Ergi (noun) and argr (adjective) are two Old Norse terms of insult, denoting effeminacy or other unmanly behaviour. Argr (also ragr) is "unmanly" and ergi is "unmanliness"; the terms have cognates in other Germanic languages such as earh, earg, arag, or arug.

Ergi in the Viking Age

To accuse another man of being argr was called scolding (see nīþ) and thus a legal reason to challenge the accuser in hólmganga.[1] If hólmganga was refused by the accused, he could be outlawed (full outlawry) as this refusal proved that the accuser was right and the accused was argr. Being proven to be an ergi or niðing was generally punished by becoming an outlaw in surviving law codes.[2] If the accused fought successfully in hólmganga and had thus proven that he was not argr, the scolding was considered what was in Old English called eacan, an unjustified, severe defamation, and the accuser had to pay the offended party full compensation. The Gray Goose Laws states:

Modern usage

In modern Scandinavian languages, the lexical root arg- has assumed the meaning "angry", as in Swedish, Bokmål and Nynorsk arg, or Danish arrig. Modern Icelandic has the derivation ergilegur, meaning "to seem/appear irritable", similar to Bokmål ergre, meaning "to irritate". (There are similarities to the German ärgerlich, "annoying, annoyed", and Dutch ergerlijk, "irritating" and ergeren, "to irritate".) In modern Faroese the adjective argur means "angry/annoyed" and the verb arga means to "taunt" or "bully". In modern Dutch, the word erg has become a fortifier equivalent to English very; the same is true for the old-fashioned adjective arg in German, which means "wicked" (especially in compounds as arglistig "malicious" and arglos "unsuspecting"), but has become a fortifier in the Austrian German. The meaning of the word in Old Norse has been preserved in loans into neighboring Finnic languages: Livonian ārga, Estonian arg and Finnish arka, both meaning "cowardly".

Some people involved in Heathenry use "ergi" as either an insult for queer men, male seiðr practitioners, or those perceived as "unmanly". Correspondingly, some male seiðr practitioners have reclaimed the word ergi. One male seiðr practitioner from Scotland who was interviewed by researchers noted that "ergi" was still used where he lived by the general public to refer to a man perceived as cowardly.[7]

See also

  • Malakia (μαλακία, Ancient Greek)

References

  1. ↑ Heusler, Andreas (1911). Das Strafrecht der Isländersagas (in German). Leipzig. p. 56.
  2. ↑ His, Rudolf (1901). Das Strafrecht der Friesen im Mittelalter (in German). Leipzig: Weicher. p. 166.
  3. ↑ Sørenson, Preben M.; Turville-Petre, Joan (transl.) (1983). The Unmanly Man: Concepts of Sexual Defamation in Early Northern Society. Studies in Northern Civilization. Vol. 1. Odense University Press. p. 17. ISBN 87-7492-436-2.
  4. ↑ Seebold, Elmar (Ed.): Art. arg, in: Kluge. Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 24. Auflage, Berlin, New York 2002, S. 58.
  5. ↑ Sturluson, Snorri (1870). "Ynglinga saga". In Unger, C.R.; Linder, N.; Hagson, K.A. (eds.). Heimskringla, eda Sögur Noregs konunga (in Old Norse). Uppsala.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  6. ↑ "Seidr". Norse Mythology for Smart People. Retrieved 20 November 2025.
  7. 1 2 Blain, Jenny; Wallis, Robert J. (1 October 2000). "The 'Ergi' Seidman: Contestations of Gender, Shamanism and Sexuality in Northern Religion Past and Present". Journal of Contemporary Religion. 15 (3): 395–411. doi:10.1080/713676039. ISSN 1353-7903.
  8. ↑ Greenberg, David F. (1988). The Construction of Homosexuality. University of Chicago Press. p. 249. ISBN 0-226-30627-5.
  9. ↑ Ruth Karras Mazo: Sexualität im Mittelalter. Aus dem Amerikanischen von Wolfgang Hartung, Düsseldorf 2006, pp. 275-277.
  10. ↑ Project Samnordisk Runtextdatabas Svensk - Rundata entry for Vg 67.
  11. ↑ MacLeod, Mindy; Mees, Bernard (2006). Runic Amulets and Magic Objects. Boydell Press. pp. 225–226. ISBN 1-84383-205-4.
  12. ↑ Moltke, Erik (1985). Runes and their Origin, Denmark and Elsewhere. Copenhagen: Nationalmuseets Forlag. p. 140. ISBN 87-480-0578-9.

allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergi