CHAPTER FOUR

WOMEN AND SEXUAL POLITICS

Auður G. Magnúsdóttir

O

ne late summer evening in 1238 , the prominent politician and writer Snorri
Sturluson was enjoying the company of a few friends in his outdoor bath at
Reykholt. It is said that the men were discussing chieftaincy, which probably included
what characteristics a good chieftain should possess, how he should behave and perhaps
even what material symbols of status were necessary. Doubtless the men consumed
quantities of alcohol and in time started discussing the importance of alliances. Snorri
himself gave an account of his own well-planned ties through marriage, not only his
own, but even those he had planned on behalf of his children. Having been given that
account, the impressed assembly assured him that none within Iceland could match
Snorri’s powerful position due to his alliances through marriage (Sturlunga saga: 319 ).^1
In the struggle for power in contemporary Iceland strong alliances were of utmost
importance. Snorri also believed that he had managed to secure his own position by
joining ties of friendship and marriage with many of the most powerful families in
the country (on Snorri as a politician, see Gunnar Karlsson 1979 ; see Faulkes, ch. 23 ,
below). His strategy had been to give his own daughters in marriage to men who were
socially and economically of the same standing as he was. But the social networks Snorri
had struggled for and which had impressed his friends, didn’t work out very well. In fact
one of his former sons-in-law was responsible for getting him killed. How could this
have happened?
Modern studies have tended to focus on the important role of marriage in medieval
politics as well as in the political strategies of later times, a view that is well formulated
by Georges Duby ( 1985 : 19 ): ‘Marriage establishes relations of kinship. It underlines
the whole of society and is the keystone of social edifice.’ This concentration on marriage
and biological kinship, which in modern society clearly has a different meaning than in
the Middle Ages, has meant that the social functions of other forms of relationship have
been neglected until recently, thus the role of friendship in medieval politics has been an
object of extensive research (i.e. Byock 1988 ; Althoff 1990 ; Jón Viðar Sigurðsson 1992 ;
Hermanson 2000 ). The treatment of marriage as the ‘keystone of the social edifice’ has
obscured the fact that monogamous marriage has not always been the norm, that other
forms of cohabitation were socially and politically as important as marriage, and that
kinship is changeable over time. Thus the concept family has to be discussed in relation