This dissertation examines the motif of the popular Viking in contemporary Anglophone fantasy literature, with a focus on masculinity, power, embodiment,and sexuality. The study draws on queer-theoretical perspectives on masculinity and the method of queer reading, and approaches the Viking as at once bound up with the legitimization of normative and hegemonic forms of masculinity and open to (queer) negotiations and possibilities beyond normative male masculinities.

The material consists of contemporary gritty fantasy, a recent subgenre deeply invested in contemporary concerns regarding masculinity, masculine failure, and masculinity crisis narratives, where the Viking motif plays a major role. The texts under consideration are Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law (2006–2012) and The Shattered Sea (2014–2015), Richard K. Morgan’s A Land Fit for Heroes (2008–2016), Mark Lawrence’s The Red Queen’s War (2014–2016), and Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette’s The Iskryne Saga (2007–2015).

Understanding the Viking as a motif that is intractably bound up with ideas of the past and the historical period of the Viking Age but not reducible to it, the thesis considers the fantasy Viking as a medial representation of spectacular hardbody action masculinity and puts it in relation to the fantasy text and fantasy worldbuilding as well as more generalized cultural ideas of the North and the Nordics. Furthermore, it asks how we can understand the masculinity of the Viking – long made symbolic of or associated with white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, and reactionary gender roles – beyond an assumed direct relation to men or men’s concerns.

Analytically, the thesis considers the Viking in relation to spatiality, temporality, and embodiment, finding that in the fantasy text, the Viking emerges with a strong focus on a mighty, muscular body and as a barbarian Other connected to the past and in direct opposition to civilization and futurity, making it an escapist possibility outside the disciplining power of neoliberal late-stage capitalism. Furthermore, connecting to postfeminist perspectives on masculinity in media, the thesis finds that the fantasy Viking has developed in ways that seemingly take into account feminist and queer critique of traditional, homophobic forms of masculinity, transforming the Viking and offering it up for (queer) objectification. At the same time, the Viking also becomes a safe site of traditional masculinity, where anxieties and concerns regarding a supposed loss of male power in modernity can be projected and ultimately resolved.

Den här avhandlingen undersöker vikingamotivet i den samtida engelskspråkiga fantasylitteraturem med fokus på maskulinitet, makt, kroppslighet och sexualitet. Studien tar avstamp i queerteoretiska perspektiv på maskulinitet och queer läsning som metod och förstår vikingen som på samma gång direkt kopplad till idéer om legitimering av normativa och hegemoniska former av maskulinitet och öppen för (queera) omförhandlingar och möjligheter bortom normativa manliga maskuliniteter.

Empiriskt utgår avhandlingen från en relativt ny subgenre av fantasy, gritty fantasy, som är djupt sammankopplad med samtida diskussioner kring maskulinitet i relation till misslyckande och kris och där vikingamotivet ofta har en framskjuten roll. Texterna som avhandlas är Joe Abercrombies TheFirst Law (2006–2012) och The Shattered Sea (2014–2015), Richard K. Morgans A Land Fit for Heroes (2008–2016), Mark Lawrences The Red Queen’s War (2014–2016) samt Elizabeth Bears och Sarah Monettes The Iskryne Saga (2007–2015).

Vikingen framträder som ett motiv som är djupt sammanbundet med idéer om det förflutna och historia, men som inte enbart kan reduceras till det. I stället förstår avhandlingen vikingen som en medial representation a vspektakulär, kroppslig actionmaskulinitet och sätter den i relation till fantasytexten och fantasyvärldsbygget samt mer generella idéer om Norden. Vidare har den maskulina vikingen länge symboliskt kopplats ihop med reaktionära idéer om vit överhöghet, misogyni och homofobi, och avhandlingen intresserar sig för hur vikingens maskulinitet kan förstås bortom något som enbart förhåller sig till män eller mäns angelägenheter.

Studien diskuterar vikingen i relation till rumslighet, temporalitet och kroppslighet och finner att i fantasytexten skildras vikingen med fokus på en stark, muskulös kropp och som en barbarisk Andra från det förflutna, i opposition mot såväl civilisation som modernitet och framtid. Här positioneras vikingen som en eskapistisk möjlighet utanför och i motsats till det nyliberala, senkapitalistiska samhället och disciplinär makt. Vidare, via postfeministiska perspektiv på maskulinitet, finner avhandlingen att fantasyvikingen också verkar svara mot feministisk och queer kritik av traditionella och homofoba former av maskulinitet genom att omforma vikingen och positionera den som ett objekt för olika former av (queera) begär. Samtidigt blir vikingen också en symbolisk tillflykt för konservativa idéer om maskulinitet, där ängslan över en förmodad förlust av traditionellt manliga egenskaper och manlig makt i senmoderniteten kan projiceras och upplösas.

This article discusses gritty fantasy, a fantasy subgenre, which was established in the early 2000s and has since gained a lot of traction. In previous research, gritty fantasy has often been understood as a deconstructive form of fantasy that draws on the barbaric Middle Ages and subverts fantasy tropes as a reaction against earlier forms of popular fantasy. I examine, rather, the genre’s relation to the medieval and its depictions of power. Drawing on queer temporality and theories on fantasy literature and worldbuilding (Mendlsohn; Roine), I approach gritty fantasy first and foremost as a form of fantasy literature, placing it within the context of speculative fiction and asking what it does as a fantastic literature.

Since Michel Foucault’s proto-queer theoretical History of Sexuality (1976/2002), time and history have functioned as important sites for the theorization and understanding of sexuality and gender as productive, culturally situated phenomena, rather than static, transhistorical, or naturally ordained. In particular the medieval has been a central site of contrast for the rethinking of modern conceptions of sexuality and heteronormativity (Dinshaw 1999). By contrast, popular fantasy often seems overwhelmingly normative in its medievalism, imagining the fantasy medieval as much ‘further back’ in a supposed linear development of greater social acceptance for sexual diversity than modern Western society.

With the popularity of Game of Thrones, this particular construction of the fantasy medieval has gained critical academic attention. Recent feminist inquiries into the medievalisms of the current popular trend towards grimness and realism in fantasy media have revolved around what Amy Kaufman refers to as “muscular medievalism,” which “imagines the past as a man’s world in which masculinity was powerful, impenetrable, and uniquely privileged” (Kaufman 2016, 58; see also for example: Polack 2015; Young 2016; Carroll 2018). In these readings, the medievalism of popular fantasy is understood as constructing problematic understandings of gender, sexuality and race through its use of the ‘past.’ 

In this presentation I want to offer a queer reading as a complement to these feminist engagements with the temporality of fantasy fiction. Drawing on theory on queer temporality and queer uses of the past (Dinshaw 1999; Fjelkestam 2018), I here make an initial attempt to sketch out a queer reading of the temporality of popular epic fantasy.

The aim of this article is to examine the representation of female masculinity in genre literature. Reading female masculinity as queer embodiment, I put two science fictional texts driven by a typical action narrative in dialogue with earlier research on representations of female masculinity in literature and popular culture to demonstrate the importance of bringing the genre of the text into the analysis when examining female masculinity.

In the article, I use the connection between female masculinity and tragedy as my starting point to exemplify how the genre of a text shapes the depiction and reading of female masculinity. In the action-driven science fiction texts I study, this link is very much present, but tragedy is given another role to play. Instead of being an element in the constitution of gender non-conforming as an unlivable experience, the representation of these masculine female heroes as oriented away from heteronormative constructions of a good life (Ahmed 2006) makes possiblethe depiction of these women as masculine, as well as the glorification of their gender non-conformity within the framework of the action-based SF narrative.