part of article, Jarl;

We must seek to explain why some people cross-dressed or were buried with mixed grave goods during the Viking Age. Women buried with weapons might be "masculine women" - women interested in traditional male activities and therefore having the opportunity to become female warriors.

Likewise "feminine men" could be an explanation: men with special skills for traditional female handicrafts. Physical disabilities, like blindness, could be a reason, too.

-----

What a feminist post-modern loads of bullshit! :loco:


Indeed. And this bit - "we must seek to explain why...", is most worrying. It sounds to me like "we must prove a point that...blah, blah... homosexuality... blah... female warriors blah..." . Archeology is no science. Some things will forever remain unknown. And I think its best to leave them that way, instead of trying desperately to get more definite info at the expense of truth. Taking that sort of data from the "we must explain it" point of view is not very prudent.

[Loddfafner]

Some things will forever remain unknown. And I think its best to leave them that way, instead of trying desperately to get more definite info at the expense of truth.

More definite information will get us closer to truth and remove the delusions that hold us back.

Sapere aude! - Kant

[Jarl]

More definite information will get us closer to truth and remove the delusions that hold us back.

Sapere aude! - Kant

I agree. But the common thing with archeology (trust me, I've been interested in this field for a long time) is that all too often monstrously complex and elaborate theories are built on a very thin foundation. Ordinary people do not always want to learn the truth. They are no probability theory experts. They want definite information. However there is always a risk that by giving them "more definite information", you are actually arbitrarely carving out some data from the whole image, and leaving out some other, perhaps equally important or probable. To me the talk of "female warriors" after finding several weapon burials in female graves is the best example of insincere, biased attitude. We are not trying to look at the image from all possible perspectives and list arguments and counterarguments for each one. Instead, we are merely "proving" what we've already pre-assumed.

[Loddfafner]

I gotta admit I am not sure if I am more horrified or amused by the images that this thread title bring to mind.

[Psychonaut]

I wonder if this could've been connected to the crossdressing cultists of Freyr that Saxo Grammaticus mentions in the Gesta Danorum.