Endowments below the belt defined Viking culture [View All]

NOT SO FIERCE: Viking warriors were sexually insecure, consumed with performance angst and troubled by the thought that size really did matter, research suggests

THE GUARDIAN , LONDON
Friday, Oct 15, 2004,Page 6

Being hung like a Norse was key to social hierarchy and being considered a real man in 10th-century Icelandic society, according to a new paper, Size Matters: Penile Problems in Sagas of Icelanders, presented to the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, England, this week.

The comprehensive cultural history of the penis in medieval Iceland was researched by Carl Phelpstead from Cardiff University, Wales, who analyzed contemporaneous accounts of otherwise brave Viking warriors being ridiculed by women and girls for their dainty manhood and sexual timidity.

"For Viking men who suffered impotence or erectile problems, it was not merely a medical problem or an unfortunate constraint on their sex lives, it profoundly affected their identity," Phelpstead said.

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To complicate matters further, Phelpstead found evidence in the stories that it was as unmanly to have an outsized penis as an undersized one. In the 13th-century Njal's Saga, the warrior Hrutr Herjolfsson is cursed by a jealous queen with an erection too big for intercourse with his bride.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2004/10/15/2003206950

If you haven't read Njal's Saga, you really should. The passage mentioned above is riotously funny.