How to Achieve ‘The Mighty Passion’
The Norse focused on ‘inn matki munr’ (‘the mighty passion’). These were intricate and involved specific rituals. Before the marriage, however, meeting and talking was one way to try to make a connection. Despite the hazards, such as a child out of wedlock or blood vengeance, some courtships did occur. Attentions paid to a woman by her suitor, including visits, conversations, and the making of poems in her praise were expected, and apparently welcomed by the girl, no matter what her family may have thought. The most important, unwritten rule of courtship was that the less a potential groom saw of his intended bride before entering into formal marriage negotiations with her family, the better his chances were of staying alive.
But after marriage, love can be expected and encouraged in a match. The sagas give us romantic passages that inspire even the most cynical of romantics. In Rigsþula (v. 27), a Father and Mother sit gazing into one another’s eyes, their fingers intertwined. They are obviously happily in love (Hollander, Poetic Edda, p. 120). Sometimes a declaration of love in the sagas will be very short and indirect, as when Bergþóra refuses the amnesty of those attacking her home, preferring to perish with her husband: “I was given to Njal in marriage when I was young, and I have promised him that we would share the same fate”. Men, perhaps, were more free to express their love than women.