Why wouldn't their tales and attributes of the Gods be a good argument? You can learn a lot about a society by how they viewed their Gods. Remember what I said about most of what we know about the pre-Christian Germanic peoples being told to us by Christians. They are the ones who outlawed homosexuality and those cultures were mostly Christian by the time the Eddas and Sagas were finally written down. It is important to be mindful of possible cultural biases in the Lore due to this. The Roman Empire also made homosexuality punishable by death after it was Christianized, but we certainly wouldn't say that Greco-Roman culture was totally against homosexuality or transgenderism prior to its conversion.
The article I posted mentioned certain priests:
"Apparently homosexuals had a role within the worship of the Vanic gods. The Christian chronicler Saxo Grammaticus scornfully reported in his Gesta Danorum that some priests of Freyr used "effeminate gestures and the clapping of the mimes on stage
and . . . the unmanly clatter of the bells." Dumézil sees evidence for a group of priests of Njôrðr and Freyr who were honored, yet seem to have engaged in acts of
argr, and who may have worn their hair in styles reserved normally only for women or even dressed themselves as women (Dumézil 115).
One might assume that the morals expected of gods cannot necessarily be applied for humans. However, there were likewise a number of heroes known to have been guilty of
ergi such as Helgi Hundingsbana (
see above). Another famous
ragr hero is the famous Icelandic hero Grettir, who in the poem Grettisfærsla is said to have had sexual intercourse with "maidens and widows, everyone's wives, farmers' sons, deans and courtiers, abbots and abbesses, cows and calves, indeed with near all living creatures," (Sørenson 18) yet no one attached opprobrium to Grettir because of his vast, and omnisexual, prowess."
Yes, Seiðr is associated with both gender-variant and homosexual practices among males and this was true especially in pre-Christian times. It's a cultural constant with shamanism, it seems.
"Finally, why seiðr should have included a buggering of the wizard? An obvious answer is that he had to become female to practice the seiðr, which agrees well with the statement of the prose Edda. This is all the more certain as women can obviously practice seiðr without receiving this treatment. Another example of this feminization is provided to us by some Siberian shamans, called the ‘soft men’, who dress like women and sometimes marry men. As for the antiquity of this behavior, it is without doubt since even Hippocrates reports this fact for certain Scythian soothsayers scythes who also state they received from a goddess their divinatory knowledge (named Aphrodite by Herodotus, and thus the goddess of love of the Scythian civilization)."
Seiðr, seið, Sol-Iss-Þurs and Nordic shamanism
"It is important to note that this negative attitude may be a result of Christian and continental influence. After all, the texts were written down well after Christianity was introduced, and whereas it took several centuries before the concept of women meddling with magic was thought of as “bad”, the demands on masculine behavior were much more harsh from an early stage. It is my impression that even before the Conversion, Christians played on inherent ideals of manliness in order to put paganism in a bad light. During pagan times, the general masculine ideal could be transcended by sorcerers who would move in both masculine and feminine spheres (whether they were masculine or feminine themselves). A certain “unmanliness” was always associated with sorcery and divination, for various possible reasons. Some sorcerers seem to have been transgendered or gay, sorcery being a realm in which people who did not fit into the hetero-norm could thrive.
Transgender behavior may have been regarded as unusual but magical and sacred. Male sorcerers who were not gay, transgender or particularly feminine would still be seen as operating within a subtle, hidden, mysterious sphere that was “unmanly”, manliness being associated with openness and direct confrontation rather than the performing of secret spells."
Seiðmaðr and Earl – The Male Sorcerer or Shaman | Freyia Völundarhúsins
A Womb by Magic – Transcending Gender, Transcending Realities | Freyia Völundarhúsins
