Old Norse words for genitalia (thread). How did vikings talk about each other's genitals?

Recently me and @LAlbris were watching History of swear words on Netflix, and we were both curious about the lack of mention of Old Norse influence on English swearing. 1/13

After watching the episode about "dick", my wife asked me what terms the vikings used about penises. We could both only think of plenty of examples of a word referring to pussy, namely fuð. 2/13

Fuð occurs in several runic inscriptions, like B434 "Jón silkifuð á mik en Guþormr fuðsleikir reist mik en Jón fuðkula ræðr mik", meaning "John silk-pussy owned me and Guthorm pussy-licker carved me and John Pussy-ball interpreted me". 3/13

In the younger Scandinavian fuþark, one would spell the word fuð as "fuþ", due to the lack of a rune for the ð-sound. A part of the inscription on B11 is "fuþorg". If we transcribe this as "fuð-ǫrg", it would mean 'ruled by the wild and uncontrollable lust of the pussy". 4/13

We also find the Old Norse term "fuðflogi" literally meaning 'one who flies away from the pussy'. This term was designated those who ran away from a commitment to marriage. This is a compound of fuð and a a word for flying. 5/13

The most commonly used word for pussy in Scandinavian today is Norwegian "fitte", Swedish "fitta" and Danish "fisse".These all seem to be loans from continental Germanic languages, like German Fotze, Dutch fotte etc, which in turn are etymologically related to Old Norse fuð. 6/13

So what about dicks? I immediately thought of the Vǫlsa þáttr where a horse penis is worshiped. I always though of Vǫlsi as a proper name, not a noun. This name seems to be an s-suffix of Old Norse vǫlr meaning 'staff, rod'. In this short saga... 7/13

... Vǫlsi is referred to as "vingull". This word has spawned a verb in Norwegian "vingla", which means 'to dangle', so vingull is definitely not referring to an erected penis. But this word is only used about the horse's cock. Vingull is related to English "swing". 8/13

Horse cocks are actually mentioned quite frequently in the literary texts, and it seems to have been more appropriate to write about than human cocks. Other terms for horse cocks are "dindill" and "beytill", the latter being a suffixation of "bauta" meaning 'standing stone' 9/13

In sagas we do find the word (h)reðr referring to human dicks. This word apparently still lives in Norwegian as "red" (I never ever heard this) and Icelandic reður, both meaning cock. Icelandic also has hreðjar meaning 'bollocks'. 10/13

The runic inscription Starigard/Oldenburg 4, dated to 11th century, is quite juicy: "kúkr kys kuntu!", litteraly "cock, kiss the cunt!".

The Gravlev-stick might also be inscribed with "kúkr", and even looks like a cock! 11/13

Old Norse "kunta" and "kusi" are both used as nicknames, but are recognizable as terms for pussy. Kunta is cognate to Eng. cunt, and "kuse/kusse" are rather commonly used terms for pussy in Norwegian and Danish today. 12/13

As you may know, Scandinavians swearing is mostly connected to religion, so we don't have the same fear of sex and nudity found in Anglo/American culture. But words for genitalia is surrounded with some degree of taboo, so this info was not easily accessible. You're welcome 13/13

For those of you who read Scandinavian, I wrote a more thorough blog post on this available here http://sprakmeg.blogspot.com/2021/01/fu-ok-vingull-om-norrne-kjnnsdelar.html