What you were about to listen to is a supplemental episode which is meant to accompany our series exploring the portrayal of powerful women in Old Norse literature.

This episode will focus on Maiden Kings in Old Norse literature, focusing particularly

on the story of Thornbjork, as it's told in Hurlf Saga Golta Stoner.

As for our last episode, I would like to issue a content warning before we get started today. This episode continues to deal

with themes of sex, sexuality, and sexual violence. So like the previous episode,

listener discretion is strongly advised.

If you haven't yet listened to the earlier parts of this series,

and in particular episode six, I would highly recommend that you go back and do so

before you begin this supplemental episode. This is intended to be listened to

in tandem with episode six to provide greater context about women, sex, and power in Old Norse literature.

And so, with all that said, let's talk about mating kings. You're going to do. Meeting Kings or Meikonger, as they are called an old Norse, represent a relatively diverse

group of characters who are found across several sagas. The sagas which feature these mating

kings are generally classified either as for Nalder sogr, legendary sagas, or Rither, which are courtly sagas which were heavily influenced by the romantic

literature of continental Europe. In general, these stories feature characters who are young aristocratic women, who, through

a variety of methods, gain the right to be the sole ruler of a territory, hence the king part of their title.

And as the maiden descriptor implies, these stories also place a heavy emphasis on the virginity of these kings.

More precisely, the legitimacy of a mating king's rule is closely tied to her unmarried and chaste status.

As we'll discuss in all of these tales, when a mating king has sex,

she forfeits her right to rule independently.

The sagas in which these characters appear are all entirely fictional, and many are rather fantastical, largely lacking the imagined realism

and historical settings of the Sagas of the Icelanders or the King's sagas.

As we know, those works are likely no less fictional than these more legendary texts, but where

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