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  • Mandom och mödom: Sexualitet, homosocialitet och aristokratisk identitet på det senmedeltida Island by Henric Bagerius
  • Bjørn Bandlien
Henric Bagerius. 2009. Mandom och mödom: Sexualitet, homosocialitet och aristokratisk identitet på det senmedeltida Island. Göteborg: Göteborgs Universitet. Pp. 310.

In this study, Swedish historian Henric Bagerius argues that the sexual and social identities of the Icelandic aristocracy underwent significant changes during the late Middle Ages. Rather than connecting medieval transformations of sexualities to the Christianization or the reformation movement in the Church, Bagerius links them to a shift in social and political conditions among the Icelandic elite after the fall of the Commonwealth. After 1262/64, this elite became more dependant of the Norwegian kingdom. They cultivated more than ever before an exclusive group identity based on values and duties related to their role as royal officials such as chivalric ideals and courtly manners. Not least, argues Bagerius, the late medieval Icelandic aristocracy was more than before concerned about the preservation of lineage, inheritance, and the transmission of landed property from one generation to another. These developments made the aristocracy adopt the doctrines of monogamy, the abolishment of the institution of concubinage, and a strong interest in women’s virginity.

Bagerius’s sources are the sagas of late medieval Iceland, mainly the indigenous riddarasögur and some fornaldarsögur. His aim is to use the romances as a source for the identities of the audience of the texts and for how the social elite formed the Icelandic aristocracy’s view of who they were or should be. The sagas’ fantastic settings in India, Egypt, Byzantium, and so on, make them especially suitable, argues Bagerius, for the study of identities, for norms, ideals, and world-views. In this approach, he follows the method of Torfi Tulinius used on the fornaldarsögur in The Matter of the North (2002) in analyzing issues of kingship, conflict, inheritance, and so on among the elite in the thirteenth century. [End Page 233]

Bagerius shows that although these sagas are filled with “strong” women, most memorably the maiden kings, there is a homosocial pattern that emerges in late medieval Icelandic literature. The bridal quests in the sagas are intertwined with the friendship between chivalrous knights, and contracting of marriages is for enhancing political networks and power between men.

One of the challenges for these men, however, is the enigma of women’s virginity. On the one hand, virginity is depicted as an ideal, but on the other hand needs to be violated by men who want control over women’s bodies. Although the virgin functions as an ideal, the maiden king who resists submission to male power also has to be deflowered to be a part of a balanced world order. On the other hand, there are many young virgins who have problems curbing their sexual desires. These women represent a threat to both their family as well as to the heroes’ manhood. Bagerius’s discussion of the complexities of virginity and maidenhood in relation to the formation of manhood in the sagas and its relevance to men in the late medieval Icelandic elite is one of the great strengths of this study.

Bagerius’s book should reach a wide audience, especially considering the growing interest in the late medieval literature of Iceland. Rather than being seen as boring, decadent, and of little quality, the flowering of manuscript production and of new genres indicates the popularity of the riddarasögur in the late Middle Ages and that they merit greater attention by scholars. This shift of interest in saga studies and in the evaluation of the late medieval Icelandic literature in general might be related to two trends in scholarship. First, an increased interest in the mentalities, identities, and world-views these sagas represent, and second, the shift from the focus on the national to what the literature and society of Iceland had in common with the rest of Europe. Translation studies have begun to compare Old Norse, for example, to Middle English translations of Old French and Latin texts and investigate similarities and differences between textual cultures here and in the rest of Europe. Such studies are interested not only...

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