This chapter evaluates the usefulness of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s concept of “homosocial desire” in understanding the construction of heroism in the Helgi poems of the Poetic Edda. Sedgwick inaugurates the use of this concept in pursuit of her hypothesis of “the potential unbrokenness of a continuum between homosocial and homosexual” (1985, 1). However, she observes that homosocial desire is often normalized by homophobic discourse—homosexuality is explicitly abjected or refused in order to validate homosocial bonds. Therefore, Sedgwick’s concept is potentially helpful in illuminating the dynamic at work in three poems that seem to replicate this dynamic: Helgakviða Hundingsbana in fyrri (The First Lay of Helgi Hundingsbani), Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar (The Second Lay of Helgi Hjörvarðsson), and Helgakviða Hundingsbana önnor (The Second Lay of Helgi Hundingsbani). These poems center on heroic adventure and martial exploits, where homo-social intimacy between warriors is predicated on the exclusion of same-sex eroticism seen most clearly in the exchange of sexual insults, or níð. Nevertheless, although Sedgwick has influenced work on premodern sexuality by several medieval and early modern scholars, her approach has not been accepted uncritically, and indeed it needs some modification in order to avoid anachronism in its application to medieval texts.
Drawing on research on cognate material by Preben Meulengracht Sørensen and my own work, this chapter begins to develop a critical approach to heroic homosociality that allows the texts to speak on their own terms and to interrogate modern categories and taxonomies of sexuality. In particular, it replaces Sedgwick’s emphasis (via Girard) on the triangulation of desire through a woman with a more nuanced approach to the erotics of interpersonal relations. Finally, the chapter demonstrates that the “incoherent” plot of Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar makes more sense if we unpack the complexities of the poem’s construction of Helgi’s relations with friend, brother, and lover.2
The heroism in the Helgi poems is readily apparent. It may be less obvious, however, why the essay title employs and opposes the terms “homosociality” and “homophobia”. In doing so, it explicitly draws on the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, one of the founders (along with Judith Butler and others) of the branch of gender/sexuality studies known as Queer Theory. Sedgwick inaugurates the use of the phrase “homosocial desire” at the start of her influential book Between Men: English Literature and Male Homo-social Desire. The term “homosocial” had already become a standard term in sociological studies, and, in a discussion of Sedgwick’s work, Stephen Jaeger describes the term with approval as one that:
sets sexuality to one side, eliminates its automatic inclusion, while holding it in readiness. The discourse of male-male love displays on its surface sexuality vanquished and banished. Sexual desire and sexual intercourse can infiltrate it secretly, but they do not govern it from their position of hiding. (15)
However, Sedgwick in fact employs the term in a collocation of her own coinage: “homosocial desire.” This, as she remarks, appears to be something of an oxymoron—“homosocial” is a neologism formed by analogy with “homosexual,” from which it is thus intended to be distinguished and is usually applied to so-called “male bonding” activities, which are frequently, in many Western societies, characterized by homophobia. Therefore, Sedgwick remarks:
To draw the “homosocial” back into the orbit of “desire, of the potentially erotic … is to hypothesize the potential unbrokenness of a continuum between homosocial and homosexual—a continuum whose visibility, for men, in our society, is radically disrupted. (1985, 1–2)
In our society, she explains, where there is a site of homosocial desire that society sanctions, one often finds that this desire is normalized via homophobic discourse—homosexuality is explicitly abjected.3 Often cited in this context is the locker-room where manly men often make homophobic jokes to demonstrate that their physical and emotional intimacy with other men does not make them “gay.”4 Sedgwick clarifies that she does not want to suggest a “genetic” hypothesis—to claim that homosexual desire lies at the root of all forms of interaction between men. Instead, her term is “a strategy for making generalizations about, and marking historical differences in, the structure of men’s relations with other men, and she is using “desire” for its affective force, leaving open the question of how far that force can be considered to be sexual (1985, 1–2).
Sedgwick’s work has been extremely influential, whether receiving plaudits or criticism.5 The specific argument of Between Men, however, is that the homosocial relations in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature are cemented by the exchange of women (for instance, in marriage) and involve sublimated homoerotic desire. Her model is thus not immediately applicable to medieval literature, where women are often not involved in homosocial exchanges, and this chapter outlines some modifications that a reading of the Helgi poems suggests need to be made to make her theories more applicable to medieval literature. Nevertheless, her approach remains valuable in its decision not to prejudge the relations among friendship, sex, love, and desire in a specific historical context. It is clearly also of potential use in illuminating the dynamic at work in the Helgi poems, with their episodes of homosocial intimacy and prominent display of homophobic insults, a dynamic that reveals the constructed and fragile nature of heroic masculinity and the complex interaction of, and competition between, familial and other affective bonds.
Heroic homosociality is evident from the outset in the first Helgi lay, exemplified by the way the protagonist, from the moment he receives his name, is said in stanza 9 to “vaxa / fyr briósti” [grow in the bosom of his friends] as an “álmr ítrborinn / ynðis lióma” [noble-born elm, light of bliss]. He is clearly at the top of the hierarchy here, metaphorically as a tall tree and literally as the prince and future ruler of the land. He maintains these homosocial bonds by the distribution of wealth: “hann galt ok gaf / gull verðungo” [he paid out and gave gold to his retinue], and we may compare here the gnomic passage at the start of Beowulf, where the young prince Beow behaves in similarly exemplary fashion, and we are told:
Swa sceal geong guma gode gewyrcean,
fromum feohgiftum on fæder bearme,
þæt hine on ylde eft gewunigen
wilgesiþas, þonne wig cume,
leode gelæsten.6
[So shall a young man bring about good, with costly gifts from his father’s breast, that in old age his dear retainers remain with him afterwards: that when war comes, they will serve their prince.]
Although treasure does not in fact ensure loyalty in Beowulf beyond the prologue (Beowulf’s hand-picked warriors notably desert him in the dragon fight),8 in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, Helgi is followed by a large retinue of warriors into battle with the sons of Hundingr, and, as we shall see, his brother and second-in-command, Sinfjötli, represents him staunchly in the verbal battle with Guðmundr.
However, even at this early point, we have to register that this treasure is blóðrekin [bloodstained], and its continuing supply and thus the bonds of loyalty are predicated on martial dominance. It necessitates that Helgi kill his rivals—for instance, he kills Hundingr at the age of fifteen in stanza 10, presumably to gain the “löndum ok þegnom” [lands and men] over which we are told Hundingr “lengi réð” [ruled for a long time], and he accepts Sigrún’s request to challenge her unwanted suitor Höðbroddr in stanzas 18 and 19. He must also resist calls for compensation and peace, as we see in stanza 12:
Létat buðlungr bótir uppi,
né niðia in heldr nefgjöld fá;
ván kvað hann mundo veðrs ins mikla
grára geira ok gremi Óðins.
[The Buðlungr did not allow compensation to be seen, nor the kinsmen any sooner to obtain kin-payment: he said they should expect the great storm of grey spears and Óðinn’s wrath.]
The interaction here is curiously reminiscent of that in the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon in the exchange between Byrhtnoth and the Viking messenger, where the latter threatens the Anglo-Saxon leader with garræs “a rush of spears” (l. 32) and Byrhtnoth promises to give garas [spears] (l. 46) instead of tribute.7 In neither text is there any question of the hero giving up his treasure to avoid battle. Similarly, in stanza 13, we are told that
Fróða frið fiánda á milli,
fara Viðris grey valgiörn um ey.
[The peace of Fróði was torn between the foes; Óðinn’s dogs roamed slaughter-eager throughout the island.]
Although the wolves here connote the bestial nature of battle to a modern audience, there is no doubt that Helgi is right to spurn peace and attempt to crush his foes. The final element of the heroic dynamic here is the imposition of an abjected sexual passivity onto one’s opponents, which we see in the extended flyting between Helgi’s brother Sinfjötli and Höðbroddr’s brother Guðmundr.9
Much has been written about flyting, and the best of it is by Meulengracht Sørensen in his book The Unmanly Man. In this work, Meulengracht Sørensen details the sexual and gender dynamic found in both saga and Eddic literature, whereby male-male erotic activity is stigmatized, specifically sexual passivity. (He argues persuasively that the stigma was not generalized to all forms of same-sex activity until later in the medieval period under the influence of the Church’s attempts to impose orthodoxy and reform.) Indeed, the worst insult one man can level at another in the Icelandic laws is to call him sannsorðinn or ragr—that is, to state that he has been penetrated by another man, an issue that still causes anxiety (and sometimes violence) today in men insecure in their own sexual identity. This kind of insult, known as níð, is considered to be so heinous that it justifies the recipient in killing his taunter, and the threat posed by níð is a key feature of sagas such as Króka-Refs saga and Gísla saga Súrssonar.10 Often, however, these insults form part of an extended and somewhat ritualized exchange, known as a flyting, defined by Carol Clover as
an exchange of verbal provocations between hostile speakers in a predictable setting. The boasts and insults are traditional, and their arrangement and rhetorical form is highly stylized. (445–446)
These flytings can be found in mythological poetry, as in Lokasenna, and heroic poetry alike. The insults all pertain to a man’s masculinity and putative deviations from the sexual norm and can blend assertions of homosexual behavior with imputations of bestiality and transvestism. Often, as here in the first Helgi lay, one party will make an opening claim that is then refuted by the other, who then makes a counter-claim, and the back-and-forth exchange tends to observe formal boundaries, with each claim occupying a separate strophe.11
In Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, Sinfjötli starts the process by saying in stanza 34:
Segðu þat í aptan, er svínom gefr
ok tíkr yðrar teygir at solli.
[Say this evening, when you feed the pigs and entice your bitches with their slops.]
Sinfjötli is implying that Guðmundr, far from being nobly born, is in fact base, performing menial and degrading tasks that are ordinarily given to slaves. He follows this up by contrasting Helgi, whom he characterizes as supremely brave, who is flugtrauðan “averse to flight” and who “opt hefir / örna sadda” [has often given food to the eagles] (i.e., killed many warriors), while Guðmundr “á kvernom / kystir þýiar” [was kissing bondswomen at the querns]. This is a double insult in that, as well as the imputation of low rank or at least an undesirable affinity with those of low rank, it also contains the idea that Guðmundr spends a lot of time with women. While in Western culture today this might suggest a successful demonstration of heterosexual and hyper-masculine credentials, in the medieval period, a preference for female company (even when engaged in flirting with and kissing them), especially when preferred over martial activity in the company of other men, most often connotes effeminacy.12
Guðmundr comes back with the accusation that Sinfjötli has spent time as a werewolf and killed his own brother, violating both the species boundary and the most basic family bond. There is some truth to this, since in Völsunga saga ch. 8 Sinfjötli does in fact spend time living out in the forest like a wild animal and kills his half-brothers. Sinfjötli does not counter these charges but instead raises the stakes by embarking on a series of níð insults. He says:
“Þú vart völva í Varinseyio,
skollvís kona, bartu skrök saman;
kvaztu engi mann eiga vilia,
segg bryniaðan, nema Sinfjötla!
Þú vart in skœða, skass, valkyria,
ötol, ámátlig, at Alföður;
mundo einheriar allir beriaz,
svévís kona, um sakar þínar!
Nío átto vit á nesi Ságo
úlfa alna, ek var einn faðir þeira!” (sts. 37–39)
[You were a seeress in Varinsey, woman wise in deceit—you collected lies together: you declared you wanted to have no man, mailcoated warrior, except Sinfjötli!
You were the destructive witch, of the valkyries, terrible, fearsomely strong, of the Allfather—all the Einheriar were near fighting each other, self-willed woman, for your sake!
On Sága headland we two had begotten nine wolves—I alone was the father!]
Calling Guðmundr a “seeress” (st. 37) feminizes him twice over, since magic is frequently associated in Norse literature with effeminacy, and Helgi follows this up in the next strophe by calling him a “witch” and one of the “valkyries” (st. 38). The feminization is necessary to make a further element of the insult work, which is that he lusted after Sinfjötli. It might seem odd to impugn another man’s masculinity by implying that he desires the speaker himself. However, there is in medieval culture a fundamental distinction between what is often known as the “active” and “passive” dimension, though it is more accurately described as “insertive” and “receptive.”13 This becomes clear in st. 39, where Sinfjötli claims to have fathered nine wolves with Guðmundr, where the insult lies in the assertion of Sinfjötli’s dominance and Guðmundr’s passivity and femininity. Of course it goes without saying that this gender dynamic rests on a misogynistic view of femininity. The accusation that a man has born another man’s children is a subsection of níð, as, for example, in Þorvalds þáttr víðförla, when Þorvaldr kills two men who have composed an obscene poem about him and the bishop, implying that they have had sexual relations and the bishop has borne Þorvaldr’s children.14
Guðmundr refutes the charge of having been impregnated by Sinfjötli and counters it by asserting in stanza 40 that “þik geldo … þursa meyiar” [the ogre maidens … gelded you], thus implying Sinfjötli was not only dominated by female figures but also literally emasculated (which would of course also render him incapable of fathering children). He then reiterates in the following strophe the accusation of fratricide and adds to it the imputation of slackness and indolence when he says, “Stiúpr … Siggeirs, / látt und stöðom heima” [Siggeir’s stepson (Sinfjötli) lay under the grain stacks at home].15 Although an idle youth is a common feature of a hero’s biography, this is supposed to be followed by great deeds of heroism, rather than the firinverkom [wicked deeds] for which Guðmundr says Sinfjötli is frægian [infamous].
Guðmundr then raises the stakes still further by combining bestiality with effeminacy in his charge in stanza 42 that Sinfjötli was “brúðr Grana / á Brávelli, / gullbitluð vart / gör til rásar” [Grani’s bride on Brávöllr, with a golden bit you were ready to go for a gallop]. It is one of the worst imaginable Norse insults to call a man a female animal, and, as a further intensification, Guðmundr asserts his own humanity and mastery when he says, “hafða ek þér móðri / mart skeið riðit” [I’ve ridden you weary over many a course], reversing the situation in stanza 9 where Sinfjötli claims dominance.16
Sinfjötli next achieves a double insult in stanza 43 in accusing Guðmundr again of performing menial tasks, saying he “Gullnis / geitr mólaðir” [milked Gullnir’s goats] and that he did this again as “Imðrs dóttir / töttrughypia” [Imðr’s daughter / in a tattered dress]. Although the stories behind these allusions are now obscure, and thus the full import of the insult is lost, it is clear that they combine the stigma of transvestism with that of low rank and poverty.17 The tag “vill þú tölo lengri?” [Do you want to keep talking?] is a challenge, asking Guðmundr whether he is ready to admit defeat, but Guðmundr responds with curses and murderous wishes.
This flyting is a verbal contest with gender implications, but it is in fact inconclusive. Helgi stops the dispute (and to some extent belittles the contribution of his second-in-command) when he declares that the time for exchanging “ónýtom orðom” [useless words] is over and the time for battle has come. However vicious the flyting, it would seem, the true test of heroic masculinity is in martial prowess, and Guðmundr is not only vanquished by words: Helgi proves himself the better man in the terms of the poem by his actions. We are told in stanza 53 that
ey var Helgi Hundings bani
fyrstr í fólki, þar er firar börðuz …
alltrauðr flugar.
[Always was Helgi, Hundingr’s bane, first in the host where men were fighting, wholly averse to flight.]
He is the ideal warrior-prince. The detail that he had “hart móðakarn” [a hard acorn of a heart, st. 53] is found elsewhere in Norse literature, for instance, in Fóstbrœðra saga chs. 2 and 17 and the interplay among Gunnarr, Högni, and Hjalli in Atlakviða stanzas 23 and 25, where a small heart that is hard or firm is an index of a hero’s bravery.
The reward for Helgi’s successful meeting of these heroic requirements is seen in the final strophe of the poem where Sigrún asserts that it is “fitting” [samir … vel] that he should have both “rauðir baugar ok in ríkia mær” [red-gold rings and the powerful girl], both “sigrs ok landa” [lands and victory] (st. 56). She is a semi-divine figure who can give herself, along with these other representations of power, to Helgi because of his demonstration of heroic masculinity signified by both verbal and physical dominance. This heroic masculinity is supported further by the preponderance of kennings in the lay (more than any other Eddic heroic poem), most of which are military.18 This gives it an affinity with skaldic verse and could be seen to tap into that medium’s interest in heroic rulership and kingship, expressed in terms of generosity with treasure, martial accomplishment, and the effective vanquishing of foes.
Even though it concerns an entirely different Helgi, Helgakviða Hjörvarðs-sonar contains similar elements to the two Helgi Hundingsbani lays. However, the winning of a woman is even more central, not least because the poem proper is preceded by a passage describing how Helgi’s father Hjörvarðr won Sigrlinn through the agency of Atli, the son of one of his earls. Since Helgi is the product of Hjörvarðr’s fourth marriage (all of which produce sons), he can be seen as the product of hypermasculine sexuality. We are told in the prose preceding stanza 6 that he is “mikinn ok vænn” [tall and handsome], but “var þögull; ekki nafn festiz við hann” [was silent; no name had fastened itself to him], which may suggest the trope of the kólbítr or unpromising youth and the idea that a hero somehow has to earn his name. As the youth soon to be known as Helgi sits on a burial mound, he sees nine valkyries ride past, the chief of whom (later revealed to be Sváva) gives him his name and warns him that if he is always silent, then it will be a long time before he achieves dominance, figured (as in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I) as the possession of wealth (“hringom ráð” 6), martial prowess (in the kenning for warrior, “ríkr rógapaldr” [powerful apple-tree of strife]), and possession of land (Röðulsvellir). The warning implicitly urges him to embark on this heroic trajectory, and she also tells him of a pre-eminent sword he should seek out.
Like Helgi Hundingsbani, he pursues heroic masculinity by vengeance and martial deeds, taking a troop of his father’s men “hefna móðurföður síns” [to avenge his grandfather] (prose before st. 12) and using the sword Sváva directs him to kill his mother’s former suitor Hróðmarr and achieve “mörg þrekvirki” [many valiant deeds], including killing the giant Hati, apparently without motivation. The hero’s actions are thus to some extent predetermined, since from his youth he must engage with the consequences of decisions and actions taken before his birth. However, the pressure to achieve “valiant deeds” and gain a suitable bride leads to other actions that have further consequences. As in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I when the giant’s daughter Hrímgerðr begins a flyting, it is his companion Atli who takes up the challenge. As we saw before, Atli had been Helgi’s father’s second-in-command, too, and wooed his wife for him, and this echoes the split we saw in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I between physical and verbal prowess, in some sense therefore making Atli Helgi’s double.
Atli attacks Hrímgerðr as one of the kveldriðor [night-riding witches] (st. 15) and “hála nágráðug” [corpse-greedy trollwife] (st. 16), but since she is female, he cannot of course employ the full range of níð insults. In contrast, she has no such problem and, like Guðmundr, combines accusations of bestiality and effeminacy, saying in stanza 20:
Gneggia myndir þú, Atli, ef þú geldr ne værir:
brettir sinn Hrímgerðr hala! Aptarla hiarta
hygg ek at þitt, Atli, sé, þótt þú hafir hreina rödd!
[You would neigh, Atli, if you were not gelded: Hrímgerðr raises her tail! Further back, Atli, I think your heart must be, though you have a stallion’s voice!]
The sexual dynamic here is complicated if, in raising her tail, Hrímgerðr is (in either her imagined equine form or in her own form, since it is conceivable that a troll might have a tail) signalling sexual availability. The essential idea then would be that she is effectively saying, “Even though I am sexually available, you are so gay that you can’t do anything about it.” That is, she is implying effeminacy, even though this could leave her open to the type of níð insult most often levelled at women: they are nymphomaniacs and they are interested in heterosexual sex to a degree that is shameful (Meulengracht Sørensen 18–19). Presumably the need to mock Atli’s lack of masculinity outweighs the potential insult to which she is opening herself.19
Atli reverses the gender polarity, though, and asserts his dominance over her—he is the reini “stallion” not the mare—threatening that his sexual prowess is such that she would be entirely lamed—“öll muntu lemiaz” (st. 21)—if he really engaged seriously in their congress (“ef mér er alhugat”). Hrímgerðr suggests that if she can sleep with Helgi “eina nótt” [for one night] (st. 24), this would be fitting compensation for the killing of her father, a proposal that is oddly flattering to her opponent but that Atli rejects on his behalf, and she recognizes that Helgi would rather have Sváva, whom she has seen reconnoitering the harbor and who she claims is the only thing preventing her from killing Helgi’s men (st. 26).
Atli wins the flyting by cunning rather than anything else by keeping the giantess talking until sunrise, at which point she is turned into stone. Carolyne Larrington in her introductory note to her translation of this poem says that this flyting “has no relevance to the plot” (123), and this is true. However, it is not irrelevant to the dynamic of the poem, since it enables the credentials of Helgi’s heroic masculinity to be set out. In both Helgakviða Hundingsbana I and Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar, homosocial bonds are directed at facilitating a male-female union—Sinfjötli and Atli both enable their companions to attain their valkyrie brides. However, the homosocial aspects of Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar are more complicated because of the introduction of the tragic episode with Helgi’s brother Heðinn after Helgi and Sváva become betrothed, as we shall see.
It seems at first like a bizarre and unnecessary part of the plot. After Heðinn rejects a troll-woman’s advances, she vengefully curses him to vow to have Sváva, and he wanders off in sorrow. However, when he bumps into Helgi and tells his brother what has happened, Helgi seems not to be angry or perturbed but to resign himself to dying in a duel, content with the idea that his brother will take over his bride. In addition to this psychologically implausible scenario, we are also given the rather odd and unexplained information that the troll-woman was probably actually Helgi’s fylgia.
However, this section does make rather more sense viewed in terms of its gender dynamic. If the troll-woman is really Helgi’s fylgia, then Heðinn’s rejection of her invitation to have “fylgð sína” [her company] may actually represent unacknowledged enmity toward his brother, later manifested in the oath to have Sváva over the pledging-cup. It is an interesting scene. We are told:
Um kveldit óro heitstrengingar; var fram leiddr sonargöltr; lögðo menn þar á hendr sínar ok strengþo menn þá heit at bragarfulli.
[During the evening oaths were made; a sacrificial boar was led forth; men laid their hands on it, and men made vows on the oath-cup.]
This is a ritualized scene of homosocial bonding—we are not told what the other men vow, but judging from other similar episodes in medieval literature, such as the well-known beot scenes in Beowulf and Maldon, we may imagine that they involve boasts of individual prowess: the ability to do certain things, achieve certain goals. Essentially, it is a site for competitive masculinity to display itself, and it is implicitly hostile: it involves saying, “I am better than you, I am a bigger man than you.” The boasts are sublimated forms of the basic male forms of competition—who can urinate highest up a wall, who has the biggest penis, who has dominance. Indeed, as a speech act, the boasting forms a counter-part to the flyting: the former involves the competitive comparison of positive attributes, the latter the competitive comparison of negative ones.
What is surprising here is not so much that this homosocial scenario leads to the potential disruption of homosocial bonds in fratricide, an act viewed with horror in medieval texts (as, for instance, in Beowulf’s claims about Unferth).20 Heðinn clearly fears this but attempts to avoid it, since we are told he “iðraðiz svá miök at hann gekk á braut villistígo suðr á lönd” [repented this so greatly that he went away on wild paths to the south]. Rather, it is Helgi’s ready acceptance of the situation his brother has brought about and his recognition that destiny cannot be avoided: “Sönn muno verða / ölmál” [the ale-talk must come true] (st. 33). Not only does he tell his brother not to “reproach” himself (Sakaz eigi þú), he even thinks that it may be for the best if he does not return from his duel (“þá má at góðo / gøraz slíkt, ef skal” [it may turn out for good if that is what occurs], st. 33). Heðinn underlines his brother’s unusually accommodating nature by saying that, rather than forgive him, “þér er sœmra / sverð at rióða” [it would be more seemly to redden your sword] (st. 34). However, Helgi prioritizes his homosocial bond with his brother over his love for Sváva, asking her not to weep (gráttattu!) but “at þú Heðni / hvílo gørvir / ok iöfur ungan / ástom leiðir” [that you prepare your bed for Heðinn / and love the young prince] (st. 41). She, however, seems less than keen to be passed between the brothers, implying that Heðinn is unworthy of her as a “iöfur ókunnan” [unknown prince] (st. 42), and the poem ends with Heðinn’s vow to avenge his brother (st. 43) and presumably thus to render himself worthy of Sváva.21 Larrington points out that the fatal duel Helgi faces is against Álfr, “the son of his grandfather’s killer, the son of his mother’s thwarted suitor, and thus in a sense his brother manqué, the man who might have occupied the place he now has” (2011, 174). Therefore, one could read this duel as a displacement of the “real” sibling rivalry between Helgi and Heðinn, which neither of them is willing to contemplate: homosocial bonds are paramount, and the threat to them is eliminated by Helgi’s sacrifice.
Despite the similarities of plot between the First and Second Helgi poems, the latter has a different tone and emphasis. Here, Helgi kills not only Sigrún’s suitor and his kin but also Sigrún’s father Högni and all of her kin except for her brother Dagr. Although he swears a truce and Helgi and Sigrún marry and have children, Dagr nevertheless later takes revenge for his father’s death and slays Helgi. As Heinz Klingenberg comments, the leitmotif here is “revenge of kin. Kin-loyalty is opposed by individualistic love … which itself is overtaken by … kin-revenge” (281). The gender dynamic is correspondingly different, too. In another motif not present in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, we are told that Helgi goes in disguise to reconnoiter the court of King Hundingr before he kills him. When Hundingr sends men to search for him, Helgi has to disguise himself as a woman:
En Helgi mátti eigi forðaz annan veg en tók klæði ambáttar ok gekk at mala.
[But Helgi could not save himself any other way, but put on a serving-woman’s clothes and went to grind [meal]]. (prose before st. 2)
However, a figure called Blindr “inn bölvísi” [the malevolent] seems to see through his disguise, saying,
Hvöss ero augo í Hagals þýio,
era þat karls ætt er á kvernom stendr;
steinar rifna, støkkr lúðr fyrir!
[Sharp are the eyes of Hagall’s bondwoman; that is not one of lowborn lineage who stands at the millstone—the stones are tearing apart; the wooden stand is cracking!]
This episode is similar to the one in which Achilles tries to disguise himself as a girl but is unmasked when he is seen to be fascinated by the weaponry in the market rather than the silks and fabrics: the moral being that one’s true nature will win out.22 However, the emphasis in Helgakviða Hundingsbana II seems to be on the disparity in rank rather than in the cross-gendered aspect. Moreover, Helgi’s friend Hagall covers for him by claiming that this is in fact Sigrún, and the reason the wooden stand is struggling under this miller’s force is that she is a valkyrie, a fighter: that is why this person’s eyes are ötul “terrible” (st. 4).
It is rank, too, that is at issue rather than gender in the later flyting between Sinfjötli and Guðmundr, when Sinfjötli says that Guðmundr will have “geitr um halda” [to herd goats] rather than fight (st. 22). It is true that the verbal interchange is much briefer in this poem, and it is possible as Carolyne Larrington suggests that the scribe “intended readers and reciters to leaf back to the first poem and read the flyting there” (1996, 132). However, no marks of abbreviation are found in the manuscript to indicate that this should occur, and I would argue that this is a deliberate choice to de-emphasize the gender aspects here and avoid sexual insults based on níð. A possible reason for this is that, although he is still pre-eminent in martial activity, in this poem, Helgi responds in love to the sexual initiative of Sigrún, the valkyrie who chooses him as her lover in defiance of her kinsmen. We are told in stanza 14 that she went to see the prince “Helga / hönd at sœkia” [to seek Helgi’s hand], and there is a repeated emphasis on her volition and agency. In stanza 15, she says she had already whole-heartedly loved Helgi before she had seen him, then later she says that, although she is betrothed to Höðbroddr, “iöfur annan / eiga vildak” [I wished to have another prince] (st. 16). We are told:
Nama Högna mær of hug mæla;
hafa kvaz hón Helga hylli skyldo.
[Högni’s maiden did not speak contrary to her thoughts; she said she intended to have Helgi’s favor.]
There might even be a hint of initial reluctance on Helgi’s part in the statement that “nú vill dyliaz / döglingr fyr mér, / en Högna mær / [Helga] kennir” [now the prince wishes to hide himself from me, but Högni’s maiden knows Helgi!] (st. 13).
The sense of her initiative here is so strong that for Helgi or his second to accuse another of sexual passivity might raise uncomfortable questions. The emphasis shifts in this poem from homosociality and its abjected opposite to the conflict between relations and to doomed male-female love. Nevertheless, at the end of the poem, Helgi remains in the otherworld with his warriors, and Sigrún remains in the house with her maid until she too dies of grief.
The emphasis at the end of Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar and the start of Helgakviða Hundingsbana II that Helgi and Sváva were reincarnated as Helgi Hundingsbani and the idea at the end of Helgakviða Hundingsbana II that Helgi and Sigrún were reincarnated as Helgi Haddingia-damager and Kára Hálfdansdóttir, another valkyrie, even though this is disavowed as kerlingavilla [an old wives’ tale] perhaps reflects the sense that heroic masculinity involves a trauma endlessly repeated in the hope of it working out right this time: the hero defeats his rival for a bride but sparks a turn of events that in turn leads to the hero’s demise. Certainly it would seem that heroic masculinity in these poems is a fragile thing. It is predicated on the support of other men achieved by the maintenance of homosocial bonds, but also the displacement of homosocial desire onto the enemy who is feminized and then destroyed. Desire is validated when its object is a woman, but this can have fatal aspects.
I have tried to demonstrate the utility of Sedgwick’s concept of homosocial desire. However, as mentioned earlier, in her work this is triangulated by a woman. This occurs in one of two ways. First, it can occur in a positive sense, where two men are brought into an alliance by the exchange of a woman in marriage, usually as father-in-law and son-in-law. Second, however, and negatively, it can occur where two rivals are joined in competition for the love or possession of the same woman.
This dynamic can be seen to some extent in the Helgi poems, but it has to be modified significantly. For instance, in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, one could loosely see Helgi and Höðbroddr as joined in their rivalry over Sigrún, but the site of the greatest antagonism and that most clearly fits Sedgwick’s dynamic of abjected homosexuality is the flyting. However, the verbal contest is not between the rivals themselves but between the men’s companions and representatives, Sinfjötli and Guðmundr, which complicates the binary relationship envisaged by Sedgwick. The same scenario holds for Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, but in this poem, we have a further triangle, where Helgi and Dagr are, in a sense, rivals for Sigrún. However, this bond of enmity is motivated by Dagr’s wish to avenge his father and re-appropriate his sister, and thus the sexual bond is replaced by the sibling bond for one of the parties.
Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar is even more complicated. There is an instance of Sedgwick’s positive triangle, in Helgi’s relationship with Sváva’s father, Eylimi, but this bond is largely peripheral to the poem and covered in a single sentence (“Hann kom til Eylima konungs ok bað Svávo dóttur hans” [He came to King Eylimi and asked for his daughter, Sváva]). Again, in terms of the negative triangle, in a sense Helgi’s father Hjörvarðr is joined in enmity to Sigrlinn’s father Sváfnir, who refuses their alliance. However, it is Atli who does the wooing and who later kills Sváfnir. It is Atli, too, who carries out the flyting with Hrímgerðr, both protecting his prince from the giantess’s desire and also clearing the way for Helgi to get to Sváva. Finally, the best example of Sedgwick’s type of triangulation is in Heðinn’s rivalry with his brother for the love of Sváva. However, not only is there a sibling connection here, an aspect that does not really feature in Sedgwick’s account, but the rivalry is turned by Helgi into a positive homosocial bond in his acquiescence to his fate and desire for his brother to take over his bride.
It is thus clearly not possible to take over Sedgwick’s taxonomy of homo-social desire wholesale in analyzing medieval texts, and the Helgi poems delineate a much more complex set of overlapping and competing bonds, indicating that a more nuanced consideration is necessary of how the roles of lover, rival, friend, and sibling can interact. It suggests, too, that the modern emphasis on the desire for the sexual object choice, which Sedgwick argues structures much of modern thought and culture in the West, is still less accurate and apposite than even she suggests.23 Desire in medieval texts is involved in and inflected by these other relations in a way that does not come to the fore in the texts that Sedgwick analyzes. A more nuanced typology seems desirable, and it is hoped that the analysis in this chapter may serve as a tentative move toward a recognition of the fluidity of relationships of desire—a recognition largely accepted in practice but that we seem curiously unable to formulate discursively.
1. This chapter originally appeared as “Heroic Homosociality and Homophobia in the Helgi Poems,” in David Clark. Gender, Violence, and the Past in Edda and Saga. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. 46–66. Reprinted with minimal alterations and with permission.
2. On the incoherence of Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar’s plot, see Larrington 123.
3. “Abjection” (literally, the state of being thrown away or cast off) is a term employed in critical theory to denote individuals, groups (people with disabilities, the LGBT community, people of color), or objects (corpses, feces, rotting matter) that may be associated with degradation, baseness, and/or disgust by those belonging to the dominant social group. See initially Kristeva.
4. This applies more to professional than amateur sports, particularly to football. See, for instance, Cascarino and, more recently, Brocklebank. Eric Anderson argues persuasively that this kind of “homohysteria” is fast disappearing in university-educated men (7).
5. See initially the contributions to Regarding Sedgwick, ed. Barber and Clark. For a critical review, see G. S. Rousseau in The Pursuit of Sodomy, ed. Gerard and Hekma 515–529.
6. Beowulf 20–24a, cited Klaeber, ed.
7. On this aspect of Beowulf, see Clark 2006.
8. Cited from The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, ed. Dobbie 6: 7–8.
9. It is interesting that both rivals are represented in the verbal contest by their close associates, and this split is seen in a variety of medieval contexts where the skills of physical prowess and verbal dexterity are shared between two closely connected men. It seems clear that the former is privileged over the latter, and it is the less highly ranked individual who carries out the verbal contest. We might compare the similar split when the god Freyr’s servant Skírnir woos Gerðr on his lord’s behalf. (See further comments below.)
10. Meulengracht Sørensen, chs. 3 and 4. For a more detailed description of níð and the sexual and gender dynamic of Gísla saga, see Chapter 4 of my Gender, Violence, and the Past in Edda and Saga.
11. For a detailed list of the formal and generic characteristics and common components of flytings, see Clover; see also Bax and Padmos.
12. See, for instance, Karras 129; Keiser 141–151.
13. See Karras 4, Murray 5, and the discussion in Chapter 4 of my Gender, Violence, and the Past.
14. See Meulengracht Sørensen, Unmanly Man, 54–55; Martínez Pizarro; and Chapter 5 of my Gender, Violence, and the Past.
15. Taking stöðom as a form of staði [stack of grain or haystack]; cf. La Farge and Tucker, s.v.
16. There may be an obscene pun on skeið here. It appears in Fritzner as a “scabbard” word, with obvious resonances picked up in the fact that the Modern Danish word skede is a vulgar term for “vagina.” My thanks to Carolyne Larrington for alerting me to this.
17. It is, of course, possible that the stories never existed. Accusations in flytings often have no factual basis, as with Loki’s untrue accusations in Lokasenna and the Beowulf-Unferth interchange in Beowulf, where Beowulf corrects Unferth’s version of events. More generally, allusions could easily be created to give an impression of a rich background.
18. For instance, varga vinr “friend of wolves = warrior” (st. 6), blóðorm “serpent of blood = sword” (st. 8), and benlogum “wound-flames = swords” (st. 51). See von See et al., Kommentar, 4: 144.
19. It is also possible that, since Hrímgerðr is a troll-wife, there is no need for her to abide by the normal social rules.
20. When Unferth questions Beowulf’s bravery, the latter claims that Unferth became his brothers’ slayer: “þinum broðrum to banan wurde” (l. 587). He will be punished for it in hell (ll. 588–589).
21. Women are often passed between male relatives when one of them dies, and the poet’s acknowledgment of Sváva’s reluctance shows an unusual recognition that women’s desire for men is not interchangeable.
22. See, for instance, Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.162–13.180.
23. Sedgwick’s later comments go further in recognizing the complexity of intimate bonds. See, for example, Epistemology of the Closet 8.
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