Sex and Sagas

Would you have sex with a troll woman? This episode is the second instalment of a two-part series on sexuality and gender in Icelandic sagas. Lucie talks with Matthew Roby, who deciphers for us the dirty details of these Old Norse and Icelandic texts. Turns out there are a lot of them, and many include monstrous beings!

A warning however, this episode touches upon sexual violence against women, and sexual violence inflicted on children.

Click here to listen to the first episode on Sagas and Gender

Matthew Roby is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. You can learn more about his research on his website matthewroby.com, Matthew’s Academia.edu page, or on his professional Facebook page.

Further Readings:

Karras, Ruth Mazo, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others (Routledge, 2012).

Roby, Matthew, “Menopausal Marvels: Elderly Female Sexuality in the Fróðárundur of Eyrbyggja saga,” Saga-Book 44 (2020), 139-66.

Roby, Matthew, “The Troll-Girl Revelation Motif: Female Infantile Sexuality and Pedophilia in Hálfdanar saga Brönufóstra and Jökuls þáttr Búasonar,” Scandinavian Studies 93.4 (2021), 553-585

The Medieval Grad Podcast is hosted by Lucie Laumonier. Lucie is an affiliate assistant professor at Concordia University. Click here to view her Academia.edu page or follow her on Instagram at The French Medievalist. She is also a columnist on Medievalists.net, writing about agriculture and rural life in the Middle Ages.

You can listen to the podcast via Libsyn, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or through your favourite podcast player. If you are part of our Patreon you can listen to these episodes early!

The music in this podcast is La douce jouvencelle

Top Image: The Sea Monster, by Theodor Kittelsen (1881)