Ergi in the Viking Age
To accuse another man of being argr was called scolding (see nīþ) and thus a legal reason to challenge the accuser in holmgang. If holmgang was refused by the accused, he could be outlawed (full outlawry) as this refusal proved that the accuser was right and the accused was argr. If the accused fought successfully in holmgang and had thus proven that he was not argr, the scolding was considered what was in Old English called eacan, an unjustified, severe defamation, and the accuser had to pay the offended party full compensation. The Gray Goose Laws states:
There are three words—should exchanges between people ever reach such dire limits—which all have full outlawry as the penalty; if a man calls another ragr, stroðinn or sorðinn. As they are to be prosecuted like other fullréttisorð and, what is more, a man has the right to kill in retaliation for these three words. He has the right to kill in retaliation on their account over the same period as he has the right to kill on account of women, in both cases up the next General Assembly. The man who utters these words falls with forfeit immunity at the hands of anyone who accompanies the man about whom they were uttered to the place of their encounter.[1]
The practice of seiðr or "sorcery" was considered ergi in the Viking Age and in Icelandic accounts and medieval Scandinavian laws, the term argr had connotations of a receptive, passive role of a freeborn man during homosexual intercourse. There are no written records of how the northern people thought of homosexuality before this conversion. The sociologist David F. Greenberg points out:
at first...stigmatization did not extend to active male homosexuality. To take revenge on the disloyal priest Bjorn and his mistress Thorunnr in the Gudmundar Saga "it was decided to put Thorunnr into bed with every buffoon, and to do that to Bjorn the priest, which was considered no less dishonorable." Dishonorable to Bjorn, not to his rapists. In the Edda, Sinfjotli insults Gudmundr by asserting that "all the einherjar (Odin's warriors in Valhalla) fought with each other to win the love of Gudmundr (who was male)." Certainly he intended no aspersions on the honor of the einherjar. Then Sinfjotli boasts that "Gundmundr was pregnant with nine wolf cubs and that he, Sinfjotli, was the father." Had the active, male homosexual role been stigmatized, Sinfjotli would hardly have boasted of it.[2]
Saleby Runestone
Although no runic inscription uses the term ergi, runestone Vg 67 in Saleby, Sweden, includes a curse that anyone breaking the stone would become a rata, translated as a "wretch," "outcast," or "warlock", and argri konu, which is translated as "maleficent woman" in the dative.[3] Here argri appears to be related to the practice of seiðr[4] and represents the most loathsome term the runemaster could imagine calling someone.[5]
