(noun) and (adjective) are two

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...

terms of insult, denoting

effeminacy Effeminacy is the embodiment of traits and/or expressions in those who are not of the female sex (e.g. boys and men) that are often associated with what is generally perceived to be feminine behaviours, mannerisms, styles, or gender roles, rath ...

or other unmanly behaviour. ' (also ') is "unmanly" and ''ergi'' is "unmanliness"; the terms have cognates in other

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, E ...

such as ', ', ''arag'', ''arug'', and so on.

''Ergi'' in the Viking Age

To accuse another man of being ' was called ''scolding'' (see ') and thus a legal reason to challenge the accuser in

holmgang Holmgang (holmganga in Old Norse, hólmganga in modern Icelandic, holmgång in Swedish, holmgang in Danish and Norwegian bokmål and nynorsk) is a duel practiced by early medieval Scandinavians. It was a legally recognized way to settle disput ...

. 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 '. If the accused fought successfully in ''holmgang'' and had thus proven that he was not ', the ''scolding'' was considered what was in

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

called ', an unjustified, severe defamation, and the accuser had to pay the offended party full compensation. The

Gray Goose Laws The Gray (Grey) Goose Laws ( is, Grágás {{IPA-is, ˈkrauːˌkauːs}) are a collection of laws from the Icelandic Commonwealth period. The term ''Grágás'' was originally used in a medieval source to refer to a collection of Norwegian laws an ...

states:

The practice of ' or "sorcery" was considered ' in the

Viking Age The Viking Age () was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. It followed the Migration Period and the Germ ...

and in Icelandic accounts and medieval Scandinavian laws, the term ' 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:

Saleby Runestone

Although no runic inscription uses the term ',

runestone A runestone is typically a raised stone with a runic inscription, but the term can also be applied to inscriptions on boulders and on bedrock. The tradition began in the 4th century and lasted into the 12th century, but most of the runestones d ...

Vg 67 in Saleby, Sweden, includes a curse that anyone breaking the stone would become a ', translated as a "wretch," "outcast," or "warlock", and ', which is translated as "maleficent woman" in the dative.Project Samnordisk Runtextdatabas Svensk
- Rundata entry for Vg 67. Here ' appears to be related to the practice of ' and represents the most loathsome term the runemaster could imagine calling someone.

Modern usage

In modern Scandinavian languages, the lexical root ' has assumed the meaning "angry", as in

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

Bokmål Bokmål () (, ; ) is an official written standard for the Norwegian language, alongside Nynorsk. Bokmål is the preferred written standard of Norwegian for 85% to 90% of the population in Norway. Unlike, for instance, the Italian language, there ...

and

Nynorsk Nynorsk () () is one of the two written standards of the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. From 12 May 1885, it became the state-sanctioned version of Ivar Aasen's standard Norwegian language ( no, Landsmål) parallel to the Dano-N ...

', or

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...

'. Modern Icelandic has the

derivation Derivation may refer to: Language * Morphological derivation, a word-formation process * Parse tree or concrete syntax tree, representing a string's syntax in formal grammars Law * Derivative work, in copyright law * Derivation proceeding, a proc ...

', meaning "to seem/appear irritable", similar to Bokmål ''ergre'', meaning "to irritate". (There are similarities to the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

', "annoying, annoyed", and

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

', "irritating" and ', "to irritate".) In modern Faroese the

adjective In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...

' means "angry/annoyed" and the

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

' means to "taunt" or "bully". In modern Dutch, the word ' has become a fortifier equivalent to English ''very''; the same is true for the old-fashioned adjective ' in German, which means "wicked" (especially in compounds as ' "malicious" and ' "unsuspecting"), but has become a fortifier in the

Austrian German Austrian German (german: Österreichisches Deutsch), Austrian Standard German (ASG), Standard Austrian German (), or Austrian High German (), is the variety of Standard German written and spoken in Austria. It has the highest sociolinguistic p ...

. The meaning of the word in Old Norse has been preserved in loans into neighboring

Finnic languages The Finnic (''Fennic'') or more precisely Balto-Finnic (Balto-Fennic, Baltic Finnic, Baltic Fennic) languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7 mi ...

: Estonian ' and

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

', both meaning "cowardly".

References

External links

*
SAOB: Arg.adj
*

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20081001190615/http://www.arkeologi.uu.se/ark/education/CD/Cuppsats/CHT04/adolfsson.pdf Adolfsson, Lars: Germanska mannaförbund. Existens och initiation. Bachelor's thesis, Uppsala 2004]
Viking Answer Lady
{{Religion and LGBT people Effeminacy Male gender nonconformity Pejorative terms for men Gender-related stereotypes Old Norse