Antipolygynous Bachelorhood in Icelandic Sagas

• Published in: Evolutionary behavioral sciences 2023-10, Vol.17 (4), p.365-380
• Main Author: Larsen, Mads
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 13th century; Criticism; Egalitarianism; Feudalism; Fiction; History; Hoarding; Human; Iron; Iron Age; Kinship; Literature; Marriage; Mating; Monogamy; Polygyny; Prohibition; Psychosexual Behavior; Risk Taking; Sagas; Self regulation; Sexual practices; Theory of Evolution; Trust (Social Behavior); Violence
• ISSN: 2330-2925; 2330-2933
• DOI: 10.1037/ebs0000292

Henrich (2020) accounts for how the modern world was underpinned by a psychological-institutional coevolution set in motion by the Church's Marriage and Family Practices (MFPs). Among these was the prohibition of polygyny, which had driven a zero-sum mindset of violence and risk-taking-to the detriment of social trust and self-regulation. Raffield et al. (2017a) use evolutionary theory to argue that the Viking Age was driven by how elite woman-hoarding had deprived low-status males of access to the mating market. Norse men in the Late Iron Age suffered a fate common throughout humanity's agricultural period: to be relegated to lifelong bachelorhood. After the Viking Age, one Germanic tribe still resisted feudalism. With their 13th-century saga production, Icelanders use fiction to convince themselves to submit to European normalcy under the Norwegian king. The Christian authors aggrandize their Viking ancestors, but in a way that whitewashes Germanic sexual practices while promoting new MFPs. The European transitions to lifelong monogamy took centuries, as not only high-status males, but females too, are biased toward polygyny in many environments. This article shows how sagas commonly use their very narrative structure to convince men to restrict their bachelor phase to only a few years of wealth and status amassment-before they settle down and marry one woman for life. The social dysfunction that results from large numbers of men being unmarried had ingrained a deep cultural stain on prolonged bachelorhood, which is used as a thematic analogy to how kinship societies drive similar dysfunction. Public Significance Statement Our species has a bias toward polygyny that, when the environment permits, can drive high levels of sexual and reproductive stratification. The modern world was facilitated by the Church's imposing of sexual egalitarianism, which drove social stability and long-term investment. In our present era, we see the emergence of a neo-polygynous mating pattern that could require cultural adaptation if we are to avoid social dysfunction similar to what Icelandic saga authors warned against seven centuries ago.