Did you know that Loki was a gender-bending God? In this episode of the Medieval Grad Podcast, Lucie Laumonier interviews Matthew Roby on sex and gender in Old Norse and Icelandic sagas. There were many gender-bending characters in these texts, informing us of the gender representations and roles of Norse societies.
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.
The topic was so dense that we’re making a two-part series about this – first, gender, and in the next episode, sex!
Further Reading:
Evans, Gareth Lloyd and Jessica Clare Hancock, eds., Masculinities in Old Norse Literature (D.S. Brewer, 2020)
Jochens, Jenny, Women in Old Norse Society (Cornell University Press, 1995)
Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir, Valkyrie: The Women of the Viking World (Bloomsbury, 2020)
The Medieval Grad Podcast is a new podcast here at Medievalists.net. Look for two episodes to be released each month – if you are part of our Patreon you can listen to these episodes early!
You can listen to the podcast via Libsyn, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or through your favourite podcast player.
Lucie Laumonier 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.
The music in this podcast is La douce jouvencelle
Top Image: Loki depicted in the 18th century Icelandic manuscript “SÁM 66” – Wikimedia Commons