Document Type
Article
Abstract
The past ten years have seen a trans turn in medieval studies, with a surge of publications correcting misconceptions of the Middle Ages as exclusively cisheteronormative. Recovering moments of medieval trans joy is a central aim of this scholarship, in order to unsettle modern negativity towards transness. But sometimes, to paraphrase Hil Malatino (2021), “being trans feels bad.” To broaden the archive of feeling within premodern trans studies, this article turns to the understudied context of Old Norse-Icelandic literature – which offers few instances of identifiable let alone recuperable trans figures. My discussion focuses on Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss (ca. 1320) and the bad feelings of its heroine, the giantess Helga Bárðardóttir. Embracing what Malatino calls ‘trans intercorporeality’ as an interpretative strategy, I examine the trans inflections of her "bad feelings," locating them within medieval discourses of heteronormativity and "passing." This article offers a framework that recognizes trans possibility without insisting upon modern diagnostic or sexological criteria, while also demonstrating how Old Norse-Icelandic literature expands our understanding of what constitutes trans history.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum (Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies) for their permission to include images from their manuscript collection in this article, via a creative commons non-commercial license (cc-by-nc). I am grateful to the award committees of the Gender and Medieval Studies Working Group and the Society for Medieval Studies for their suggestions on this article, and I am humbled by their support of my work. This article has also benefited from the helpful feedback of Bettina Bildhauer and Lynn Shutters, and from audiences at the 2024 Modern Language Association Convention and the Gender and Medieval Studies Conference. I am indebted to Colby Gordon for sharing with me a draft of the introduction to his then-forthcoming Glorious Bodies: Trans Theology and Renaissance Literature (University of Chicago Press, 2024). I am also grateful to Ed van der Molen and Jane Bonsall, for conversations that helped me refine my ideas.
Keywords
Trans, Transgender, Old Norse, Iceland, Sagas, Affect
Recommended Citation
Price, Basil Arnould "Bad Trans Feelings in "Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss"." Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 60, No. 2 (2025)
