When the term ergi became increasingly used in writing from Norse culture, and that it may have been used with some connection to or opposition to Christian ideas is a very interesting point to bring up. I'll provide some clues, but I'll not provide the extensive evidence from search results, do it will be a trust me bro style of post so that I don't put too many links anymore, but I've extensively studied this matter and have for many years with reference to academic papers and books that I have in my library, both digital and physical, since Norse stuff is one of the areas I'm very interested in, along with racist type stuff separately and their overlap, but Norse religion and culture is important to me separate from the right wing uses.
The Norse stuff that people have access to comes from a stage where Christianity may have already started to influence and impact it.
I haven't heard of the misogynistic group you mentioned but I'll probably look into it soon.
A series of videos I wanted to post here are about a sick trend I discovered among the new Hindu culture informed by Z influence on India through the Hindutva right wing radicals that have seized India. The video trend has every misogynistic trope that presents women as wicked, says that women should never be helped in any way even if they are in trouble, and the videos all conclude with a woman being slapped across the face by a man, it is some of the s*ckest sh*t I've seen, all from out of India, and each has multiple millions of views and entirely supportive comment sections full of praise for women being abandoned, ignored, left in suffering, and to be harmed. It is vile hate and misogyny and really pathetic, like they are poisoning themselves with the worst culture and attacking half the population and their own mothers and sisters and daughters, it is wholly wicked. One after another thry produce the same story with different performers under different accounts, each being rewarded with huge amounts of views and monetization as a reward for the misogynistic story it presents and support of violence against women. It also gives a horrific impression of India and Indian people, so it is bad press for them, just like their Z teachers barely seem to comprehend how finding out about them and their culture based on their manner and depictions and statements and behaviour does not make their targets seem as bad as them, they come off as the horrible monsters and not those they are attacking or putting down. In this case, the dumb asses are putting down their own people, the women they will need to continue to live with and breed with, so creating hostility among themselves is just plain stupid, even if they make some money off of it, it is shortsighted and their own government should stop it, but instead it stems from their evil government, some of the most evil in the world today.
The Norse culture has strong connections to the culture and language connected to the Indus and even very specifically the Sindhi people, down to their cultural dress and boat travel traditions as sailors of river and sea. Very related people with similar genes, the R1a1 haplotype, are shared also, besides having the same language and clothing, so it seems like the people were at least at some point much more closely related and the same.
The modern Nordic people who are depicted in media as the Norse are not the same, they don't share the genes, they are not actually from the same stock at all as the people they prop up as their ancestors for national pride and tourism and to garner international interest, as R1a1 and the other Viking genes are not common among their population, and have also shown a lot of mixture from Southern Europe and were not local to Northern Europe where they are so strongly connected. They seem to have followed river paths from the East, and similar paths were also followed to far off regions by the Romani, the gypsies who originate from India. This whole issue becomes a racist political struggle and the truth is deliberately obscured because Nationalists don't want to hand over anything to groups they deem inferior or "darker", but the Norse were famously not as they are often depicted, but tended towards being able to tan more and had long dark wavy hair that they would comb, and the men and the women were less different looking from each other, and the men were effeminate looking, so that both the males and the females tended to look more similar and androgynous. There are academic papers about all of this, and it is a relief that you may be so overwhelmed by information that I don't have to post them here as evidence lol, it feels great to be able to just discuss all the information I've read through. I have probably already posted things on this site about all this though, in various threads.
The Bible, particularly The New Testament, presents some ideas about masculinity and gender roles and costume and appearance which were mixed with Roman trends and standards. So the Norse curation of their appearance, with careful combing and other things possibly like darkening around the eyes and things that may have been picked up from the East and Middle East and across the world where they had trade interactions, which brought about things like their having a Buddha statue from Pakistan and possible familiarity with Allah as a term, made them associated with the East ad even Saracens or Muslims, who were also sometimes disparaged as effeminate or with different standards than the Christianized Europeans who wanted to constantly distinguish themselves through "othering", something they may have picked up both from the Bible and Greco-Roman popular histories and trends among the intellectuals of Greece and Rome which permeated later ecclesiastic and Church academic education and overall culture.
Now here comes a little confusion potentially. Like their closely related fellows across the world, the Indo-European people with strong connections to the East tended to wear trousers, called pants in North America, both males and females, while the Greco-Roman world did not wear pants. That might seem like an insignificant point of data but I think it plays a very big role, just like it would in more recent times, about "who wears the pants" and what it means. The Greco-Roman style evolved and was taken by the Christians of Europe, so that they were wearing clothing that may have been considered unmanly by the horse-riding trousers wearers, while the androgynous nature of the Eastern types may have appeared effeminate to those in the Greco-Roman costumes, and they had also seen depictions of the "Amazons", female warriors in Eastern costume, wearing trousers.
The Christians may have looked like they were wearing female styled clothing, especially as longer skirts became more common in some of the cultures bordering the Christianized ones, and the prayers and charms of Christians may have also appeared like the trappings of what women were more commonly doing among the later Vikings, since sidr or the magical practices became increasingly associated with women specifically, and even female spirit animals called fylgja were associated with sorcerers, even if they were otherwise warband leaders, but this all was likely a late development overall, though women being used as magical characters who were sought out was quite ancient, but a man taking such a role might have been considered shrugging off male duties that required more physicality, even though the differences among the Viking males and females was negligible and less different than as commonly seen among males and females today, particularly in Western cultures.
So each was likely calling the other effeminate and lusty looking, whore-like and gay, but the Christians were more likely to have started the insults based on the Bible and their feeling threatened by these Eastern migrations and wanting to stop the attraction felt by their women and the intermarriages that were occurring which threatened their demographics and the growth of their own religion against a competing culture.
The Vikings or Norse may then have adopted some of these insults, turning them against those who were calling them such and also against others of their own, and this was sometimes more likely to occur when they were more culturally Christianized.
Funnily enough, "paganism" was always associated by J and then Christians with lust, sexuality, and effeminacy since a very early period as indicated by the Bible, and this has continued until today, except that white supremacist or white supremacist adjacent and Nationalist and Ultra-Nationalist jingoistic "patriot" type movements (very often funded by Supremacist Is and Christian Z U.S.A.) have tried to make "paganism" masculine and misogynistic, attracting young men to the idea of muscular superhero-like "Gods" as ideals of themselves and Dragon Ball Z styled machismo pipe dreams which tend to attract nerds and ultimately closeted homosexuals where the adoration of the male physique is taken to such extremes that it is practically spiritualized and secretly sexualized, making them pretty much gay for their National Spirit of "Genii" and similar representations, especially when it is coupled with a hatred of women and moderation towards androgyny or what becomes considered effeminacy, formerly known as normalcy and rational balance.
That is where the metrosexual effeminacy of aestheticism, like extreme concern regarding personal health, bodybuilding, and looksmaxxing is somehow connected to racism, eugenics, and caucasian pride.
The whole loop is crazy, and it may very well be that very Ancient Norse and Vikings and Proto-Norse and Proto-Vikings had nothing to do with any of this or this sort if thinking whatsoever.
In remaining myths, they seem to be attributing gender swapping incidents freely to their most beloved and worshipped figures, though at other times associating such with shame and insults or humorous embarrassment, but these stories are coming through from a time after the Christian impact had already started and was well under way, and it can be hard to tell what was common among the thought of any devout people as that is not usually recorded by the intellectuals who are literate and recording things for specific purposes, besides also stories coming from different competing cults and religious variants.
I use Norse terminology frequently in my own thinking and beliefs, and I don't believe in literal anthropomorphic thunder and inspiration as humanoid, but that God, which is an Indo-European word too, is most referred to possibly now across the whole world due to the prevalence of English as an international tongue, and that God, Odin, and Allah are the same, that Thor and Loki are likewise different aspects and attributes of one intelligent power manifesting through all things and controlling them, and that it is in the image if literally Nothing, but is responsible for every appearance in our experience. Odin's attributes and qualities appear in the Qur'an, and the name or epithet in the Qur'an that seems to be linked to these things, at least one of them, is Rahman, which as "Ramanu"nor "Rimmon" in more Ancient times was associated with the constellation of Corvus or The Crow or Raven and known as "The Thunderer". All the qualities of the major Norse deities are mentioned in the Qur'an and Vedas, but people will not tend to notice that or be aware of any of it or to do extensive research about things from other periods of history, and this limits them in my opinion and even cuts them off from the truth and much of spirituality and the spiritual experience.
So I believe that I worship, literally, all the various Gods from all cultures throughout history as One Power, recognizing those various names and terms as references to aspects and domains pertaining to one power, like how Amun was considered at some times by some as apparently the One, King of all Netjer, all the different "Gods" or epithets.
The people who wanted to attack all such and pridefully boast about massacring people for this reason and making some specific tribal thing the one that has to destroy and put down all others instead of absorbing or accepting and syncretizing or acknowledging things, and comitting heinous crimes according to their written history and history recorded up until today, are not counted by me as among any I can accept or include, due to their vehement hatred and their fabricated and near meaningless national deity which just appropriates and then insults others rather than being harmonious or respectful. They are teaching the Hindus to behave like that too now, when that isn't how it was in the past apparently. There are similarities with the rudeness of some Buddhists also, though I use Mahayana Buddhist terms in my own thinking and beliefs, but I largely reject many of the things that they suggest, which are ascetic and human over-glorifying, basically transhuman and life destroying, and so the originators of all this, I'm not fond of, and they seem to be the Zoroastrians, the Buddhists, the Platonists, the J, and the Gnostics, the Christians, and others like the Kurds or Yezidi, Druze, and Freemasons and New Religions, there is a whole lineage that seems closely related and largely stemming out of the area that became controlled by the Zoroastrians and influencing a lot, which differed from another chain of the religions which did not seem to do quite the same thing and seemed closer together as far flung as they are, the other chain being like all the older "pagan" religions which were less strictly dichotomous seeming. The final synthesis of these two strains seems to be Islam as one of the last practiced religions left on the Earth, and that it has somewhat fulfilling exercises that feel like authentic practices coupled with a way of interpreting information, so that it feels like one is doing something for a reason and towards something, has in many ways helped it to become a dominant and ever growing "technology" that many people adopt when dissatisfied by the seeming nothingness of Christian practice and otherwise general material culture and hopeless feeling atheism under a countdown towards certain death. The Qur'an, though the most strictly monotheistic religious text in history, seems to be the final stage that paganism and polytheism was headed back towards as it was trying to deal with the popularity and increasing enforcement of Christianity, and the Qur'an ends up being the greatest threat to the status of J and the Christian buffer it incubates inside, because its Universalism and total absorption makes it calculably the most natural and popular option, so there had to be repeated measures, just as there are today, to stop it from being heard and recognized by the common people, as it would dethrone the special status of the J or the J God or the God who is a J Man and give an option for all people to be on an equal standing with their personalized and individual, ultimately anarchic relationship to God as they determine how to interpret things for themselves and do the right thing, but this democratization and protestant style sola scriptura approach has been impeded by multiple efforts, including efforts that try to turn people to other things, distract them, make them more backwards, and put them under the authority of scholars who can then be bribed and controlled, so there are movements, funded by people actually hostile to Islam and its growth overall, to convince younger people to only listen to whatever authorities say, and those authorities are controlled by the wealthy, the elite, the irreligious even.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serkland
"
The exact etymology is disputed.
Serk- may derive from "Saracen"; from
sericum, Latin for "silk", implying a connection with the
Silk Road; from the Khazar fortress of
Sarkel; or from
serkr, shirt or gown, i.e., "land of the gown-wearers". In all cases it refers to a land in the East. Originally, it referred to the land south of the
Caspian Sea, but it gradually expanded to cover all Islamic lands, including parts of
Africa (and possibly even
Muslim Sicily).
[1][2]
"
https://www.reddit.com/r/MedievalHistory/s/2pn0QmdsJD
"
I've started a new project of reading through the chansons de geste over on my substack,
Adam's Notes. This week I'm covering Gormont et Isembart, one of the earliest gestes. It's a very, very loose approach to an actual battle fought in 881 between the Franks and the Vikings, but by the time it was written down in manuscript form (sometime between 1068 and 1150) the Vikings of the story had morphed into Saracens. It's the story of Isembart, who renounces Christianity to fight alongside King Gormont. It's also very fragmented: only 661 lines survive, and these cover the final, epic battle. Luckily though, there are some callback that tell us what happened earlier in the poem.
If that sounds interesting to you, you can check out more on my substack,
Adam's Notes. I also have another project which is a read through of the 17-century diary of Samuel Pepys.
"
"
Your supposition about "saracen" becoming a synonym for "heathens" is largely correct. This happens in several stories, and there's even a manuscript where Sweyn Forkbeard is drawn in a turban waving a scimitar.
But the process can be complicated. In the Anglo-Norman romance of King Horn, the bad guys are also clearly Vikings, but they're not only called Saracens throughout, they're said to have come from Africa, and the narrator promises a sequel where King Horn conquers Egypt, and his son all of Arabia. This was written in the Court of Henry II shortly after the Beckett incident when people wanted Henry to take up the Cross in repentence, so the conflating of Vikings and Saracens had a political purpose.
The Middle English version of the tale, written when the Crusades were winding down, keeps the Saracen terminology but has the villains behave more like Vikings, and in the even later poem Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild, they're straight up Danes and Irishmen.
As to your point about the Chansons de Geste avoiding the mythological elements of Arthurian legend, this is only true of the early material. The fairy king Oberon originates in Huon of Bordeaux, and later writers have Arthur and Morgan le Fay as denizens of fairyland.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termagant
"
In the
Middle Ages,
Termagant or
Tervagant was the name of a god that some European
Christians believed
Muslims worshipped.
[1][2] It originates in the eleventh-century
Song of Roland.
The word is also used in modern English to mean a violent, overbearing, turbulent, brawling, quarrelsome woman; a
virago,
shrew, or
vixen.
[1]
"
That is how the female who gets slapped in the misogynistic videos from India acts. The Hindutva attacks Muslims and women.
"
European literature from the Middle Ages often refers to Muslims as
pagans and depicts them worshipping
Muhammad along with various
idols and sometimes other deities, such as
Apollyon,
Lucifer and Termagant. In some writings, such as the
Song of Roland, these were combined to create an "unholy
Trinity" of sorts composed of Apollyon, Muhammad and Termagant.
[3]
The original form of the name is
Tervagan. There are many hypotheses explaining the origin of the name, but it does not seem to derive from any actual aspect of Muslim belief or practice, however wildly distorted. Gustav Beckmann lists 23 different theories. He defends that first proposed by
Ugo Foscolo in 1819 that Tervagan is the
dea trivia, the threefold moon goddess
Luna–
Diana–
Persephone (or
Selene–
Artemis–
Hecate), attested since classical antiquity. Thus,
ter vagan means 'three wandering [i.e., like the moon]'. Apollyon (Apollin) is simply
Apollo, Diana's brother.
[4]
Walter William Skeat, accepting the meaning "thrice wandering" as a reference to the moon, tied the name "Trivagante" to the Islamic use of crescent moon imagery. Joseph T. Shipley argues that the Italian
Trivigante became confused with
termigisto, meaning "boaster," derived from
Hermes Trismegistus, leading to Termagant.
[5] Leo Spitzer argues that Tervagant, like several other names ending in
-ant from the
Matter of France (e.g.
Baligant and
Morgant), is an "
occitanization" of a
vulgar Latin present participle created by
Old French poets for exotic effect. He proposes as its etymon
terrificans ("terrifying"), appropriate for a god.
[6] Alternately,
Aleksander Gieysztor derives the name from the
Slavic deity
Triglav, with the name having spread west into French-speaking lands.
[7]
James A. Bellamy proposes that the names Tervagan and Apollin in the
Song of Roland derive from
Ibn ʿAffān and
Abū Bakr, two of Muhammad's companions, in-laws and successors.
[8]
"
Thrice Wandering
"
Whatever its origins, "Termagant" became established in the West as the supposed name of the principal idol supposedly worshipped by Saracens, being regularly mentioned in
chivalric romances and
chansons de geste. The spelling of the name varies considerably (
Tervigant, Tervagant, Tarvigant, etc.).
[6]
In
Occitan literature, the troubadour
Austorc d'Aorlhac refers to Bafomet and Termagant (
Tervagan) side by side in one
sirventes, referring also to the latter's "companions".
In the 15th-century Middle English romance
Syr Guy of Warwick, a
Sultan swears an oath by Termagant.
In the
Chanson de Roland, the
Saracens, having lost the battle of
Roncesvalles, desecrate their "pagan idols" (lines 2589–90) including Tervagan.
Tervagant is also a statue worshipped by the "king of Africa" in the
Jean Bodel play in
Old French after the end of the
Third Crusade (c.1200),
Le jeu de saint Nicolas.
In the
Sowdone of Babylone, the sultan makes a vow to Termagaunte(lines 135–40):
[9]
Of Babiloyne the riche Sowdon,Moost myghty man he was of moolde;He made a vowe to Termagaunte:Whan Rome were distroied and hade myschaunce,He woolde turne ayen erraunteAnd distroye Charles, the Kinge of Fraunce.In
Geoffrey Chaucer's
The Canterbury Tales, "
Sir Thopas" (supposed to be told by Chaucer himself on the pilgrimage) is a parody of these chivalric romances. In the tale, a knight
giant named "Sir
Oliphaunt" is made to swear an oath by Termagant.
In
Herman Melville's
Mardi (Chapters 25, 26, 28), Samoa's wife Annatoo is described as a Termagant, and metaphorically referred to as
Antonina to Samoa's
Belisarius. Explaining why she did not need the armaments on the ship, Melville writes "Her voice was a park of artillery; her talons a charge of bayonets." (Chapter 23.)
Ludovico Ariosto used the form
Trivigante.
[6]
It has been claimed that Termagant became a
stock character in medieval
mystery plays[10][11] but another source denies this.
[12] In the
theatre, Termagant was usually depicted as a
turbanned creature who wore a long, Eastern style
gown. As a stage-
villain, he would rant at and threaten the lesser villains who were his servants and worshipers.
As a result of the theatrical tradition, by
Shakespeare's day the term had come to refer to a bullying person.
Henry IV, part 1 contains a reference to "that hot termagant Scot". In
Hamlet, the hero says of ham actors that "I would have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing Termagant, it out-Herods Herod".
Herod, like Termagant, was also a character from medieval drama who was famous for ranting.
Beaumont and Fletcher's play,
A King and No King, contains the line "This would make a saint swear like a soldier, and a soldier like Termagant."
[13]
Mainly because of Termagant's depiction in long gowns, and given that female roles were routinely played by male actors in Shakespearean times, English audiences got the mistaken notion that the character was female, or at least that he resembled a mannish woman.
[5] As a result, the name "termagant" came increasingly to be applied to a woman with a quarrelsome, scolding quality, a sense that it retains today. This was a well-established usage by the late 17th century.
Thomas Shadwell's play
The Squire of Alsatia (1688) contains a character called Mrs Termagant who is out for revenge on one of the other characters, and is described as a "furious, malicious, and revengeful woman; perpetually plaguing him, and crossing him in all his designs; pursuing him continually with her malice, even to the attempting of his life."
[14] Arthur Murphy's play
The Upholsterer (1758) also contains a female character called "Termagant".
[15] In
Washington Irving's "
Rip Van Winkle" (1819), Dame Van Winkle is described as a "termagant wife". "
Virago", "
fishwife" and "
shrew" are near-synonyms for "termagant" in this sense. In season 2 of
Westworld, Major Craddock calls
Dolores a termagant.
The term is still sometimes used of men. In 2008, the Australian politician
Kim Beazley labelled opponent
Tony Abbott a termagant.
[16]
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahound
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baphomet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High,_Jus ... _and_Third
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regnator_omnium_deus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crom_Cruach
https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowled ... jewellery/
https://www.stk.uio.no/english/research ... g-age.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubba
"
A depiction of
Ragnar Lodbrok (
Lothbrok) and his sons,
Ivar and Ubba, worshipping pagan idols, as it appears on folio 39r of British Library Harley 2278.
[307] This illustration depicts the pagan Danes as elaborately dressed Muslim
Saracens, wearing tall
turban-like headdresses and forked beards. Other illustrations in the manuscript, depicting Ivar and Ubba, show Vikings armed with curved swords.
[308][note 37]
"
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... xcerpt.jpg