How do the Norse Gods and how did the Norse people view disability?
Haltr rĂĂ°r hrossi,
hjĂśrĂ° rekr handar vanr,
daufr vegr ok dugir,
blindr er betri
en brenndr sĂŠi,
nýtr manngi nås.
A halt (unable to walk) person rides a horse,
a person with one hand wields a sword,
a deaf person fights and succeeds,
to be blind is better
than to be burnt,
nobody has use of a corpse.
In those days it was probably somewhat more likely than it is today to become disabled as a result of an injury, and there were fewer ways to increase accessibility to people whether it was the result of an injury or not. It was important for everyone to see to it that everyone was well-cared for, because they would have been very keenly aware that they would possibly, maybe even likely, find themselves with a different set of capabilities than the ones they once had. To some extent, this applies to everyone who lives long enough for age to affect them; Egils saga shows Egill struggling with the loss of his strength and vision. Because Norse people lived in a society where an individualâs wellbeing was more clearly tied to the wellbeing of others, especially in the household (which was often much bigger than a modern nuclear family-type household), disabled people usually would have been surrounded by others in relations that are already defined by reciprocal interdependence, no matter the ability of the people involved.
When discussing or depicting disability, Norse literature such as the HĂĄvamĂĄl quote above does have the unfortunate tendency to show that disabled people are valuable because they are still able to do something or other, or because of respect owed them for former accomplishments. For example, Ăvarr the boneless is described as physically disabled, but so intelligent that he has incredible accomplishments by means other than those that apply to strong warriors. I donât know of a clear example where it comes out and says point-blank that everyone is valuable no matter what, whether they are producing something or not. However, I believe thatâs for two reasons. One is that most of the evidence depicting disabled people is found in the Icelandic sagas, where they are often part of the story in a way that what they do is a mover of the story in question, so it will tend to involve people with an active public life. The other reason is that it may not have been considered something that needed to be specified. The laws, at least the ones we have record of, made it clear that everyone was to be cared for -- to the extent possible for the law to describe, it was always clear where someone landed in the legally-mandated networks of relations of support.
I donât want to sugar-coat. The Norse world was probably very hard on many disabled people, and many individual Norse people likely treated them inhumanely. That wasnât okay, any more than it is when it happens now.
But the main point that I think the HĂĄvamĂĄl quote is trying to make is that all people have a place, and in a society based more on networks of mutual support than on the individualism that pervades western society, itâs up to everyone collectively to find the best place and role for others in those networks, whether their needs and capabilities are shaped by what we would consider a disability or not. Perhaps thereâs a way to research this, and I havenât done it, but I suspect that they didnât really have a clear image of a âdefaultâ person with an archetypal set of abilities anyway, and when heroes are kings are described in terms of their many abilities and attributes this is always treated as some sort of exception.
As regards the gods, itâs worth reminding that some of the gods are themselves disabled. ĂĂ°inn has lost an eye and also pertains to mental illness in a way that is difficult for us to pinpoint exactly; ĂĂłrr has chronic pain as a result of the piece of stone shrapnel lodged in his head; TĂ˝r of course famously lost a hand. HÇŤĂ°râs blindness is depicted tragically, unfortunately, although there is an argument to be made that that particular story was heavily amended shortly before becoming the version that we have, so the story of Loki taking advantage of his blindness to kill Baldr may not be representative of a deep stratum of Norse myth.
I think that to modern people the idea of gods who are disabled might be a little strange to think about. Weâre used to the idea that a god can just âdo anything,â and certainly we can pray to these disabled gods about things that are completely outside of what any human can do. But I think that if nothing else, the Norse gods affirm that there is no such thing as a âdefaultâ human being which disabled people are unable to live up to; we all have unique abilities and it shouldnât be the job of disabled people to force themselves into conformity with the expectations of a society that idealizes a particular set of abilities. And needless to say, they would have no patience for ableism.
