Hi! I'm reading The House of the Wolfings and all these houses have -ing names, Elking (elk), Harting (hart/stag), Bearing (bear). And even in other lore and legend we got Ynglings, Wulfings, Hundings, Scylfings, etc. So, my last name is Haring. And anything I can find about it says it's just a different way to spell herring, and relates to the fish/a fisher. But I can't help and look at this and wonder if it has anything to do with this old naming pattern. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Hard for me to say. This is a little outside my expertise. I think if I really wanted to know, I'd start by seeing if I could trace the origin of it being used as a surname, especially the occupation of the people who used it. That would at least give some indication of whether the explanations you've found on the internet are well-informed, or just guesses. I will say, the herring explanation does make sense and even if it is a weakly-supported guess I think it would take a lot of work to unseat it as the likeliest candidate (compare the surname Fish/Fisher/Fisch/Fischer/Fisk/etc).

Surnames weren't common in most parts of Europe until relatively recently, so we should not expect that a name was coined as an ancient tribal or dynastic name and used continuously that way up until it transitioned into being a modern surname. I'm not aware of any Wulfingas or Ynglingar who are alive now. So we would have to look for a different process of that kept a name in some other kind of use in between. There might actually be one here. It seems that Haring was used a given name at one point, and the probably-related Hering even earlier. so it's theoretically possible that it could have been a group name, then became a given name for a while, and later a modern surname. Or it might be simpler to say, formed as a given name in early times, and then adapted as a surname when they started using those. I have no idea how likely that is. If the Haring surname only started being used as a surname in like the 1600's, then it remains to be explained why those guys had the same/almost the same name as a first name hundreds of years before. But in that case, we would not have a strong reason to suppose that the name stayed in a particular family or line.

Even if the name was first formulated in ancient times, it's still entirely possible that it could be related to herring. Herring are an extremely important food source, historically as well as today, and we do have evidence of ancient Germanic people named for characteristic foods (the Rugii, named for 'rye'), and furthermore, while we don't see a lot of tribal/dynastic names involving fish, we shouldn't ignore the fact that it's as much an animal as wolves and hounds, etc (though I can't imagine herringing being used as a name).

Also, while -ing names go back to ancient times, the use of the suffix to make names continued to be used into the modern era. I'm pretty sure they can still make new -ingar and -ingjar in Icelandic now. So even if your name doesn't follow a succession leading back to ancient times, and was coined in like 1600 or something, it may still have participated in that much older naming convention.

In fact, herring arguably does follow the same *[root]-ingaz, -ingijan- name-formation process, at least on the phonological level. The theories that I see for the etymology of herring derive it variously from *hēri- 'hair' (referring to its wispy bones), *harja- 'army' (referring to large schools of fish), or *haira- 'hoar; gray.' Any of these could also be tribal or dynastic names, with or without a connection to the fish. A derivation from the 'hair' word would parallel the Haddingjar, from haddr 'hair.' A derivation from the 'army' word would be similar to the Harii, a Germanic tribe whose name indicated them as warriors. I don't think any of these individually stand out as likely independent explanations of your name, but they're all feasible both for the origin of the word herring and for names that could have emerged when there were Skylfings and Skjöldungar and stuff. So really, you could be the inheritor of an ancient cool name, by means of the fish, which is itself pretty cool.

I dunno, like I said this is not really my wheelhouse (the further the discussion goes from Icelandic and its antecedents, the less capable I get) so this is all speculation but I hope it's helpful.

Hi there! I was wondering, would you know where I could find anything on like, social taboos involving marriage? I wanted to know if there's anything in the sagas or maybe in archaeology/anthropology that touches on forbidden unions. I know the goddess Lofn is cited as one who grants permission to such people to be together, but I wanted to know if we have anything on what these forbidden unions could look like? Off the top of my head, I imagine feuding families to be a good start, but I can't find much else on the subject. Thank you!

Marriages in Old Norse society were arranged by families (usually between the prospective husband and the father or other male relative of the prospective bride), and more for political and economic reasons than for personal ones. Some people were married specifically because their families were feuding, to bring the feud to an end (often the people involved wanted out but failure to retaliate could have consequences; uniting the families could end the feud in a way that saved face. In Old English a woman who is married into an enemy family for this reason is called freoðu-webbe, 'frith weaver'). Frands Herschend went as far as proposing to see women in Iron Age Scandinavia generally as hostages (in the sense that Freyr and Njörðr are hostages in Ynglinga saga). If the sagas are relatively accurate there does seem to have been an understanding that the family should be arranging things such that the woman is happy with the result, but they weren't legally obligated to.

In this kind of situation, a marriage that's forbidden would be basically any that either side of the family, especially the woman's closest male relatives, opposes. The reasons were probably diverse and personal, and not generally based on widespread taboos. Most of it probably had to do with money and social hierarchy.

Feuding certainly played a role here, or rather we should say relations based in reciprocity, whether positive or negative, did. As I said, marriages were sometimes arranged specifically to bring hostile families into a single family and end the conflict, but if one side thought they had the upper hand and stood to gain by continuing the hostilities then they would surely not permit such a marriage. Marriages might also be arranged out of obligation to more powerful people.

In fact, it might be possible to frame any actual social or legal prohibitions on marriage that did exist as protections for the woman from being married off to someone she didn't want, rather than restrictions on her freedom, because she hardly had any. We can surely consider divorce in a similar way, which was permitted in certain circumstances.

The main restriction that we do have evidence for is marrying someone who is too close a relation. There were probably situations where the financially or politically advantageous thing to do is to get two close cousins married to each other and it may have actually happened, but it's illegal in the laws we have a record of. This may have been less regulated in heathen times.

Of course, there could have been culturally-assumed restrictions that weren't formally prohibited in the law. There's speculation that, while a Nordic man marrying a non-Norse woman was not uncommon, happening the other way around was not generally permitted. This is supposedly reflected in the mythology, where the male gods marry jötunn women but the goddesses do not marry jötunn men. However, there is archaeological evidence from the Vendel period that contradicts this (the book I'm getting this from is over 20 years old, so by now there could be contradictory evidence from the Viking age too, but I'm not sure), so if there was ever such an ethnic taboo it must have either not been universal, or developed later. I'll also remind that there is a contradiction in the mythology as well; Gefjun isn't described as marrying a jötunn but she does have kids with one, which scholars do typically count as a violation of an ethnic taboo, sometimes as grounds to reject the myth itself as "impossible" (Lindow's description).

A lot of this may have varied by class. We mostly know about the land-owning class. It's hard to say whether poorer people would have even less freedom over whom they married because of their dependence on land-owners, or if they had more freedom because there was less social and financial stake in it. It seems likely that their marriages weren't as regulated, but their ability to actually move from place to place was the major limiting factor.

I'm not aware of any sources for it, but I have no trouble believing that illegal or otherwise unsanctioned marriage happened. The thing that kept people in line was inheritance. So if people were in a position where they could turn down their inheritance (whether because they had another source of resources or because their families were so poor their inheritance was negligible anyway), and could have a place to live, they could probably just do what they wanted.

So I think for the most part, if we were to picture Lofn's intercession as historical events, we might picture the site of those intercessions as kind of distant from the actual marriage, like opening opportunities to get by while forgoing one's inheritance, or unexpected changes elsewhere in the social network. Or a simpler example would be a woman successfully convincing her father, brother, or other male representative to let her do what she wanted.

This is a little out of step with Snorri's etymological explanation of Lofn's name as related to 'permission' but as I explained here I think the actual etymological meaning of her name was 'hope'.

Of course a lot of heathens read Lofn's description in the Edda as affirming of marriages that deviate from gender and sexual norms, which the text does in fact leave room for but probably isn't what Snorri had in mind. There's a lot of room for speculation about how this may have been relevant in pre-Christian times but it would be difficult to move it beyond speculation.

Unfortunately quite a lot of this is already pretty speculative, because of how much later our sources concerning marriage are than the time when Lofn may have actually been recognized. Frankly, the same applies to our sources for Lofn, and the time when she may have been recognized. If I'm right about the etymology of her name then I think it's at least a partial vindication of Snorri but that does not necessarily mean that his description of her is entirely reliable.

Hello guys i have good news and bad news.

The good news that I'm finally in Egypt now with my youngest brother and the bad news is my mother and my other brother with his wife still in Rafah waiting to evacute to Egypt.

I feel so sad and depressed for leaving them i should stayed and get out together.

Helping Four Sisters: Four Campaigns (Updated)

I'm making this post to help spread the campaigns for four sisters currently in the Gaza Strip, and their efforts to escape.

Update added to the bottom of this post.

The women in question are a business owner with two young daughters, an educator, an internship MD, and a photographer. They've each started respective campaigns in an effort to help their parts of their families.

You can also follow their instagram accounts: @asiafmostfa (Asia), @nusaibafmust (Nusaiba), @queen_gazal_gal (Sumya), and @asma_fawzy_photographer (Asma). They've made posts showcasing the condition of their displaced lives in Rafah right now.

Update

Ibrahim Fawzi (@ibrahim_fawzi_mostafa), at request of his aforementioned sister Asia, and with the help of Dylan McGlone in the US has also started a campaign. Please share this version instead.

Associated Art Fundraiser

Dylan also has an Crochet Fundraiser, where you can receive a Crochet Key in exchange for proof of support for one of these campaigns. You can contact them on Instagram via @__dylan__28 to ask any questions you might have beforehand.

Google Form here.

"

Content warning: contains accounts of war crimes, including rape.

In the previous issue of Anarchosyndicalisme, the CNT-AIT echoed the call for solidarity from anarchists in Sudan.

Since a terrible war broke out on 15 April 2023 between two military factions – the Rapid Support Forces (or Janjaweed militias) against the official army – civilians have been living in a climate of “pure terror” because of a “ruthless and senseless conflict”, denounced by the UN with general indifference. At least 15,000 people have died, and more than 26,000 have been injured, but these figures are certainly underestimates.

There are 11 million internally displaced people, 1.8 million people in exile, and 18 million people at acute risk of starvation. 8 million workers have lost their jobs and their income. 70% of areas no longer have water or electricity, 75% of hospitals have been destroyed, 19 million students have stopped studying, 600 industrial plants have been destroyed and looted, as have 110 banks, 65% of agriculture has been destroyed, 80% of inputs (fertilisers, pesticides, agricultural machinery and harvesters) in the Geziera irrigated area – the largest in the world – have been looted and destroyed, etc.

The media and activist silence surrounding Sudan is allowing soldiers on both sides to commit genocide with impunity. The conflict between the two clans has many components: ethnic, with its trail of reciprocal genocides (according to the UN); “imperialist”, because each of the two opposing groups is supported by various foreign powers that covet Sudan for its natural resources and its strategic location. But above all, it is a “counter-revolutionary” war. By putting the country to fire and blood, it has crushed the hopes of the civil and democratic revolution. And drove many of the revolution’s activists into exile. By completely destabilising the country, this war has enabled the leaders of the former regime to remain in power without being tried for the crimes they committed over decades (during the military dictatorship and then the coup d’état).

Following the appeal for solidarity, we received more than 1,200 euros (including 200 euros from the companions of the Kurdish-language anarchist forum, KAF), which we were able to pass on to our Sudanese companions. This solidarity enabled them to organise humanitarian distributions of blankets, hygiene products (sanitary pads, soap, toothpaste) and infant milk. A reception area for children was organised, with drawing materials and elementary classes, giving the children a chance to escape the madness of war.

But today, the situation is becoming impossible. The violence of the military groups is unleashed. The Janjaweed militias are behaving like barbarians towards civilians. They murdered our companion Sarah after raping her. For their part, the soldiers are arresting and torturing revolutionaries, accusing them of being allied with the Janjaweed. Our companions urgently need to seek shelter in neighbouring countries. We are relaying their desperate appeal to the international anarchist movement.

If you would like to make a contribution, please send cheques made payable to CNT AIT to CNT-AIT 7 rue St Rémésy 31000 TOULOUSE, or via PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/cntait1 "

Hey guys, I have a priority fundraiser rotation for you:

Fadi & Shahed: 2,044 USD out of 62.5k

Sana'a & Sujood: 12,016 £ out of 50k

Mahmoud Qassas: 9,994$ out of 200k

Ezzideen Shehab: 10,296€ out of 32.5k.

Hussam Aburamadan: 16,374€ out of 148k.

Hamdi Hijazi: 1,511$ out of 25k.

Suheir Hojok: 16,897 AUD out of 70k.

Madleen Abu Jayyab: 29,005$ out of 70k.

I have personally verified every one of these campaigns listed here.

As Mona's campaign nears completion I'm preparing for you this list so we can show these families the same amazing and unbelievable support we showed Mona and her family. The invasion of Rafah grows nearer everyday. Please understand the urgency of this campaign.

Version date: April 25th 2024.

Life For Gaza: Each Cent Counts, Quenching the Thirst of Humanity in Gaza City

The Gaza Municipality is tasked with providing vital services such as water supply, waste management and sewage treatment. However, the widespread destruction in Gaza City has severely hampered the Municipality's ability to deliver even the most basic necessities to its residents. With limited access to water, the population faces a dire health and environmental crisis, especially affecting children.

By joining forces in this initiative, we cultivate hope and solidarity, fostering empathy and collaboration across communities while easing the hardships endured by those in Gaza. This collective effort reassures them that they are not alone in their struggle. The Gaza Municipality earnestly appeals for your support to help reinstate essential services, currently the foremost priority. In the northern regions of the Gaza Strip alone, over 500,000 individuals urgently require these services.

Where your donations will be directed:

- Water supply enhancement projects

- Maintenance of water wells

- Implementation of water desalination initiatives

- Management of waste collection and disposal systems

- Reconstruction of roads demolished during war

- Implementation of sewage water pumping and treatment schemes

- Execution of pest control and rodent eradication programs

hello there! today i came across a claim that sort of baffled me. someone said that they believed the historical norse heathens viewed their own myths literally. i was under the impression that the vast majority of sources we have are christian sources, so it seems pretty hard to back that up. is there any actual basis for this claim? thanks in advance for your time!

Sorry for the delay, I've been real busy lately and haven't been home much. Even after making you wait I'm still going to give a copout answer.

I think the most basic actual answer is that it's doubtful that someone has a strong basis to make that claim, and the same would probably go for someone claiming they didn't take things literally. I think we just don't know, and most likely, it was mixed-up bits of both literal and non-literal belief, and which parts were literal and which parts weren't varied from person to person. We have no reason so suppose that there was any compulsion to believe things in any particular way.

About Christians being the interlocutors of a lot of mythology, this is really a whole separate question. On one hand there's the question of whether they took their myths literally, and on the other is entirely different question about whether or not we can know what those myths were. Source criticism in Norse mythology is a pretty complicated topic but the academic consensus is definitely that there are things we can know for sure about Norse myth, and a lot more that we can make arguments for. For instance the myth of Thor fishing for Miðgarðsormr is attested many times, not only by Snorri but by pagan skálds and in art. Myths of the Pagan North by Christopher Abram is a good work about source criticism in Norse mythology.

Though this raises another point, because the myth of Thor fishing is not always the same. Just like how we have a myth of Thor's hammer being made by dwarves, and a reference to a different myth where it came out of the sea. Most likely, medieval Norse people were encountering contradictory information in different performances of myth all the time. So while that leaves room for at least some literal belief, it couldn't be a rigid, all-encompassing systematic treatment of all myth as literal. We have good reason to believe they changed myths on purpose and that it wasn't just memory errors.

I know you're really asking whether this one person has any grounds for their statement, and I've already answered that I don't think they do. But this is an interesting thought so I'm going to keep poking at it. I'm not sure that I'm really prepared to discuss this properly, but my feeling is that this is somehow the wrong question. I don't know how to explain this with reference to myth, so I'm going to make a digression, and hope that you get the vibe of what I'm getting at by analogy. Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917) described animism in terms of beliefs, "belief in spiritual beings," i.e. a belief that everything (or at least many things) has a soul or spirit. But this is entirely contradicted by later anthropology. Here's an except from Pantheologies by Mary Jane Rubenstein, p. 93:

their animacy is not a matter of belief but rather of relation; to affirm that this tree, that river, or the-bear-looking-at-me is a person is to affirm its capacity to interact with me—and mine with it. As Tim Ingold phrases the matter, “we are dealing here not with a way of believing about the world, but with a condition of living in it.”

In other words, "belief" doesn't even really play into it, whether or not you "believe" in the bear staring you down is nonsensical, and if you can be in relation with a tree then the same goes for that relationality; "believing" in it is totally irrelevant or at least secondary. Myths are of course very different and we can't do a direct comparison here, but I have a feeling that the discussion of literal versus nonliteral would be just as secondary to whatever kind of value the myths had.

One last thing I want to point out is that they obviously had the capacity to interpret things through allegory and metaphor because they did that frequently. This is most obvious in dream interpretations in the sagas. Those dreams usually convey true, prophetic information, but it has to be interpreted by wise people who are skilled at symbolic interpretation. I they ever did this with myths, I'm not aware of any trace they left of that, but we can at least be sure that there was nothing about the medieval Norse mind that confined it to literalism.

For multiple reasons this is not an actual answer but it's basically obligatory to mention that some sagas, especially legendary or chivalric sagas, were referred to in Old Norse as lygisögur, literally 'lie-sagas' (though not pejoratively and probably best translated just as 'fictional sagas'). We know this mostly because Sverrir Sigurðsson was a big fan of lygisögur. But this comes from way too late a date to be useful for your question.

BOOP

If anyone including the asker is wondering what's going on, I was asked a simple but open-ended question about a rune and I am, true to form, working on an answer about onto-epistemological implications of misunderstanding the nature of the comparative method of linguistic reconstruction, and misapplication of the comparative method, while attributing to it high, sometimes inviolable legitimacy as a method for creation of knowledge.

@itsshinycollectordestinyworld I'm definitely going to answer, just might take me some time

@itsshinycollectordestinyworld I have blown your question up completely out of proportion in my own head, which is why I'm taking so long to answer. There's an opportunity to talk about something but I'm having trouble putting it into words and that's why it's taking me so long to answer. In the meantime if you have any more specific questions about it feel free to ask and I can probably get back to you quicker on that (and chunking it down might be helpful for me anyway).

@itsshinycollectordestinyworld I'm definitely going to answer, just might take me some time

What happened with your speculative theology/philosophy series? (I remember they had a tag called "ragnarok studies" or something like that in Old Norse but I can't find it now)

I only ever made two posts tagged with it but it's thorraborinn.tumblr.com/tagged/ragnarökfræði

I know you've said that other Heathens have given you crap for giving Dr. Jackson Crawford even the mildest amount of criticism, but I was wondering if you would be willing to share any more criticism about his videos, especially the ones on the gods and Norse culture? If not, is anyone you know who has critiqued his stuff? I know Dr. MatthIas Nordvig doesn't like him, but he took down all his videos. I'm asking because I as I read a lot of other scholars' work the more I question how he came to some of those conclusions like translating Óðr's girl to Odin's girl. I know he subscribes to the idea that they are one and the same, but I still think it's weird to put in the translation while knowing you're not going to be adding explanations in the book.

Honestly I don't really have any systematic criticisms, just normal ones like I have for basically any scholar. I don't really watch his videos but I think I've agreed with most of what I have seen. It's more that because his content is so easily accessible and viewed by so many people, some of those people seem to have become really emotionally invested in him being an unquestionable authority, and they really shouldn't be doing that to anyone. There isn't a population of heathens who get personally offended and defensive if I say I think Terry Gunnell or Margaret Clunies Ross missed the mark somewhere. I think for many of Crawford's viewers he's the only specialist whose work they are accessing regularly, and if they read some other authors too they would have a better experience.

Come to think of it, some heathens do get really invested in certain authors like Vilhelm Grønbech or Paul Bauschatz, and get very defensive if you criticize them. To an extent this is also true of H.R. Ellis Davidson. For a lot of heathens of my generation her books were the first scholarly works they read, so their relationship to her was probably similar to heathens and Crawford now. And Ellis Davidson did a lot of good work that nonetheless can and should be criticized.

I will say though that Jackson Crawford's translation of the Poetic Edda is almost universally regarded as bad by people who can read the original, so yeah, most scholars would agree with you about that. And nobody seems to be able to wrap their heads around his decision not to include notes and commentary. I get the impression that he wasn't trying to make something that's accurate or suitable for scholars, but trying to produce something that's entertaining and easy to understand for a mass, popular audience with only casual interest. So if someone wants to get an accurate idea of what the source texts are actually saying, they should read Edward Pettit's translation or Carolyne Larrington's (2014, not 1996), just as someone who wants a translation that is highly poetic at the expense of accuracy and clarity might choose Hollander's.

To say any more than this would require me to watch more YouTube than I am willing to.

Hey, yeah, sorry, I kind of hesitated in responding because people don't like when I say even mildly negative things about Jackson Crawford but yeah honestly I think he just dropped the ball in a way that's pretty minor and understandable in that first video, but then thousands of people watched it and many heathens consider him to speak gospel and maybe it isn't the best thing to put him in a position where he can't make a normal mistake without it reshaping a religion that's still in its formative years.

Anyway I think he's doing a thing that people often do when they study a language, especially a dead one or one that they're otherwise not actually using in day-to-day contexts, where they interpret everything more literally than than do with your own language. Like, in English the word "manly" isn't just an adjectival equivalent of "man" (because a woman can be "manly," and a man can be "unmanly"; ftr we don't need to agree with this usage, but we understand what's being said). Or like, laugh at German for its compound words like English speakers don't say "mouthfeel."

So basically I think it just hasn't really occurred to him to look at these things separately. Notice that in his second video, every example he gives is either drengr góðr, a derived adjective, or one example that's in isolation which he explains as "sarcastic" (it's also poetry and is constrained by metrical needs; but it wouldn't need to be sarcastic if it just means 'guys'), and more importantly is in a different language (Old English). There isn't actually a shortage of uses of drengr on its own to support what he's saying, and the fact that he sort of by chance happened not to land on any of them seems to mean he didn't feel the need to think about it, and just threw darts at a list of attestations, so to speak.

Honestly, even just looking at drengr góðr, translating as "badass" seems like a huge reach. I think the second video is a better explanation of the drengr góðr than just calling it "badass" and leaving it at that but it's also still kind of one-dimensional. I guess I'd say the whole thing is kind of sloppy, in a way that ordinarily wouldn't matter and which everyone is going to be from time to time, very much including myself, in a way that "jeez, I would have been more careful if I knew you people were going to make such a big deal of it" would be at least sympathetic. Other than assuming an Old English word is in full semantic continuity with an Old Norse word, that one's a little rough. Ultimately this guy's job is to entertain a popular audience and not to carefully mediate heathens' relationships to our textual sources and we should stop treating him that way.

As far as transgressing gender goes, if we're trying to stick to how it was used in Old Norse, I'm not sure this is really the word you're looking for. I might just be lacking creativity myself at the moment, but I'm not sure how you would go about that. The women called góðr drengr in the sagas are housewives, though it isn't clear that that's what being a góðr drengr is about for a woman in that society or if this is a coincidence of it occurring mostly in Njáls saga which has prominent characters who are housewives and more nuanced presentation of gender than most sagas. On the other hand if you're trying to tap into how the word is used in a modern, even if mistaken "badass" context (whether I like it or not, if people are saying it and being understood we can't say it isn't a real usage of the word), that might work out better. Just be careful not to do the "she is good because she is like/comparable to a man" thing that retains "man" as the hierarchically higher category even while broadening its membership (but rejecting "effeminate" men). Like equating "balls" with courage.

Hey, bit of an odd question maybe but I've been looking into the use of "drengr" and had a thought I hoped you might have some insight on: I know "drengr" was & can be used for women just as it is but I was wondering if, grammatically/syntactically/etc., something like "drengkona" or "drengmaer" would make any sense at all if you wanted to specify a woman-drengr without other context? thanks!

I think maybe kvendrengr but the problem would be in the semantics. What modern English-speaking heathens mean when they say "drengr" comes from a particular set phrase, drengr góðr (or góðr drengr), literally meaning something like "good lad" but used so often that it takes on a distinct meaning separate from the two words that make up the phrase. Sometimes góðr is replaced by another adjective (beztr 'best', hæfr 'competent', dugandi 'capable', etc), and sometimes it's extended to harða góðr drengr, but you can always tell that some kind of formulaic phrasing is being used.

Outside of that phrase, you need to give context to how the word is being used, or it could mean any of several different things. In Old Norse times, I'm not sure what its unmarked, "default" meaning would be, but I don't think it was the same as when it's drengr góðr. It was probably just a young, unmarried man, or maybe "someone in service to a war-leader". In modern languages it mostly just means "boy," sometimes "farmhand/hired worker" or similar. In Modern Icelandic, the phrase drengur góður can still be used regardless of gender, but drengur on its own is inherently gendering (as male), and it probably was in Old Norse too.

Just to be clear, it was used in the same sense as the phrase drengr góðr, but that isn't the only thing it meant, and you need context to make it clear that that's what's intended, and as far as I can tell it was never applied to women that way. To give you a sense of the degree to which saying the whole phrase dominated usage of the word in general, here's a section of what is returned when your search the Scandinavian Rune-text Database for "dreng":

These are mostly in the accusative so look for góðan. The one third from the bottom that doesn't say 'good' says 'best'. And yeah, I could have looked for a section to screenshot that wasn't so uniform but I also could have given three or four non-overlapping sections that looked the same. The entries that don't say góðr (or another similar adjective) in proximity to drengr are mostly using the word differently, to say that someone died young (ungr drengr), to say that someone was in service to someone powerful ([some guy's] drengr), and sometimes it's plural and indicating the people who commissioned or carved the stone, so something like "we lads did this".

There are some derived words that might be useful to you, including drengskapr (think 'dreng-ship') and the adjectives drengiligr and drenglyndr. If your context allows use of two words, then drengilig kona would be a better way to say what you're trying to say. Or you could just use an adjective in the feminine in isolation, like drengilig (though this is also the plural neuter).

Personally (without knowing more about what you're doing with this), I would either say drengr góðr and let it be ambiguous with regard to gender, or just use a different word. I think English-speaking heathens would not think drengr were as special as they do if they had a better grasp on the Old Norse vocabulary generally. Maybe something like skǫrungr; this word is actually gender-neutral in application (grammatically masculine, but is used for women very frequently, whereas calling women drengr góðr is very uncommon, and just drengr nonexistent), and all the women in the sagas who are called drengr góðr are also called skǫrungr. But if you want to be specifically clear about her gender the word kvenskǫrungr already exists. I dunno, it depends on what you're doing with it and what in particular you're trying to say.

My experience of watching heathens put drengr on a pedestal has been very weird because I speak a language where it's still used and is very normal and no more interesting than any other word. So it's like if someone from a non-English-speaking culture were like "Can you help me to make sure I understand your extremely important social and religious concept of the 'guy' correctly?" The prevalence of the phrase drengr góðr on memorial runestones indicates that yeah, this formula had a significance back then that it doesn't have now (yeah, you can still say it, but nobody's putting it on their tombstone) but man it's weird to hear, especially as a single word. To be honest most of my experience of being called a drengur involves someone being vaguely demeaning.

Hey, bit of an odd question maybe but I've been looking into the use of "drengr" and had a thought I hoped you might have some insight on: I know "drengr" was & can be used for women just as it is but I was wondering if, grammatically/syntactically/etc., something like "drengkona" or "drengmaer" would make any sense at all if you wanted to specify a woman-drengr without other context? thanks!

I think maybe kvendrengr but the problem would be in the semantics. What modern English-speaking heathens mean when they say "drengr" comes from a particular set phrase, drengr góðr (or góðr drengr), literally meaning something like "good lad" but used so often that it takes on a distinct meaning separate from the two words that make up the phrase. Sometimes góðr is replaced by another adjective (beztr 'best', hæfr 'competent', dugandi 'capable', etc), and sometimes it's extended to harða góðr drengr, but you can always tell that some kind of formulaic phrasing is being used.

Outside of that phrase, you need to give context to how the word is being used, or it could mean any of several different things. In Old Norse times, I'm not sure what its unmarked, "default" meaning would be, but I don't think it was the same as when it's drengr góðr. It was probably just a young, unmarried man, or maybe "someone in service to a war-leader". In modern languages it mostly just means "boy," sometimes "farmhand/hired worker" or similar. In Modern Icelandic, the phrase drengur góður can still be used regardless of gender, but drengur on its own is inherently gendering (as male), and it probably was in Old Norse too.

Just to be clear, it was used in the same sense as the phrase drengr góðr, but that isn't the only thing it meant, and you need context to make it clear that that's what's intended, and as far as I can tell it was never applied to women that way. To give you a sense of the degree to which saying the whole phrase dominated usage of the word in general, here's a section of what is returned when your search the Scandinavian Rune-text Database for "dreng":

These are mostly in the accusative so look for góðan. The one third from the bottom that doesn't say 'good' says 'best'. And yeah, I could have looked for a section to screenshot that wasn't so uniform but I also could have given three or four non-overlapping sections that looked the same. The entries that don't say góðr (or another similar adjective) in proximity to drengr are mostly using the word differently, to say that someone died young (ungr drengr), to say that someone was in service to someone powerful ([some guy's] drengr), and sometimes it's plural and indicating the people who commissioned or carved the stone, so something like "we lads did this".

There are some derived words that might be useful to you, including drengskapr (think 'dreng-ship') and the adjectives drengiligr and drenglyndr. If your context allows use of two words, then drengilig kona would be a better way to say what you're trying to say. Or you could just use an adjective in the feminine in isolation, like drengilig (though this is also the plural neuter).

Personally (without knowing more about what you're doing with this), I would either say drengr góðr and let it be ambiguous with regard to gender, or just use a different word. I think English-speaking heathens would not think drengr were as special as they do if they had a better grasp on the Old Norse vocabulary generally. Maybe something like skǫrungr; this word is actually gender-neutral in application (grammatically masculine, but is used for women very frequently, whereas calling women drengr góðr is very uncommon, and just drengr nonexistent), and all the women in the sagas who are called drengr góðr are also called skǫrungr. But if you want to be specifically clear about her gender the word kvenskǫrungr already exists. I dunno, it depends on what you're doing with it and what in particular you're trying to say.

My experience of watching heathens put drengr on a pedestal has been very weird because I speak a language where it's still used and is very normal and no more interesting than any other word. So it's like if someone from a non-English-speaking culture were like "Can you help me to make sure I understand your extremely important social and religious concept of the 'guy' correctly?" The prevalence of the phrase drengr góðr on memorial runestones indicates that yeah, this formula had a significance back then that it doesn't have now (yeah, you can still say it, but nobody's putting it on their tombstone) but man it's weird to hear, especially as a single word. To be honest most of my experience of being called a drengur involves someone being vaguely demeaning.

@itsshinycollectordestinyworld I'm definitely going to answer, just might take me some time

The cops are threatening to arrest my 13 year old transgender child for throwing a cookie. This cannot be real