SOURCE: Linke, Uli. “The Theft of Blood, the Birth of Men: Cultural Constructions of Gender in Medieval Iceland.” In From Sagas to Society: Comparative Approaches to Early Iceland, edited by Gísli Pálsson, pp. 265-88. Enfield Lock, Middlesex, Eng.: Hisarlik Press, 1992.

In the following essay, Linke studies the symbolic representation of female procreative power—and an instance of male appropriation of that power—in the Elder Edda.

The present work is an excursion into the history of ideas, and not an exploration of customs or social forms. In this essay I examine cultural conceptions of gender in Icelandic mythology, as represented in the Edda (F. Jónsson 1900).¹ Building on previous investigations (Linke 1986, 1989, 1992), I will explore medieval notions of manhood or maleness in relation to femaleness with particular emphasis on the underlying ideologies of reproduction. I attempt to show how Icelandic models of social order are embedded in...