Were There Any Queer Vikings?

We are generally not very used to thinking about queerness (identities and sexualities other than cisgender and straight) as something that can be found in the deeper past — meaning the human story spanning back hundreds and thousands of years ago. This is probably because the language and images we use to talk about queerness today are relatively recent inventions. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/us/gay-lgbt-pride-march-history.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">The first Pride March took place in 1970</a>, helping to change the negative connotations of words like queer and gay, and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/story/how-did-the-rainbow-flag-become-a-symbol-of-lgbt-pride#:~:text=It%20goes%20back%20to%201978,pride%20for%20the%20gay%20community." rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">the pride flag was created in 1978</a>. Since then, thanks to the work of activists around the world, more and more people can talk openly about queerness, being LGBTQIA+ and all the different things this might mean to different people. But to think that this somehow means that queer feelings are no older than the 20th century and not part of longer human experience, from the first humans to the peoples shaping the last two millennia, would be very wrong. <a href="https://medium.com/@liviadyring/were-there-any-queer-vikings-4a05ae772e50">Read More</a>