Come. You must have wondered about it. All this talk about the baðstofa and no privacy, then on the other hand women who were preggers and having babies ... it just begs the question: How the heck did they get it on back then?
Sadly, I’m afraid I can’t tell you. Not a lot of documentation exists about this stuff. Those scribble-happy Icelanders, who wrote chronicles of kings and gods in their own little corner of the baðstofa and recorded all sorts of things in their journals, from monumental historical events to the state of the weather, completely neglected to tell us about their sex lives.
It was very remiss of them.
What we do know, however, is that both church and king went to extreme lengths to curb the hanky panky. Any sort of sexual deviation was severely punished - “deviation” in this case meaning anything beyond the missionary position. The penal (no pun intended) code at the time was the so-called Stóridómur (English: The Grand Judgment), a set of laws written by a bunch of prudish males and adopted in 1564. The stated purpose of Stóridómur was to “reduce instances of sexual depravity”, the most serious of which was incest in its various constellations. The law listed seventeen female relatives that men were not permitted to sleep with: mother, sister, daughter, stepmother, daughter-in-law, etcetera. (Am guessing that nothing remotely akin to homosexuality or bestiality ever entered the minds of those twenty-four founding fathers of Stóridómur.)
Folks found guilty of incest either had their heads cut off (men) or were tossed into an icy pool of water where spectators could gather for a picnic and watch them drown (women). That very pool still exists at Þingvellir, right at the end of the rift most people walk along when they visit, and it is still called Drekkingarhylur, or “Drowning Pool”.
A slightly less heinous sexual offence was the ubiquitous practice of having children out of wedlock. For that, one or both parents had to pay a fine, the amount of which rose with each repeated instance. And lest you think they would just go on indefinitely in this manner, think again: after the fourth time they were made to choose between being flogged or ... (wait for it) ... marrying each other.
Indeed, old Stóridómur was no lamb to play with (Icelandic idiom). It even went so far as to permit the castration of vagrants against their will and without any sort of legal recourse, even if said vagrant died during the, um, operation. This was deemed necessary so they would not go around impregnating farmers’ young daughters. Although given the description of most vagabonds, I would guess that a) having sex was the furthest thing from their minds, and b) farmers’ daughters would avoid them like the plague.
Not that all those laws and regulations were confined to unmarried or incestuous folks. Even the legally married were not exempt from the pious meddling of the church. For example, couples were forbidden to have sex the night before a holy day, or the night before a Friday, or for a full seven days before taking communion. A man was not allowed to take communion at all if he had ejaculated the night before, was not allowed to have sex with his wife during pregnancy, and not for forty days after she gave birth. Which by my calculations constitutes a period of about ten full months. (I’ll leave you to ponder that at your leisure.)
Mind you, the above refers to the Catholic church, which reigned supreme in Iceland before the reformation in the mid-16th century. Not that the reformation changed much, mind, since Stóridómur was established soon afterwards and continued to impose its strict authoritarian rules on the Icelanders’ sexual conduct.
42 Blue verses
I know I said that no one was writing about sex in the old days, and I fear I’ll have to eat my words because it turns out that at least one person was. There exists one (count ‘em) slightly racy manuscript that has been preserved from the old days. It is is called The Saga of Bósi and Herraud and dates back to the 15th century. And because people probably would have had some vital body part forcibly amputated had they been caught writing porn, it’s all penned in this adorable allegorical language. To wit:
“What is your business here?” she asked.
“To let my foal drink from your wine spring,” he said.
“But can he, my man?” she said. “He will not be familiar with the sort of well house that I possess.”
“I shall lead him forth,” he said, “and forcibly submerge him if he will not drink by other means.”
“Where is your foal, my heartfelt friend?” she said.
“Between my legs,” he replied, “and touch him now, but gently, for he is very skittish.”
In his book Landmarks of a Lifetime, folkways scholar Árni Björnsson speculates that there was no shortage of lewd stories and verses back in the day, but that very few were ever written down. Possibly because they weren’t considered worthy of the paper (or vellum) required to preserve them, but also because of the fear of the church and its mighty wrath.
Before we move on I have one more random factoid on the lewdness front. There were these cairns up in the highlands called beinakerlingar (bone crones), which in part referred to the large number of bones (animal bones, that is - horse bones in particular) that were commonly stuck into them. No definitive explanation for this odd custom exists, but it is believed that initially people wanted to let others know of their travels on seldom-traversed mountain trails, or inform them about wayward sheep. Consequently they scribbled notes and stuck them into the bones, which they then stuck into the cairns.
For some strange reason, this innocent and helpful practice turned into a habit of people writing racy verses and sticking those into the bones. They usually took the form of a verse written in the voice of a woman and addressed to the next traveller, urging him to prove his masculinity. These verses became known as beinakerlingavísur (bone crone verses), and over time the definition expanded to incorporate all lewd verses, which became collectively known under that name.
43 Fun fun fun
You may have the idea that life in the Iceland of old was little more than a dreary slog through endless days of back-breaking work, putrid food and miserable living conditions, alleviated only by the occasional fantasy of being carried off by a hidden person, or a lewd verse stuck into a bone.
But oh, how wrong you would be. Because the Icelanders also knew how to have fun. Yes they did.
How, you ask?
Well, for example they danced. They had this dance called Vikivaki where they all got in a circle, joined hands or clapped shoulders, and then did two steps to the left and one step to the right, occasionally changing rhythm, all to the sound of somebody chanting.
I know. Sounds like a blast. Which is just what the bishop at the time thought. In fact, he thought it sounded like a little too much of a blast. And it wasn’t just the dancing, it was all the sordid decadence that went along with it. Apparently when folks got together to dance it loosened up their morals and allowed them to get carried off by their carnal urges. And then nine months later hellooo baby.
So the bishop came up with a crafty plan to take care the problem: make dancing illegal. (This was in the 12th century, if that tells you anything.)
But you know those impudent Icelanders. They never do as they’re told. They just kept doing their two-steps-to-the-left, one-step-to-the-right, until in the 17th century the bishop had a minor conniption, banged his proverbial fist on the table, and declared that dancing was now absolutely, unequivocally banned and would not under any circumstances be tolerated because of all the bastards that were born afterwards. (This was obviously a different bishop, though.)
And to drive the point home, the Danish king sent one of his minions over to Iceland to ensure that them dancing and chanting infidels back in not-so-Niceland knew he meant business.
And clearly it worked, because from that point and for the next three hundred years or so, the Icelanders did not dance. (They kept having bastards, though.)
So does that mean they had no fun? No it does not. They merely did other things to amuse themselves. Like for instance going to church. That got them off the farm (remember th
eir employer was like their dad and they couldn’t just wander off without his permission whenever they felt like it) and to a place where they could socialise a little bit with people they didn’t spend every minute of every day with. (And night with.) As a matter of fact I have it on good authority that they may have gone to the church not because they were so desperate to hear the sermon, but so they could go to the coffee and cake event afterwards. (Gasp!)
Also, the kvöldvaka was fun. Especially if someone told a good story that hadn’t been told a hundred times already.
Oh, and they played chess! As a matter of fact, the single artefact that led to the founding of the National Museum of Iceland was a chess piece that was discovered buried in the ground. It turned out to be really old. Meaning they played chess for fun even back in the days when they were allowed to dance, take saunas, and tell bawdy stories around the long fire without the church freaking out about it.
And last but certainly not least, they played sports. More specifically, they played Iceland’s national sport: the glíma, a form of wrestling where two guys get dressed up in tights and swimming trunks with straps hanging off them, and then proceed to hang on to each other’s hips and dance around until one of the guys trips the other so he falls down. I guess you could call it the sporting version of the Vikivaki, and if you haven’t seen what it looks like, I urge you to stop reading, go online, and google it. It will make your day.
44 Going to town
Back in the day when Iceland was an oppressed and miserable Danish colony, our overlords passed a decree that they, and only they, were allowed to do business with us. Meaning that if someone in Iceland was caught trading with anyone but an authorised Danish merchant they were in big, big trouble.
Now, your average Icelander would probably have preferred to flip them the bird and to chew on Iceland moss for the rest of his life rather than have to kowtow to those outrageous commands. But alas, human beings tend to be frail, feeble creatures when they are staring temptation in the face, and the Danes had certain things that the Icelanders really, really wanted. Things like flour, timber (for the poor sods that didn’t get direct deliveries from Siberia), sugar, and most tantalising of all, the unholy trinity: coffee, tobacco and liquor.
And so, when those poor, persecuted peasants had something to trade - like, say, woolly hats, fish liver oil or lamb carcasses - they would saddle up their horses, make a little convoy, and head into town to see the merchants.
But oh, those merchants. Those dudes were the schizz, man. They towered so far above the blubbering peasantry of the Colony of Iceland that it’s a wonder they didn’t have perpetual nosebleeds. And they were not about to haul their asses out of bed on a regular day to open up shop for a convoy of snivelling peasants unless they were bloody well in the mood. And sometimes they were just bloody well not in the mood. And those plebs who all reeked of fish oil ... well they’d just have to wait until the next day. Or the next. Or for such a time as was convenient for the merchants to be in the mood.
So what does a poor snivelling peasant do when he is made to wait around indefinitely to trade his stuff? Well, what any reasonable person would do, of course. He got drunk. Not that he needed the excuse, mind - hitting the sauce was pretty common practice for anyone who went to town. In fact, liquor was so inextricably tied up with those excursions that the smell of it was flippantly referred to as the kaupstaðalykt, “town smell” - a moniker that is still used today.
By the time the merchant finally opened up shop, the peasant farmer might just be the teeniest bit irate, and the teeniest bit inebriated. And might just decide to express his dissatisfaction, which would inevitably give the merchant an excuse to hop over the store counter and punch the peasant in the face. This, more often than not, would result in a brawl.
So you see that going to town was balls of fun, too.
That was one scenario. The other common scenario was this: whenever the merchant deigned to open, he would always have a wee bottle behind the counter, and would be happy to dole out shots to his pathetic customers with their measly wares. They would then start chatting about the weather or suchlike, the merchant would pour more liquor, the peasant would imbibe, the merchant would repeat as needed, and eventually the peasant would be blotto. At which time the merchant would promptly take the opportunity to cut a deal that was in every way advantageous to his own person, and in no way advantageous to the poor, blubbering peasant.
It will probably not surprise you that Icelandic peasants hated these merchants with an unbridled passion. And even though it was strictly forbidden, they took to trading, whenever possible, directly with the foreigners whose ships were moored offshore. Which I guess was their way of flipping the bird, albeit in a somewhat passive-aggressive manner.
45 Grunge scene
We cannot come to the end of this little collection of essays without mentioning the Icelanders’ hygiene back in the day.
First, though, let me state the obvious: bad hygiene was pretty standard anywhere in the world in those days. So it’s not like the Icelanders were a special case - pretty much everyone was a filthy mess, at least by our current standards.
However, a somewhat curious thing happened with the Icelanders. When the first settlers arrived, and in the era when Icelanders were an independent people, folks seem to have paid a fair bit of attention to their personal hygiene. They would use the numerous warm pools found throughout the country to bathe in, and even built their homes nearby expressly for that purpose.
But as the nation became more oppressed and subjugated and poor, people seem to have become increasingly apathetic about cleanliness. This was particularly true in the 17th and 18th centuries, when it was almost trendy to be dirty. Either that, or it went hand-in-hand with their low sense of self-worth, which, as it happens, is my own preferred theory.
And I guess you can’t blame them. They lived in dirt houses, so there was dirt all around. It was impossible to wash the floor (obviously, since it was made of dirt). Later, as wooden floors became more common, the floor was cleaned about once a year. They would put a bit of water on it, and the caked-on dirt would form a layer of scum which was then scraped off and thrown outside.
Then there were the clothes and bed clothes. People washed their shirts every two weeks or so, but their underclothes far less often. There was one man, for instance, who was known to wash his underclothes once a year, at Christmas. He would then wear them until the summer, at which point he would take them off, turn them inside-out, and wear them that way until it was time for another washing.
Apparently people didn’t wear their underwear to bed, so that may have helped slightly, although that meant their bedding was the recipient of the dirt. The bedding was washed maybe once a year, in the spring. It was washed in, um, urine, which was considered to be a very good cleanser on account of the ammonia. The downside was that the smell stayed in for weeks afterwards (which may well be why the washing wasn’t done more frequently).
As for personal hygiene ... well, let me just say this. Apparently it was considered auspicious to be as dirty as possible. In fact an idiom existed back then that for some bizarre reason has completely vanished from the lexicon: Saursæll maður er jafnan aursæll - “a man that is dirty is often wealthy”. Filth, in other words, was associated with “filthy rich”. Children were washed every now and again, but adults rarely immersed themselves in water. People would wash their faces when they went to church, albeit rather halfheartedly, but their hands only sometimes. Women, apparently, were more conscientious about this, combing their hair and washing their faces on the weekends, although few did so daily. The favoured substance for washing of the body was not water, but rather everyone’s favourite cleanser: urine. Soap for washing hands and face first became common among the elite, and moved down through the social ranks to the peasantry in the latter part of the 19th century.
It goes without saying, of course, that fleas and lice were a common problem back then. They tended
to breed in the bedding, along with any number of other creepy-crawlies that made their homes in the hay or brushwood that served as mattresses, and which would remain in the same place, untouched, year after year. Amazingly, the popular belief was that lice came from inside the body, and were therefore impossible to eliminate. Naturally they were a massive scourge, and people frequently had open sores on their bodies from the lice bites and the accompanying itching and scratching. Of course people wanted nothing more than to be free from this pestilence, and various methods of achieving this were devised. This included placing crowberry ling under the sheets, or carrying the bones of a dead person on your body. As far as I know, none of those remedies ever achieved the desired result.
46 Grim reaper
Death.
In our day and age, death has become remote, isolated and distant. It is kept behind closed doors and rarely spoken of. It makes most people profoundly uncomfortable. Next to money, it is probably the biggest taboo of our age.
Back in the Iceland of old, death was everywhere. Consider: from 1750 to 1850, three hundred of every thousand children died before they reached their first birthday. Thirty-two percent died within the first three years of their life, and only fifty-seven percent reached confirmation age, or their fourteenth year.
In other words, only about every other person born reached adulthood.
Those children who did survive soon became acquainted with the grim reaper. It is not unlikely that one or both of their parents died while they were still young. If they had grandparents living at the farm, they probably saw them die. They watched animals being slaughtered, or found that they had perished in bad weather. Often this would be like losing a best friend.
The Little Book of the Icelanders in the Old Days Page 8