‘Vaki æ ok vaki’ (Awake! Oh, but awake!) cried Þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld Bersason, declaiming the ancient Bjarkamál, to the slumbering army of King Óláfr helgi Haraldsson on the morning of the day that would see the king's death and his own at the battle of Stiklastaðir:

(I do not wake you to wine, nor to the intimacies of a wife; rather I wake you to the hard sport of Hildr [i.e. to action in battle].)

Thus Þormóðr gives voice to a warrior's rueful, bordering on contemptuous, juxtaposition of the hard manly work of warfare and the soft pleasures of sex.

Similar sentiments are encountered elsewhere in Old Norse literature, for example in Fóstbroeðra saga, when Þorgeirr Hávarsson meets his end while putting up a stout defence against Þorgrímr trolli Einarsson and overwhelming odds, and the saga writer remarks, with notable contempt for the men who have sex with women, in contrast with the celibate Þorgeirr, ‘Nú fyrir því at þeim Þorgrími reyndisk meiri mannraun at soekja Þorgeir heldr en klappa um maga konum sínum, þá sóttisk þeim seint, ok varð þeim hann dýrkeyptr’ (Now because it proved a greater trial for Þorgrímr and his men to attack Þorgeirr than to slap against the bellies of their women, they were slow in attacking, and he was dearly bought by them).

This theme of the warrior's contempt for sex is by no means peculiar to Old Norse; in fact, it is widespread across many languages and cultures, and across many centuries. In Renaissance England, for instance, Shakespeare gives especially piquant expression to it in All's Well that Ends Well, when Paroles urges the newly-wed Bertram to flee the perils of married life: