Inside the Viking battle of the genders

Summary

History Extra Podcast – "Inside the Viking Battle of the Genders"

Date: December 29, 2025
Host: James Osborne
Guest: Dr. Jackson Crawford

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Episode Overview

This episode explores how Old Norse mythology—especially as preserved in the Poetic Edda—relates to Viking Age ideas about masculinity and femininity. Host James Osborne speaks with Old Norse expert Dr. Jackson Crawford about Crawford's new translation of the Poetic Edda, what makes these poems so rich and strange, and what the ancient texts reveal (and conceal) about gender, power, and the complexity of Norse society. Along the way, they engage with memorable myths, unpack shifting cultural values, and reflect on the power (and peril) of projecting modern ideas onto ancient stories.

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1. The Poetic Edda: Context and Content

[02:24–05:41]

• Definition and Origins

  • Poetic Edda: A compilation of traditional Old Norse oral poems, written down around AD 1270 but drawing on much older material, possibly from the 900s.
  • Prose Edda: Written by Snorri Sturluson in the 1200s to preserve the rules and forms of Old Norse poetry, but more an instructional manual than a collection of folk materials.
  • Crawford notes: "The Poetic Edda is our most direct source of Norse mythology because nothing is written down during the Viking Age about the gods, other than occasionally their names will show up on a runestone." ([03:56])

• Living Tradition

  • The oral tradition persisted: "It does seem like this remained a living oral tradition for a few centuries until the 1200s." ([05:37])

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2. Translating Old Norse: Balancing Accessibility and Strangeness

[06:06–08:21]

• Modernizing the Ancient
  • Crawford aims for clarity without diluting the text's oddness: "I wanted you to not notice the translation. I wanted you to notice what it said and have something that you could read on the bus...without me having to explain what Shakespearean English meant." ([07:38])
  • He preserves confusion when the text is unclear: "When I just did not understand what the heck something meant in the original, I have left it confusing rather than try to 'fix' it." ([08:01])

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3. Christian Influence on the Eddas

[08:58–11:12]

• Compilation in a Christian Context
  • The Eddas are not ‘holy books’—they were compiled after Iceland’s conversion to Christianity: "Their compilers, as you say, were Christians... They certainly did not have anti-Christian goals in compiling it." ([09:27])
  • No liturgy or worship details: "There's nothing in there about worship, about praying, about ritual, even about holidays or anything like that. It is stories about characters..." ([09:39])
  • The myths became cultural touchstones rather than religious texts: "They become, in a sense, the Robin Hood, the Achilles, the King Arthur of early Christian medieval Iceland." ([10:31])
  • Modern analogy: "It becomes the Star Wars of early medieval Iceland, where even people who aren’t deeply versed in it understand references to it." ([10:42])

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4. Highlights from the Poetic Edda: Story Examples

[11:24–17:21]

• “Thrym’s Poem” (Þrymskviða): Thor in Drag

  • Oldest surviving poem about the gods; features cross-dressing and gender play.
  • “It’s a really kind of goofy adventure comedy story where Thor wakes up one morning and finds out that his hammer...is missing.” ([11:49])
  • Freya refuses to marry the giant Thrym; Thor has to pose as her instead. Loki accompanies in female form.
  • “There’s obviously a lot of comedy playing off the gender roles here, with Thor being the archetypical masculine god dressed up as a bride at a wedding.” ([13:05])
  • The story is full of wordplay and “needling” banter between Loki and Thor, vividly showing Norse humor and attitudes toward gender performance.

• “The First Poem of Gudrun” (Guðrúnarkviða I): Women’s Grief

  • Gudrun, central female character, is unable to cry over her murdered husband—other women share their own tragedies in attempts to help.
  • Only able to grieve after a direct, intimate confrontation with her husband’s corpse: “Kiss the bloody mouth of your husband—as if he were living; greet him as if he were living.” ([16:49])
  • “In a culture where men are getting killed in conflicts...why can this not be the emotions of a Viking Age woman? I say I find that pretty fascinating.” ([17:01])

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5. Norse Worldview and Social Values

[17:48–20:47]

• Implicit and Explicit Values

  • The Edda’s values are mostly implicit: “The dominant worldview and values and assumptions are the unspoken ones.” ([17:55])
  • Poems like Havamal give practical (sometimes subversive) wisdom, such as moderation in drinking, even if real Vikings weren’t always so moderate: “Throughout all of the other poems and sagas, men are constantly drunk, and it causes them all kinds of problems...” ([18:53])
  • Osborne draws modern parallels: “Like you wouldn’t expect to see in a modern text, an exact reflection of the way in which society today works...” ([19:23])
  • Crawford offers a memorable metaphor: “Probably watching Star Wars is a decent example...The values are mostly in the assumptions that they make, rather than anything that's explicitly articulated.” ([20:01, 20:12])

• Memorable Quote

  • “You’re going to do a better job of learning [about the culture] from the assumptions they make rather than from the positions they explicitly articulate.” —Dr. Jackson Crawford [20:47]

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6. Gender in the Poetic Edda: Masculinity and Femininity

[23:18–27:41]

Masculinity

• The ‘Drengr’ Ideal
  • The drengr is “the man who stands alone...recklessly courageous.” ([24:25])
  • “This word is used all the time on Viking Age runestones to praise a dead man...My father was a drengr, I want to die like a drengr. This is such a culturally littered word, and it never occurs in Havamal.” ([24:36])
  • Havamal values are distinct: “It’s about what the wise man does, maybe the man who’s a little too old to engage in the activities that would mark him as a drengr.” ([24:39])

Femininity

• Women’s Agency and Caricature

  • Oldest stanzas about the sexes are blunt: “No man should ever trust what a woman says...Their hearts are shaped on a wobbly wheel and deception is planted in their breasts.” (Havamal 84) ([25:34])
  • But men are also shown as deceptive: “I've known men and women both, men lie to women and we tell the biggest lies when we speak the most eloquently.” (Havamal 91) ([26:00])
  • Women’s “power is in words. It’s not typically women doing the stabbing, but it is sometimes.” Gudrun, for example, kills her second husband in revenge ([29:12]).
  • In the sagas, women are often depicted as the voice or manipulator behind male violence: “The counsels of women are cold.” (Kol deru kvenaroz, Njals saga) ([30:12])
  • The Norns, female fates, “stand at the absolute fountainhead of all violence in these stories.” ([31:08])

• Notable Quotes:

  • “They figure very, very prominently and often as the manipulator of words and the manipulated by words.” —Dr. Jackson Crawford [30:48]
  • “In a sense, women stand at the absolute fountainhead of all violence in these stories.” —Dr. Jackson Crawford [31:28]

• Complexity and Gaps

  • Osborne: “While they do have this agency ... they do also almost universally seem to be caricatured in this way that positions them as either manipulating men to do bad things directly or being the reason why a man is inspired to do bad things.” ([28:46])
  • Dr. Crawford: “There may really have been women who occupied a very different social position than we would expect.” ([29:50])
  • Stories of goddesses are sparse: “Mostly, when we hear about the divine beings, we’re hearing about men. The major exception is Freya...she tends to be more of a playing piece on the board between the men than a really active participant.” ([33:07])

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7. Lost Voices and Women’s Stories

[32:05–34:20]

• Missing Women’s Perspectives
  • Crawford: “We have certainly lost many, many, many stories...It may be slightly prejudiced toward content that's more masculine in focus or intent...” ([32:05])
  • “There are a few poems that are plausibly composed by women...Gudrun's poem and Audrinn's poem feature only women speaking and could easily be the work of a woman.” ([32:44], [34:09])
  • The scarcity of goddess narratives is notable and may indicate lost traditions.

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8. Hypermasculinity and Gender Tension: Modern Parallels

[34:22–35:42]

• Norse Hypermasculinity
  • Norse society was certainly masculine and competitive, but not uniquely so among ancient cultures.
  • The contradictory attitude toward women mirrors dynamics in certain modern all-male environments: “Women are looked at as manipulative, but also as manipulable...It really reminds me a little bit of that attitude.” ([35:03])
  • Quote: “This is the very hypocritical, very contradictory view of women that young men, who are in fact often isolated from women, can get in any culture.” ([35:42])

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9. In Closing: Ideals and Diversity in Norse Society

[36:36–39:24]

• Masculinity’s Demands and Countercurrents

  • Osborne recalls a saga: “Thorsten's father tells him that he would rather have no son than have a coward for a son.” ([36:36])
  • Crawford: “He’d rather have a dead son than a cowardly son.” ([36:47])
  • Yet Havamal offers a counter: "It’s better to be alive no matter what…That’s a somewhat subversive thought in a society like this." ([37:18])
  • Final meta-point: “We are looking at a big diversity of opinions in these sources. Just like the Bible is not one single monolithic text by one person at one time…” ([37:42])

• Femininity: No Single Ideal

  • Osborne: “Do you think there’s an equivalent that gets to the heart of how the Norse see what women should be like?” ([38:12])
  • Crawford: “There are many different models of what a good woman might be...I think stoic fidelity in life and death is probably pretty close to encapsulating that feminine ideal.” ([39:24])

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the Edda as a cultural text:
  • “It becomes the Star Wars of early medieval Iceland, where even people who aren’t deeply versed in it understand references.” —Dr. Jackson Crawford [10:42]
• On translation choices:
  • “I wanted you to not notice the translation. I wanted you to notice what it said...without me having to explain what Shakespearean English meant.” —Dr. Jackson Crawford [07:38]
• On Norse humor:
  • “It’s ridiculous, it’s short, it’s goofy, but it is apparently a very old story and a reminder that as seriously as people who believed in these gods no doubt took them, they could also have fun with them.” —Dr. Jackson Crawford [14:40]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:24] — What is the Poetic Edda?
• [06:06] — Translating Old Norse for modern readers.
• [08:58] — Christian influence on Norse texts.
• [11:24] — Examples of Edda stories: Thor’s comedy, Gudrun’s tragedy.
• [17:48] — Do the Eddas show Norse values?
• [23:18] — Masculinity and femininity: ideals and complexities.
• [29:32] — Warrior women in myth and archaeology.
• [32:05] — Missing women’s voices and perspectives.
• [36:36] — Norse ideals: Brave sons and complex women’s roles.

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Conclusion

In this episode, Dr. Jackson Crawford and James Osborne reveal the multidimensionality of Viking Age gender ideals—from the heroic drengr to the complex, sometimes contradictory depictions of women as both powerful and perilous. The Poetic Edda, while a treasure trove of stories, is shaped by the society that preserved it—one where humor, tragedy, manipulation, fidelity, and subversion all sit side by side. Crawford’s translation invites modern readers to connect with the ancient past—without losing sight of its strangeness and surprise.

Transcript

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[Podcast Host (James Osborne)]

Our understanding of Viking Age mythology largely comes from the poetic Edda, a 12th century compilation of fascinating Old Norse poems that explains how Norse people understood the world around them. In this episode of the History Extra podcast, Dr. Jackson Crawford tells James Osborne about the second edition of his translation of the Poetic Edda and examines what it tells us about the Old Norse ideas of masculinity and femininity.

Today, I'm delighted to say that we're joined by old Norse specialist Dr. Jackson Crawford. Jackson, you've recently published the second edition of your translation of the Old Norse Poetic Edda. Now, many listeners might have heard of this before, or might have heard of the Prose Edda. Or perhaps not. Can you explain what the Poetic Edda is exactly, and set out how it differs from the Prose Edda?

[Dr. Jackson Crawford]

The Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda.

Have sort of unfortunately, similar names, at least as we refer to them in English today.

But what these two books are are our best most direct sources of pre.

Christian Norse mythology, even though they're written down more than 200 years after the conversion of Iceland to Christianity.

So the Poetic Edda is a compilation.

Of traditional oral poems.

The manuscript that we have called the.

Codex Regis of the Poetic Edda dates to about 1270 AD.

We can see from some lines of.

Evidence that it's copied from an earlier manuscript, perhaps from about 1200.

And the poems themselves are mostly in.

Language that is more similar to language in poems that we know from the nine hundreds.

So these appear to have been passed.

Down pretty faithfully over a few centuries since before the conversion, although surely nothing gets passed down without some modification and enlargement and probably shortening.

But that makes these poems, for the.

Most part, our most direct source of Norse mythology, because nothing is written down during the Viking Age about the gods, other than occasionally their names will show up on a runestone or another rune of conscription. But we don't really get any stories. We don't get a sense of who they are as personality or beings.

The Prose Edda differs from the Poetic.

Edda in that it's the work of one man and it is composed in the 1200s.

So at around the same time, someone, and it's someone else is writing down.

The poems that make up what we.

Call the Poetic Edda. This gentleman, Snorri Stoodlason, who is a chieftain or godi, is really concerned with.

The way that traditional Old Norse poetry is getting replaced in Iceland by. By foreign styles, basically the rhyming balladic poetry that's coming in from England or France or Germany.

And so he wants to preserve that.

Traditional Old Norse alliterative poetic style.

And he writes the book, he calls it just Edda, as a way to.

Explain how to compose that traditional Old Norse poetry.

But once he's explained the meter, the alliteration, the uses of rhyme, where it is used, he realizes that so much of it depends on understanding the myth that he then sets out to explain.

The myth that he knows.

And as he does this, he quotes many of the same poems that we know from the Poetic Edda, and then.

Many that we don't know from there. He apparently knows, probably through oral tradition, his own sort of set of these poems.

And it's interesting that he often quotes them in slightly different forms than we.

Know in the Poetic Edda.

So it does seem like this remained.

A living oral tradition for a few centuries until the 1200s.

[Podcast Host (James Osborne)]

And something that really comes through in the Poetic Edda and in your translation of it, is this degree of Strangeness to modern eyes and modern ears. But also your translation is very accessible. This is something that really I think anyone could pick up and read. How do you go about balancing those two things?

[Dr. Jackson Crawford]

Oh, it's very difficult to balance.

It's 2025, and when the first edition.

Of this came out, it was 2015.

In neither one of those years have.

I lived in a castle with a study where I drank Earl Grey tea.

Brought to me by my servants and I could do nothing but think about.

This stuff all day. Right. We all live in a fairly busy world where we have other obligations and we have to talk to real people.

And I've always been a little bit sensitive to the notion that what I.

Do is disconnected from reality or from normal people. Because I don't come from an academic background. What I do is very strange to my family and friends. Right.

When I began teaching Norse mythology at UCLA in 2011, I wanted my students.

To be able to read the original.

Sources because to me there can be a little bit of value in a.

Big book of Norse mythology that takes the stories and redigest them. But I really want you to get into the head of these people from a long time ago and see what they said. Because to me that's really what the facts are rather than what someone redigest today.

But all of the translations have tended.

To be by those guys who lived in, you know, I jokingly say, castles in the 19th century in tranquil grave brought to them by the servants. It's deliberately old fashioned sounding.

But these stories are really engaging and interesting.

And I wanted to have you not notice the translation. I wanted you to notice what it.

Said and have something that you could.

Read in the bus, something that students could pick up and read without me having to explain what Shakespearean English meant.

So it is a tough balance to strike. And in the second edition, especially as.

I have gone back over every single poem with a fine toothed combination, I've.

Made some different decisions than I made.

In the first edition.

And one of those has been that.

When I just did not understand what the heck something meant in the original, I have left it confusing rather than try to quote, unquote, fix it.

But if it's clear what it says.

In the original, I want to make it clear in modern English. And have you not noticed the translation, if that makes sense as a goal.

[Podcast Host (James Osborne)]

It does make sense. And I think that something that really does come through in your translation is that these are really engaging and entertaining stories, not entirely detached from the kinds of stories that we see in fantasy today, and obviously a large part of that is because of their own influence on the fantasy stories that we tell today. There's also the fact that the Poetic Edda was compiled in a Christian context. Do you see the Christian influence on the Poetic Edda or do you think it manages to somehow escape that?

[Dr. Jackson Crawford]

Well, this is a vexed question, because.

People are very invested in the answer.

There's a decent number of people who.

Are very invested in looking at the Eddas or especially the Poetic Edda as a sort of holy book, which is.

Not what its compilers intended.

Right.

Its compilers, as you say, were Christians and had, if not exactly Christianity, advancing goals and compiling this. They certainly did not have anti Christian.

Goals in compiling it.

And I think we see that in the kind of poems that are in.

It because they're all stories or they're practical advice like Hallvamal, but otherwise they're stories about characters.

There's nothing in there about worship, about.

Praying, about ritual, even about holidays or anything like that. It is stories about characters the same.

Way that Christians pass down the Greek.

And Roman myths, but not really instructions about how to perform a sacrifice.

And it's also notable that while the bulk of the poems do seem very.

Plausibly to date to a pre Christian.

Context, several of them are convincingly dated.

To after the conversion, which I think.

Is just as interesting in a way. I don't want to throw away the.

Poems that are later.

I think that's still a legitimate part.

Of a living tradition, and it shows that people are still thinking about these gods and heroes.

They may not be thinking of them.

As literal objects of worship, but they are still part of the tradition of talking about them.

They become, in a sense, the Robin.

Hood, the Achilles, the King Arthur of early Christian medieval Iceland. But they're just the cast of characters that you know and that you continue to talk about.

I sort of hate this analogy, but.

It'S more appropriate to today. It becomes the Star wars of early.

Medieval Iceland, where even people who aren't.

Deeply versed in it understand references to it. Right.

So we see in contemporary accounts of.

The 1100s, 1200s in Iceland People referring to Odin or Thor or stories about.

Sigurd, or not necessarily even thinking about.

It, but just knowing that this is a lexicon to which they can refer and other people will understand. Just like if I say I'm the Darth Vader of Colorado or something, you know what that means, even if you don't love Star Wars.

[Podcast Host (James Osborne)]

That's all really insightful and useful context. So before we go deeper, could you perhaps give one or two examples of the types of stories that we do actually see told in the Poetic Edda?

[Dr. Jackson Crawford]

Sure.

I'll use an example of what appears.

To be the oldest of the poems.

About the gods, and then the oldest.

Of what appears to be the poems about the heroes.

So it looks like the oldest of the poems about the gods is at least entire poems, because there are sections.

Of some poems that are older. Is the one called Trimskvila, which is.

A really kind of goofy adventure comedy.

Story where Thor wakes up one morning and finds out that his hammer, Mjolnir, is missing.

So the first thing he thinks of.

Is to call for Loki. And he says, loki, you have to help me get my hammer back.

Loki goes to Hrea, the goddess, and.

Borrows her feather skin, something that either turns him into a bird or gives.

Him wings so that he can fly. And he flies to Jotunheimar, the realm.

Of the gods, enemies often called giants in English translation, but I prefer to just leave them as Jotuns these days.

And he finds a Jotunn there named.

Thrimmer, and he asks him, where's Thor's hammer? And he says, well, I have it. I've buried it eight miles beneath the earth, and the only way that you're ever going to get it back is if you bring me Freya as my bride. So Loki comes back and tells Thor this, and Thor says, well, we have to go to get Freya and dress her up as a bride and send her to the Altonhammer, because I need my hammer back.

And Freya does not want to do this.

She is not going to be forced to bury one of the Jotuns.

So the guys get together and they talk about what to do, and Heimdallr.

Says, well, let's dress Thor up as a bride and send him there and pretend that he's Freya. Thor is very resistant to this, but.

Loki convinces him that it's the only.

Way to get his hammer back. So they dress Thor up as a bride. There's obviously a lot of comedy playing off the gender roles here, with Thor being the archetypical masculine God dressed up as a. As a bride at a wedding.

And then Loki, who's a shapeshifter, takes.

The form of, you know, like, his lady in waiting or bridesmaid or something.

And he says, we, too, must go to Jose together. And what's funny is that Old Norse.

Has active gender system, masculine, feminine, neuter that runs through all the Nouns and adjectives.

When he says we too uses the.

Mixed masculine and feminine form, implying that one of them is a woman and one of them is a man, which.

Is a joke that's pretty hard to.

Replicate in English, but obviously he's calling Thor a woman, which is meant to needle him.

They spend eight days traveling to Jotunheimar.

It's never very clear how you get from one realm to another, but they travel on by means of Thor's chariot pulled by his Goads. They get to Jotunheimar where there's a.

Big wedding reception being thrown, or well, like pre wedding party, I guess, being thrown. Thor canonically has an enormous appetite, so he eats all the food and drinks all the meat.

And Thrym is very suspicious, but never suspects that it's Thor.

And Loki keeps playing it off, always.

She'S just that hungry because she's been traveling so long.

Finally, he brings the hammer out to bless the bride. Thor has a somewhat something of a sanctifying, blessing, hallowing function that we often.

See with this hammer. And Thor grabs the hammer and kills all the Jotuns. The end. That's pretty much the story.

It's ridiculous, it's short, it's goofy, but.

It is apparently a very old story and a reminder that as seriously as.

People who believed in these gods no.

Doubt took them, they could also have fun with them.

[Podcast Host (James Osborne)]

I'm so glad you chose that example, because I have to say that genuinely is my favorite of the stories in your translation. It has action, it has comedy, it is subversive, it is genuinely funny. I would highly recommend that anyone perhaps thinking about looking at the Poetic Edda for the first time. I think it's a good starting point.

[Dr. Jackson Crawford]

Oh, sure. It probably takes about as long to read as it took me to retail it there. It's pretty short and I think it's.

Meant to be funny. And sometimes there's this funny notion that's.

Been around for a few centuries that we can't look for emotions like humor or sadness or really anything associated with the experience of women and stuff from.

The Viking age that that must come.

In from later romantic Christian poets. In fact, it often seems like the opposite is true.

And the funniest and most emotional of.

The poems often seem to be among the oldest.

So another example of that is one.

Of the poems about the heroes that.

Has among the most consistently archaic traits.

Is Guthru Narca 1, the first poem of Gudrun.

Many of the oldest poems about the.

Hero seem to be focused on Gudrun who is just a magnet for tragedy, she is married three times. She loses children from each marriage. She loses the first two husbands.

But the first poem about Gudrun is we find her mourning over the corpse.

Of her murdered first husband, Sigurdr, who's been murdered by her own brothers.

The poem tells us that she cannot cry.

She can't bring herself to cry.

And all the other women regard this.

As a real problem, like it's dangerous that she can't express herself. So they start telling her their own sob stories. You know, I lost my husband, I lost eight sons.

I was enslaved.

None of this helps her.

None of this gets her to cry. Until finally her own sister sweeps the bed sheet that they've put over Sigurd's face off and says, kiss him. Kiss the bloody mouth of your husband.

As if he were living. Greet him as if he were living. And finally she's able to cry when she does that.

And it seems to many commentators over the centuries that this is, you know.

Late courtly, ish poetry.

But in fact, this is very archaic.

Characteristics in its language. And I don't see a reason why we shouldn't think that women in the Viking Age didn't experience exactly this sort of feeling all the time. Right. In a culture where men are getting killed in conflicts, probably often even conflicts between families, why can this not be the emotions of a Viking Age woman? I say I find that pretty fascinating.

[Podcast Host (James Osborne)]

Those are two really great examples of the kinds of stories that are told in the Poetic Edda and that you've translated. So in all, we have this extraordinary collection of mythic and heroic poems, and it really does give an insight into the Norse worldview. When you translate and retranslate this, are you seeing a discernible, coherent set of values coming through?

[Dr. Jackson Crawford]

I think that you can, but I think that the dominant worldview and values.

And assumptions are the unspoken ones, and.

That when people are explicitly caricaturing and.

Articulating a worldview or values, that those are probably slightly different than the actual majority view. You don't need to explain to people, be brave, right? And there's not very many places you can look in the Poetic edit that say, like, this is why you should have courage, because it's just assumed it's a value that men are supposed to have.

But then you look at a poem like Havamal, the longest poem in the.

Poetic Edda, mostly a poem of practical wisdom attributed to the God Odin, and often. And this sort of drives me crazy, called by people today a Viking Code of ethics. You don't need to articulate stanza after stanza after stanza after stanza of things people already think. Right.

It's recommendations for life that don't necessarily.

Reflect majority worldviews and values. For example, Havamal constantly says, don't drink too much, don't drink too much, don't drink too much.

And yet, throughout all of the other.

Poems and sagas, men are constantly drunk, and it causes them all kinds of problems. Havamal says, yes, that causes problems, so don't do it.

So it's a little bit subverting. So I think this is one of those terrible quibbling, yes and nos. You get a sense of what's normal.

From the assumptions that everybody makes, and.

Then you get a sense of what's.

A little bit different, what's.

Maybe the beliefs of the very few.

The more thoughtful and poetic, are often what's explicitly articulated for us.

[Podcast Host (James Osborne)]

I guess, like so many things, it's complex and of course, like you wouldn't expect to see in a modern text, an exact reflection of the way in which society today works, because people have different ideas, everyone has their own slightly different moral frameworks, and that depends on region and culture. Lots of different factors. So it makes sense to me that you're saying this is not a one for one reflection of what Norse society was like.

[Dr. Jackson Crawford]

Yeah, I think that it's like trying to figure out what our society is like by. I don't know, again, probably watching Star.

Wars is a decent example because.

And I sort of hate to make.

This analogy, but it is a pretty good analogy for our culture, because everybody knows these stories.

They do reflect the values of our.

Time, but mostly in the assumptions that they make, rather than anything that's explicitly articulated.

When you do have an explicitly articulated.

Value, it's phrased weirdly to make it more memorable. And by phrased weirdly, it's usually said by Yoda with weird word order. Do or do not. There is no try or whatever. Right.

So I think that's a little bit analogous to Havamal, where often the good.

Moral advice is phrased in weird ways, like the heron of Unmemory sips your memory out when you're drinking.

I think that you can learn a lot about the Viking age from them, though, as long as you keep in.

Mind that, again, you're going to do a better job of learning about that from the assumptions they make rather than from the positions they explicitly articulate.

[Podcast Host (James Osborne)]

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[Podcast Host (James Osborne)]

Reading your translation and many other Old Norse texts, something which has always stood out to me is the relationships and tensions found between men and women. And I wanted to talk to you about what if anything, we can learn about Old Norse ideas of masculinity and femininity from the Poetic Edda. And of course, this is a complicated topic and you've just set out why that might be complicated. But I do think that perhaps a good place to start would be with the Havermal, which you've mentioned a few times. Does seem to me to be setting out some sense of what Old Norse masculine ideals should aim to be. Is that right?

[Dr. Jackson Crawford]

Yes. Although Havamal is probably one of the.

Least combat oriented of all of these texts, Havimal does not talk a lot about fighting.

It says that fighting is inevitable. But Havimal never uses this famous Old.

Norse word, drengr, which is the masculine ideal.

The drengr, D R E N G R is the man who stands alone. He has a sense of fair play.

But he's also recklessly courageous.

This word is used all the time.

On Viking Age runestones to praise a dead man. It's also used all the time in Viking Age praise poetry. My friend so and so was a draengr. My father was a draengr. I want to die like a draengr. This is such a culturally littered word, and it never occurs in Haldemal. Havamal is not really about what the drengr does. It's about what the wise man does. Maybe the man who's a little too old to engage in the activities of that would mark him as a drengr.

But Hallvamal is also very, very concerned.

With relations between men and women, as you point out.

And there's an entire section of Havamal.

About love and the relations between the.

Sexes, which I believe contains some of.

The oldest stanzas in the entire Poetic Edda.

Havumal is so long, it's at least six poems combined. So it's harder to get a sense.

Of exactly quote unquote, how old Havamal is, because different parts of it seem to be different ages.

But a lot of the material about.

Men and women seems to be among the very oldest stanzas in the whole book.

And we have two just amazingly memorable.

On the nose stanzas, 84 and 91 and 84 says, no man should ever trust what a woman says or anything that a woman says, using both the unmarried woman word and the married woman word. So don't trust either of them because.

Their hearts are shaped on a wobbly.

Wheel and deception is planted in their breasts. So, you know, using a potter's wheel.

Analogy there, seven stanzas later, he says.

I've known men and women both men lie to women and we tell the biggest lies when we speak the most eloquently.

So very fair handed in a way. And then several other stanzas about the.

Power that love has to make wise men into fools. About how you shouldn't make fun of.

Someone else who's in love, because actually.

A woman's beauty can have a greater effect on a wise man than on a fool.

And then this amazing back to back.

Two stories and very archaic Old Norse, about Odin trying to court a woman and failing.

He is not always successful, even as the greatest of the gods.

There are women who turn him down. And then another story where he succeeds but has to use magic tricks in order to succeed.

And I think that there's a lot.

To ponder there and a lot to ponder about the relations between men and women in the heroic poems as well. As I mentioned, Guthrun is the center of many of the oldest poems. And then there's also Brynhildr, the Valkyrie who is tricked into marrying a man other than the one that she intended to.

And I think that a lot of.

What you see in the stories about.

Brynhildr and Guthrun is these are not.

Characters that have no agency, as you find in some traditional stories.

In some cultures, they're also not characters.

Who have full agency. The men around them feel sort of entitled to trick them.

The women have just enough agency to.

Hang themselves and be blamed for it. Brynhilzer swears that she'll never marry a man who knows fear. She is tricked into marrying a man who does, even though she thinks she's marrying the fearless one. And she decides, well, the fearless man that I was meant to marry, circular, he's got to die because I didn't get to marry him.

So she goes sort of crazy. But I think that you can also.

Feel in at least some of these poems, a little bit of sympathy for the position of someone who had no choice in what happened to her, or had just enough choice to be blamed for the things that happened to her without really being the agent behind them.

[Podcast Host (James Osborne)]

It's so interesting that you pick up on that, because I think while we can learn a lot about different Norse visions and versions of masculinity from sources like Havamal and from that notion of drengr, forgive my pronunciation, that you mentioned, the femininity and what it means to be a woman does come through in a more complex way. So, as you say, women feature very prominently in a lot of these stories. Often they are the main character whose perspective we follow. And yet, while they do have this agency within this network of stories, they do also almost universally seem to be caricatured in this way that positions them as either manipulating men to do bad things directly or being the reason why a man is inspired to do bad things. It really does seem like this Old Norse literature treats women as powerful in a way, but also very, very troublesome.

[Dr. Jackson Crawford]

And they're powerful through their words. It's not typically women doing the stabbing, but it is sometimes right. I mean, in Atlak Vida, Guzrun murders.

Her second husband, Attila, in their bed. She does stab him in revenge for him killing her brothers.

Or of course, we have the shield.

Maiden Skjaldmar in Old Norse, who features in a fair number of stories. For example, in the Saga of Hervor and Heyrech, which I translated in the book called Two Sagas of Mythical Heroes.

And we even have archaeological evidence that.

Women sometimes engaged in outright fighting. For example, at the island of Birka.

In Sweden, there's the famous grave of what appears to be warrior woman, and certainly a woman.

And she was buried with horses and swords and spears, more weapons than any man buried on that island.

There may really have been women who.

Occupied a very different social position than we would expect.

But you're right, for the most part, their power is in words. It's in getting the right men to.

Do the right violent action.

In the Icelandic sagas, there's a little bit of a trope that is said.

In slightly different words in a few.

Different sagas, but in Nial saga it.

Goes, kol deru kvenaroz. The counsels of women are cold.

And that's very true to their position.

In many of these stories where it's.

You know, this person killed our such.

And such relations, so you need to kill him. This person insulted you, so you need to kill him. What are the other men going to think about you if you don't kill him? They're going to think that our family's weak.

This man insulted me, you've got to kill him. Or even if they're not deliberately stoking.

Conflict, conflict is still stoked by women more often than by anything else in the sagas.

More of the Icelandic sagas involved men.

Fighting over a woman than over anything else.

So, yes, they figure very, very prominently and often as the manipulator of words and the manipulated by words. I think you can also look at the Norns, the three beings who determine.

Everyone'S fate, who are. Who are women? Three sisters.

So in A sense they stand at.

The fountainhead of all violence.

Because so often, probably, I actually think.

This may be exactly, literally true. At least once in every one of the eddic poems about the heroes, someone blames some violent act on the Norns. Right? This was the doom of the Norns. This was the decree of the Norns.

This was.

Was fated by the Norns that this should happen.

So in a sense, women stand at.

The absolute fountainhead of all violence in these stories.

[Podcast Host (James Osborne)]

Yeah, absolutely. And I think with the Norns, as you mentioned, that's almost like a microcosm for how women are portrayed throughout the literature here, because it's the women who are causing the trouble, either directly or indirectly. And that makes me think that, you know, perhaps the stories we see in the Poetic Edda were the stories that men told other men, that were then compiled by men. And I wonder, is it possible that we have lost the stories that women potentially told each other?

[Dr. Jackson Crawford]

I think that that is probably true. We have certainly lost many, many, many stories. My guess is that a fair amount.

Of that is fairly random.

That, in a sense, what we're looking.

At with the Poetic Edda is I.

Like to say you took all of.

Your music library hit shuffle and then preserved just the first 30 songs, right? And that seems about right.

It may be slightly prejudiced toward content that's more masculine in focus or intent, just because the people transmitting it are more likely to be men. But I think there are a few.

Poems that are plausibly composed by women.

Particularly, actually one that I mentioned earlier.

Guthrie and a Cudda one. The entire perspective is a woman's, and the only people who speak are women.

It seems to me that could easily.

Be the work of a woman, in fact, maybe more plausibly the work of a woman than a man.

But one area in which I think you may be losing some material of.

More interest to women is it's remarkable how little we hear about the goddesses.

That mostly, when we hear about the.

Divine beings, we're hearing about men.

The major exception is Freya, and the reason she comes up so much is.

Because everybody wants her. So she tends to be more of.

A playing piece on the board between the men than a really active participant. Although Tyrmschleth is kind of an exception.

Because she very actively says no, she's not going to go marry a Yoltan, and she loans the feather cape.

[Podcast Host (James Osborne)]

She does say no, but she's also the cause of that conflict, isn't she? It's that same theme again of the women Causing the trouble. But of course, as you say, that isn't the only way in which women are portrayed in the Poetic Editor. It is more complicated than that. You have the weeping of Odron, which is a woman, and she helps another woman give birth to twins, a woman who's struggling to give birth, and she goes and helps and supports her through that. And the story then gets more complex from there onwards.

[Dr. Jackson Crawford]

And by the way, that poem that.

You mentioned, Audrin Agrotu, that's a great.

Reference because that also, I believe, may.

Be among the very oldest poems, complete poems in the Poetic Edda. And that is another one where I think the only speaking characters are women. Another poem that could very conceivably be composed by a woman.

I think part of what you're looking at. Let me look at the other side.

Of this coin for a moment to.

Illuminate the side you're asking about. So often you get this portrayal of.

Norse society as hyper masculine, to use a sort of academic sounding term, you know, very concerned with fighting, combat.

And it is. Although I don't think that.

I don't think that's rare in ancient or medieval societies. I think we overstate how exceptional that may be.

But I do think that a characteristic.

Of hyper masculine social groups, whether you're talking about a sports team or whether you're talking about a kind of borderline.

Radicalized Internet forum, is they talk about.

Women in this way, right? They talk about women as a rare resource.

Right? Like there's not enough to go around. We're fighting over, at least implicitly, a limited set. But also, women are looked at as manipulative, but also looked at as manipulable.

Right?

I mean, that's sort of that pickup.

Culture notion that if you say just the right things, it's like a spell, excellent woman fall for you, but at.

The same time she's trying to manipulate you. It really reminds me a little bit of that attitude. And I think it goes hand in.

Hand with some of those other hyper.

Masculine cultural associations, that this is the very hypocritical, very contradictory view of women that young men who are in fact.

Often isolated from women, can get in any culture.

[Podcast Host (James Osborne)]

That's a really interesting perspective. These stories and so many more are all told in the Poetic Edda and in your translation, which is wonderfully accessible and really engaging. These are really entertaining stories. And any listeners who do want to dive deeper into the poet together can find all that within your translation. I do want to try to find a way to tie a ribbon on what we've been talking about. And that's in a saga that isn't in your translation, but I know it's something that you've touched on in the past. And that's the story of. And again, forgive my pronunciation, Thorsten Staffstruck, or I've heard you translate it, a stick beat. In this story, Thorsten's father tells him that he would rather have no son than have a coward for a son.

[Dr. Jackson Crawford]

Yeah, that's right. He'd rather have a dead son than a cowardly son.

[Podcast Host (James Osborne)]

Do you think that sums up the Norse understanding of what masculinity should be?

[Dr. Jackson Crawford]

Yes, I think that sums up that.

Background culture that you see not necessarily.

Encoded anywhere, but deeply ingrained in the.

Assumptions that are made by characters and narrators.

I do think that you see a little bit of distancing from that ideal in something like Halvamal, where again, I think we have someone standing a little.

Outside of the mainstream whose perhaps a.

Little older, had time to think about.

These things and maybe doesn't have a father to judge him anymore who says.

For example, that it's better to be alive no matter what.

Right.

I think that that's actually.

That's a somewhat subversive thought in a society like this.

He says the deaf man can fight the.

The handless man can drive a herd, limp man can ride a horse, or the blind man. I can't. I don't have this perfectly memorized.

But you can do lots of things.

If you're alive, even if there are flaws with you.

And I do think that's a somewhat subversive thought here and that we myths that in a sense we are looking.

At big diversity of opinions in these sources. Right.

Just like the Bible is not one.

Single monolithic text by one person at one time. Right. We have a very different attitude articulated in Ecclesiastes vs. James vs. Matthew vs. Deuteronomy.

The same thing here in the short.

Story of Thorstein, Staff struck this written by somebody different from the person who composed the stance of Havamal that says it's better to be alive no matter what.

[Podcast Host (James Osborne)]

Do you think there's an equivalent that gets to the heart of how the Norse see what women should be like? Or do you think that just doesn't exist? Do you think that's just harder to find and it is misguided to even look for it?

[Dr. Jackson Crawford]

That's a really interesting question, whether there might be something that sums up a good woman's role, because there are many.

Different models of what a good woman might be.

You have Gudrun, who is regarded as.

I mean, at least a mostly good protagonist, and yet she kills her own children by Attila to avenge her brothers on him.

I think that perhaps something close to the ideal might be seen in an Icelandic saga like like NJL's saga, where.

Njal's wife Bergthora has dutifully raised all the couple's children, dutifully does the farm work, and when it comes time for Njol's enemies to come and burn him alive in their home, she has an opportunity to leave the house. They don't want to burn the women. And she says, I was married to Njol very young and I'm not going to leave him now.

I think that that stoic fidelity and.

Life and death is probably pretty close to encapsulating that that feminine ideal.

[Podcast Host (James Osborne)]

That was Dr. Jackson Crawford speaking to James Osborne. His second edition translation of the Poetic Edda is available now alongside other translations of Old Norse literature.

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