Ergi and argr are two Old Norse terms of insult, denoting effeminacy or other unmanly behavior. Argr is "unmanly" and ergi is "unmanliness"; the terms have cognates in other Germanic languages such as ', ', arag, arug, and so on.
To accuse another man of being argr was called scolding and thus a legal reason to challenge the accuser in holmgang. If holmgang was refused by the accused, he could be outlawed as this refusal proved that the accuser was right and the accused was argr. If the accused fought successfully in holmgang and had thus proven that he was not argr, the scolding was considered what was in Old English called eacan, an unjustified, severe defamation, and the accuser had to pay the offended party full compensation. The Gray Goose Laws states: uses the term argri konu in a curse. The practice of seiðr or "sorcery" was considered ergi in the Viking Age and in Icelandicaccounts and medieval Scandinavianlaws, the term argr had connotations of a receptive, passive role of a freeborn man during homosexual intercourse. There are no written records of how the northern people thought of homosexuality before this conversion. The sociologist David F. Greenberg points out:
Saleby Runestone
Although no runic inscription uses the term ergi, runestoneVg 67 in Saleby, Sweden, includes a curse that anyone breakingthe stone would become a rata, translated as a "wretch," "outcast," or "warlock", and argri konu, which is translated as "maleficent woman". Here argriappears to be related to the practice of seiðr and represents the most loathsome term the runemaster could imagine calling someone.
In modernScandinavian languages, the lexical root arg- has assumed the meaning "angry", as in Swedish, Bokmål and Nynorsk', or Danish'. In modern Icelandic, the word has evolved to ergilegur, meaning "to seem/appear irritable", similar to Bokmål ergre, meaning "to irritate". In modern Faroese the adjectiveargur means "angry/annoyed" and the verbarga means to "taunt" or "bully". In modern Dutch, the word ' has become a fortifier equivalent to English very; the same is true for the old-fashioned adjective ' in German, which means "wicked", but has become a fortifier in the Austrian German. However, the word's original Old Norse meaning has been preserved in loans into neighboring Finnic languages: Estonian' and Finnish', both meaning "cowardly".
