On Fri, 25 Feb 2000 15:57:43 -0800 Alex Ferguson writes:
>Thomas McVey:
>
>> And in Njal's saga from Iceland, an insult by one male warrior to
another
>> saying "the Troll of that mountain uses you like a woman every
fortnight",
>> is enough to get a whole family killed.
>
>Allegedly though, it's not the homosexual 'slur' per se that's the
mortal
>insult, it's the imputation of 'passivity'. i.e., had the insult been
>"you use the Troll of that mountain like a woman every fortnight",
>then it would be no worse in principle than an accusation of poor
taste...
>
Although I'm often nervous about drawing too strongly on-real world
analogies for our models, there's an interesting gaming article which
supports and adds to Alex's comment. In (defunct) "Interactive Fantasy"
Magazine #4, Lee Gold talks about self-censorship in writing gaming
sourcebooks on Japan and the Vikings. He says, "The Eddas refer to Odin
and Loki--the most morally ambiguous of the gods--as having taken on
female form, but the only references the sagas made to homosexuality was
in insult contests. The law codes ruled that you could be outlawed for
accusing someone of being a passive homosexual--or for being a passive
homosexual yourself" (101). Interestingly he goes on to talk about what
he calls "effeminate sedir magic," as I take it some kind of visionary
shamanistic practice based in the cult of Odin. For this magic the shaman
is "involved (in) such practices as to make people believe that he played
a woman's part in the sexual act" (Foote and Wilson, qtd. in Gold 103).
It is an interesting possibility, although perhaps not for the Orlanthi,
to have a myth cycle in which a male god has to turn female in order to
learn or gain command of "feminine" secrets. That seems to be the origin
of these practices and apparently these shaman were gossiped about
regarding this.
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