#ergr is the opposite of drengr

[nimblermortal]

Went back to reading The Golden Wolf and it said basically that ergr means gay and I about put the book down there.

[nimblermortal]

Actually I already have Opinions about the way nouns are gendered in Old Norse.

I mean, it’s sexist, sure. That’s... largely I think of it as a helpful mnemonic. But the ways in which it is sexist say interesting things about the nature of the society. For example, rei∂i is anger, and it’s feminine, because expressing any emotion is not drengr*.

Most body parts are neuter, because everybody’s got a body, but arms are masculine (presumably, strength of arms), tongues are feminine (those women, always talking, amirite), and shoulders are also feminine (...?).

Weapons are neuter. It is utterly fascinating to me that weapons are neuter. Swords are neuter. Shields are neuter. Spears are neuter. Weapons are neuter. Anybody can wield a weapon?

Compliments tend to end in -ma∂r, which is masculine, but in a neuter sense, the way that ‘man’ is used to mean humankind. (Ma∂r also declines irregularly, becoming mann and manni and menn and etc.) So generally compliments and distinguished professions are technically masculine, but a lot of my flash cards use the word ‘person’ regardless of how likely I think it is that women were ever described as such. One day I will be fluent enough to read sagas and then maybe I’ll have an idea.

The moon is masculine. It is in German too - German is another gender mnemonic for me with ON - but here I know why, and it has to do with folkloric wolves. Well, we’ve all been subject to folkloric wolves forcibly rearranging our genders, it happens to the best of us.

Jörmungandr is an ongoing, fascinating puzzle for me - I think it was jór that was stallion, and masculine, but jǫr∂** is earth, and feminine. The dictionary I’ve got doesn’t have any additional breakdowns for mungr or mung or mun or gandr; Wikipedia says it means huge monster, but I want to know for myself. In the meantime, it’s a great mnemonic for all these other adjacent words to think of Jǫrmungandr as - a sibling of Sleipnir’s? Named relative to his position as world serpent?

It’s fun!

*drengr is the opposite of ergr. Ergr is pretty much equivalent to 2000s derogatory “gay”. Drengr is consequently... masculine virtue, in the way it’s understood in Saga Age Norse societies, or, since I’m reading Icelandic sagas, the way masculine virtue in the Saga Age is imagined by ~fourteenth century literate folks.

**ǫ is a constant challenge for me, I can’t figure out how to type it in any context, and I can’t substitute with ó, ø, œ, or ö because those are all in use in ON.