At the heart of nid, and Viking-Age homophobia, was the assumption “that a man who subjects himself to another in sexual affairs will do the same in other respects”. The key to such insults was not so much the accusation of perceived sexual perversion as an attack on an opponent’s honour. The latter partly defined cultural gender for the Vikings, and also partly depended on it to have meaning. What we would call sexual orientation was, in the Viking Age, completely bound up with much wider and deeper codes of behaviour and dignity, extending way beyond physical and emotional preference. Nid
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