It’s stuff like this that makes reading Old Norse literature so freakin’ fantastic:
"Hákon jarl ruled twenty winters after the death of Haraldr gráfeldr at Háls in Limafjörðr. He ruled imperiously, and, as time passed, grew more and more unpopular, particularly because—and this led to his death—he considered all women whom he desired equally available to him, making no distinction as to who was whose wife or sister or daughter.
He once desired a woman named Guðrún Lundasól. She lived at Lundir in Gauladalr, and he sent his thralls from Meðalhús to get her and bring her to him for unseemly purposes. But while the thralls were eating she got together so great a band of men that there was no possibility of taking her."
I just love the tone–so blunt, so matter-of-fact–and the content is so relevant to our time, even though this piece was written c. 1190. (And what’s unique–and also great–about this passage is that, for once, Girl Power kicks Unseemly Purposes’ ass!)
Lisa L. Hannett 
That’s utterly fantabulous! 🙂
Mental note: start reading Old Norse literature.
That’s utterly fantabulous!
Isn’t it just? There’s something about the ON sense of understatement that really tickles my fancy 🙂