Miscellaneous Myths: Loki

Most of us are first introduced to mythology through illustrated children's books. This gives us the false impression that mythology is like a book: written and not particularly susceptible to change. But that's more... where mythology petrifies over time. Real living mythology looks very different from the carefully articulated skeletons we put in museums. Mythology is stories, and stories change with each telling. When stories are passed down from generation to generation through folklore and oral tradition, many things change. Especially the characters. And in mythology the characters are gods. So the gods evolve along with their society. Every time a myth is written about a god, it is like a photograph of that god at that moment in his development, or like a single image from an animation.

That frame can be really cool and interesting, but if we can find enough keyframes and put them in the right order, we can try to figure out what the whole animation looked like and get an idea of ​​how this god worked during the process. The passage of time has evolved. When we dive this deep, I usually go back as far as possible to try to find the oldest stories so we can follow this evolution and see how the gods we know today start out as completely unknown figures, before growing up. and changing with their societies to eventually become the figure we recognize today.

Which brings us to our first problem. What do we recognize today as Loki? The sources are very contradictory. He appears in many modern stories, often as a shapeshifter or illusionist, and usually an antagonist, but that is the only semi-consistent quality he has. Sometimes he is a jotunn like his father, sometimes he is a rebellious child because Odin is his father, sometimes he works with Odin, sometimes he is a tragic, gothic prince of darkness, sometimes he is a sniveling coward, sometimes he is a true good guy with a devious streak, sometimes he's just a cheeky kid, sometimes he's literally satan, and sometimes he's safely described as a fire deity even though he probably isn't, my bad.

So while previous in-depth studies had an easy starting point, as we have a clear picture of where the deity in question ends up, the wildly inconsistent modern depiction of Loki complicates the issue. We can look back to where he started, but we have no clear idea of ​​what he will become. Which, honestly, is exactly his thing. You could take these things into account a little more. But looking back to where I started is not as easy as I made it seem. The other major complication is Christianity and the persistent refusal of the Normans to write down their mythology before the monks arrived.

Our pre-Christian sources are slim to non-existent, and Christianity has a frustrating habit of eliminating other people's religions. How shameless! Doesn't anyone want to think about scientists? So instead of going into the older mythology, because we don't have it that far back, uh... don't tell Blue, but we're going to try to start with the real story as far back as possible. come on - it's the end of the Ice Age, when the glacial ice finally retreated from Scandinavia and the region entered the Norwegian Stone Age. This period of history lies pretty firmly in the "fog of time" zone, where basically all we know about the people who lived there is how they preferred to strike their flint.

A series of Stone Age societies came and went in this region from 12,000 BC. until about 2800 BC, when the Indo-European battle ax culture emerged and coexisted with the coastal baked dish culture for about a thousand years until 1700 BC, when the societies merged and entered the Norse Bronze Age. This new culture farmed and trained animals, traded with our friends in Mycenaean Greece, had enormous wealth by the standards of the time, and greatly loved ships. Between all the ship petroglyphs and their ship-shaped tombs, we can already see how these proto-Normans were on their way to becoming the Viking sailors we know and love.

At the time they didn't seem to have any writings, so any theories about their mythology are quite fragmentary and not very well founded. But from their art we know that three things were important to them: animals, ships and the sun. They appear to have established a mythological connection between the movement of the sun and the movement of animals and, in particular, they concluded that the sun was drawn by a horse, like a chariot. This is notable because it is preserved in Norse mythology in the characters Skinfaxi and Hrimfaxi, the horses that draw the chariots of the sun and moon.

Although many mythologies confuse the sun and moon with cars, the person in the car usually receives more attention than the animal pulling it. Anyway, around 500 B.C. A technological leap occurred and Scandinavia entered the Iron Age, where people worked with peat from peat. Some local climate change seems to have pushed the Normans a little south, which probably helped them make the next big leap around 0 AD. C., when the Romans arrived. The transition from the pre-Roman Iron Age to the Roman Iron Age was fairly straightforward, as it essentially meant another trade route for the Scandinavians. The Romans gave them coins, ships, weapons and all that good stuff.

But the Romans got us something very valuable: they wrote things down. In about the year 98, General Tacitus wrote Germania, an ethnography of the Germanic peoples with whom they traded, noting that they appeared to worship a pantheon of gods headed by Mercury, honored with animal and human sacrifices on a specific day of the week. He also mentioned the cult of Mars, Hercules and Isis. Now that classical Roman syncretism is in full swing here, you don't have to be a scholar of comparative mythology to realize that this "Mercury" is the cunning traveler Odin, worshiped on Odin's Day, also known as Wednesday, and that Mars and Hercules are probably Tyr and Thor is, Tyr is paired with Mars because they are both gods of war and Thor with Hercules probably because they are both giant hunters.

Unfortunately, Isis could theoretically be any Norse goddess, but Frigg or Freya are probably the best choice. Either way, this is the first solid written confirmation of the Norse pantheon we know and love. It's fragmented and filtered through a very biased lens, but it gives us something to work with. Unfortunately, it doesn't give us Loki. And what exactly that means is unclear. He may have been a relatively minor figure in the pantheon, not worth mentioning, and given that he only listed the key players of great importance with the days of the week named after him, that's not too far-fetched. .

But it's also possible that Loki didn't exist yet. And that's strange. This is also when Norse writing first appears: Futhark runes were first used around 150 AD, theoretically derived from an ancient Italian script, although it is not 100% clear how they got from the Italian peninsula all the way to Scandinavia. . Mythologically, Odin gains the forbidden knowledge of magical runes by ritually sacrificing himself to the world tree Yggdrasil and gaining a nice power-up, which I think is as good an explanation as any. (Try harder, Duolingo.) That business situation lasts until about 400 AD. C., when the Roman Empire accidentally inserts an energy rod and submerges itself in the ocean, and the Scandinavians do not notice.

But they do realize what happens later, because in the year 700 the monks appear. Christian missionaries arrive in Scandinavia, and the Normans hate it so much that apparently in retaliation the Viking Age begins, which officially begins in the year 793 when the Vikings sack and burn Lindisfarne Abbey, taking all its treasure, killing the monks and enslaving them, and firmly establishing their reputation as a fearsome force for the next thousand years. The Viking Age lasted about three centuries, but while the Vikings were Vikings, the Christianization of Scandinavia continued behind them, and by 1100 the area was almost completely Christianized. And then, after all that, we finally have the first reference to Loki.

Around 1200, the Icelandic politician and historian Snorri Sturluson wrote the Prose Edda, the first written compilation of Norse mythology, apparently in service of his main political goal at the time: uniting Iceland with Norway under the rule of King Hakon IV. He failed and Hakon had him killed a few decades later, but that doesn't matter now, because this motivation completely puts his role in compiling the prose Edda into perspective. Iceland and Norway were fully Christianized at the time, but by consolidating their shared "pagan" history and mythology, Snorri was able to give them a cultural identity to promote their unification under Hakon.

Sure, we're Iceland and you're Norway, but we're all Norwegians, right? Bring it inside! The Prose Edda therefore begins with a prologue describing the Christian story of Genesis, presenting the Norse gods as Trojan heroes who fled the fall of Troy, settled in Scandinavia, and were accepted as divine kings thanks to their technology. superior. That's right: Snorri Sturluson has distanced himself from himself. Anyway, with that little Christian-approved justification out of the way, Snorri delves into what we hope is true pre-Christian mythology. And here we see Loki for the first time. Loki appears everywhere in the Prose Edda. He is known by the epithet "Grumpy" and is described as fickle, inventor of lies, and beautiful but "evil by nature." Basically, a classic femme fatale.

Summarized in one sentence, he regularly causes trouble for the Æsir, but also regularly helps them with his clever tricks and schemes. Basically, your typical chaotic, neutral teammate who causes trouble for fun, but cleans up his mess when necessary. He has three children with a giantess in Jotunheim, which he keeps secret from the Æsir, but he is eventually discovered and, unfortunately for Loki, a prophecy is in progress. These children are destined to cause serious trouble for the Æsir when Ragnarok comes, so Odin takes them away. Loki's daughter Hel is thrown into Nifelheim and, although she becomes the super-powered queen of the dead, it is clear that she cannot really leave.

Her son, Jormungandr, is thrown into the ocean, where he grows to enormous size. And his other son, Fenris-Wolf, is too powerful for the Æsir to handle, so they take him in to watch over him, and he lives with them for a time in Asgard, and even becomes a good friend. Shot. But as he grows bigger and stronger, the Æsir become more and more worried, and eventually they come up with a plan: they pretend it's a game and bind Fenris with stronger and stronger chains, although they can't find anything. that can retain it for a long time. .

Finally, they ask the dwarves for a necklace made of impossible things and ask Fenris if they can try it on, but he becomes suspicious, so he agrees on the condition that one of them puts his hand in his jaw. If they betray him, they lose the hand. The Æsir are clearly reluctant, but Tyr agrees, and when Fenris cannot break the chain and realizes that the Æsir have betrayed him, he bites Tyr's hand. It's not said how Loki found all this, but we can assume it wasn't great. There is another story in which a disguised giant offers the Æsir the construction of a fortress, but in exchange he wants the sun, the moon and the goddess Freya.

The Æsir agree because they want that fortress, but they also do not want to pay for it, so they force Loki to sabotage the construction so that the giant does not finish it on time. Loki does this by transforming into a mare and "distracting" the giant's horse, and when the giant realizes what is happening, he returns to his true giant form to make a formal complaint with his battle axe, after which Thor kills him. Later, Loki gave birth to a healthy eight-legged foal, and thus Odin received his faithful steed Sleipnir. And before you condemn Loki, who is more irresponsible: the man who gives birth to a horse or the man who rides his cousin into battle?

I'm just saying I know who I wouldn't trust as a babysitter. And in another important world-building myth, Snorri recounts the events that set Ragnarok in motion, with Loki arranging Baldr's death by mistletoe and fleeing the evil Æsir, going into hiding and inventing the fishing net in his spare time. . When the Æsir find him, he burns the net and turns into a salmon, which hides in a nearby waterfall, but one of the Æsir deduces from the ash pattern his invention of the fishing net and recreates it to capture Loki. Loki is thwarted one last time by his own cunning and imprisoned underground and tortured by a snake, which causes earthquakes when he staggers.

Now there are many other stories about Loki: his bet with the sons of Ivaldi, his adventure with Thor in Útgarða-Loki, and an interesting prequel to the Volsunga saga in which he steals gold from a dwarf to pay a debt. including a cursed magic ring, andHe passes the ring to the man who forced him to pay the debt, starting a chain of murders and misfortunes for the imbecile in question and leaving Loki without it for a change. The consequences remain. But basically all the stories follow a very specific format: the Æsir have Loki solve a problem, whether he caused it or not, and Loki makes it work through a combination of clever tricks, comedy, and the occasional pregnancy.

But you'll also notice that the Æsir are not doing very well here. They break their oaths, cheat their way out of debt, torment and abuse Loki even when the problem is not his fault. They are not presented as particularly divine. Snorri portrays the gods as flawed, fallible, and completely human, which makes sense when he attempts to forge a historical cultural identity without delving too deeply into the currently taboo religion from which that cultural identity is constructed. And there's something Christian about the way Loki is presented in this era, and not in the way you might expect.

In addition to the Prose Edda, this era also has the Poetic Edda, a collection of poems compiled around the same time. The Poetic Edda contains Lokasenna, "Loki's Flight", an additional detail from the precursor to Ragnarok in which Loki addresses the Æsir about their flaws and sins, and how they all like to blame him when in fact they are only so bad if the. At the end of that poem they tie him up and lock him up, but they never prove him wrong. The image of Loki in the Eddas corresponds to the biblical concept of the scapegoat.

Today that term means someone who is blamed for everything, but in the Old Testament the “scapegoat” is part of a cleansing ritual. Two goats are taken, one is sacrificed and the other is taken to the desert; That is the scapegoat, who carries with him the sins of the people, ritually cleansing them of their defects at the cost of two goats. Later, Christianity added some Jesus flavor to the scapegoat concept, with the idea that Jesus himself is a kind of scapegoat for the sins of all humanity, but unlike the goat, he does so consciously as an agent. voluntary, which makes him consciously distinguish it from the concept of scapegoat.

But this image of Loki fits that. The Æsir do many bad things, but then turn around and blame Loki, or let him fix it, thus absolving themselves of the consequences. Written 200 years after Christianization, it wouldn't be surprising if this biblical concept found its way into Snorri's setup for this character, giving Loki a biblical context that he originally lacked. And between his role as a scapegoat and his torture and imprisonment for speaking a truth the Æsir didn't want to hear, it also has the unexpected consequence of... this version of Loki... becoming a Jesus figure. I did not see him coming.

So, since these Eddas already show some important structural features of Christianization, both the obvious ones with Genesis and the non-obvious ones with the thematic parallels, we are once again stuck in a position where the only information we have about Loki is very... . unreliable. Logically. This is not all we have from this time. In addition to looting and burning, many runestones were also made in the Viking Age: carved stones that have no written mythology, but often contain images from well-known stories. Mjolnir was a common symbol on runestones, and we have a handful of runestones from between the years 700 and 1000 that show some well-known images: Odin catching a salmon, a figure tied beneath a snake, a scarred face. lips, etc. in.

Although they postdate the arrival of the monks, they show a figure whose role matches the description of Loki in the Eddas, and were carved at least a few hundred years before Snorri acquired them. Although, as a curious fact, one of those theoretical images of Loki shows a figure tied with horns and was carved into a cross. Once again, Christianity is rooted. Although our knowledge is fragmentary and incomplete, this at least confirms some of Snorri's stories. There are other interesting things about Loki's character that we can glean from these eddas. The Poetic Edda very briefly mentions that at one point Loki finds the half-burnt heart of an unnamed evil woman, she eats it and becomes pregnant, later giving birth to the vaguely described "evil that afflicts man." This story is not mentioned anywhere else and we have no idea who the heart was or what evil it spawned, but this little four-line anecdote puts Loki in the role of the folkloric mother of monsters, a not uncommon motif for everyone. the ills of the world to an unfortunate lady who initially bore them or gave birth to them: Gaia, Pandora, Echidna, Tiamat, Lilith, is a theme that arises sporadically.

And speaking of themes, Loki has another unexpected role. There is a common Indo-European story of a prophecy, where someone, usually a king, learns a prediction of his future demise at the hands of a child, usually a direct descendant or other close relative. The condemned person reacts badly and locks up the child - or the parents, if the child is not yet born - causing the child to later unwittingly play the exact role that the prophecy predicted. It happens to Oedipus, it happens to Balor and Lugh, it happens to Perseus, it even happens to Krishna, and it happens to Odin, Loki, and Loki's sons.

Since we typically see Loki as the villain, or at least the culprit when things go wrong, he's easy to overlook, but Odin fits perfectly into the role of antagonist in that typical Proto-Indo-European prophecy structure. He hears the prophecy of Ragnarok and, by trying to prevent it, he inadvertently gives Loki's children the powers and motives they need to fulfill that prophecy. She had no power over the dead until she was banished to his kingdom, and when Loki marches towards Ragnarok, he brings his army of the dead with him. Jormungandr was not the world serpent until he was thrown into the ocean, growing large enough to finally kill Thor.

And Fenris-Wolf was very happy to live in peace among the Æsir with his best friend Tyr, until they betrayed him, and when he breaks those unbreakable chains, he kills Odin himself. And where does Loki fit into all this? Well, he's in good company with characters like Danae, Devaki, and Eithne, the unfortunate mothers of the prophecy's children who are imprisoned, tormented, and live unhappy lives until their children reappear to fulfill the prophecy and kill their tormentor. Which is uncomfortably similar to the beginning of Ragnarok. The only thing that makes Loki unsympathetic in this situation is the fact that his prophetic children are causing the literal apocalypse, but, and listen closely, Snorri may not have meant to portray Ragnarok as a bad thing.

Loki may be a traitor and a trickster, but at this point in his development he plays a surprisingly sympathetic role. He helps more than he hurts, with the notable exception of Baldr's death and the beginning of Ragnarok, but even that story is pretty suspect. There are many theories about this, but one of them suggests that Baldr's death is actually a trick by Odin. Odin suffered many human sacrifices, at least in mythology, and died several times, sacrificing himself for power and knowledge. And Baldr's death by mistletoe bears a suspicious mythological similarity to other stories of sacrifice to Odin: there is a story about a legendary king, Vikar, whose ships are becalmed because Odin demands a blood sacrifice, and Vikar's name appears in the giveaway every time. .

Vikar doesn't want to die, so his counselor assures him that they won't actually kill him; They prepare the sacrifice, but instead of stabbing it, they use an innocent tree branch and a very soft rope. But when they do, the branch suddenly turns into a spear and the king dies for real; Trying to trick Odin with a fake, harmless sacrifice isn't very smart. So when Baldr is killed by a weapon made from innocent mistletoe, he fits eerily well with this story of a cunning sacrifice to Odin. And we must remember that Baldr does not stay dead. He will return after Ragnarok.

And Odin knows this because he knows the prophecies of Ragnarok. The text also states that no one knows what Odin whispered in the ear of the dead Baldr, but why would he whisper in the ear of a dead person? Baldr is killed in a manner much like a sacrifice to Odin, and he returns even better than before, something Odin did to himself to gain knowledge and power. And with all that as context, Loki's role in the death becomes that much stranger. And furthermore, Loki's relationship with Odin is the subject of academic debate. The Poetic Edda describes them as blood brothers, but some scholars suggest that Loki may actually be an aspect or reflection of Odin, a derived deity who plays a specific, unknown role.

They are both tricksters and masters of disguise, and if I had to choose a Norse god to compare to Mercury or Hermes, the trickster and thief god, I would probably choose Loki instead of Odin. Baldr's death smacks of lost mythological context and ritual implications. There's more than we know, and that means Loki's role in the death is equally mysterious. Anyway, unfortunately this falls into the "we'll probably never really know how it happened" category, but it's still valuable information to know that this story probably shouldn't be taken 100 percent at face value. Loki does a lot of stupid things, but normal god-slaying is not his usual hobby.

And here's another strange angle: due to Snorri's bias as an author, his very surprising framing of the Norse gods in strict past tense, and his extremely careful separation of these pagan

myths

from the Christian faith they had adopted, killing Baldr and causing Snorri may have originally presented Twilight of the Old Gods as something... well. There's that biblical concept of cleansing Armageddon: the world becomes so fucked up and sinful that the only option is to burn the bad to the ground and start over. And while Ragnarok is almost certainly a pre-Christian concept, Ragnarok as a very important case and the central focus of the story could have been a Christian adaptation.

The idea that the old gods were screwed and had to die so that a shiny new world could take over - with a shiny new Christian god, in some translations - would have been very attractive to someone trying to appeal to a cultural story. shared without the shared to suppress religious identity. So what might have been a footnote or highly contextualized ritual in the original folklore space might have evolved into Loki's defining act: killing Baldr and beginning a cleansing apocalypse to make way for the new world. . And again, as we've discussed, Odin has a lot of themes about dying and then being reborn even better.

And it's another facet of Loki's character that isn't funny, but was probably still fundamentally good from Snorri's perspective. Overall, the Eddas don't exactly paint a flattering portrait of Loki, but it still seems unconditionally necessary. He solves problems no one else can handle, gives the gods a scapegoat so they can maintain their own perceived genius and never look inside themselves enough to significantly improve themselves, and puts an end to their imperfect world to make way for the new one. All good things from the perspective of someone living in that new world. So that's... possibly Snorri's point of view, although it's impossible to know for sure.

But he is not the only Christian historian with an opinion on Loki, and interestingly, while the Eddas seem to see him as a necessary nuisance, some later translators apparently missed the point, and Loki's role as deceiver, deceiver, and father of lies . interpreted as a parallel to Satan, something Snorri himself never did. For example, the hilarious Norwegian philologist Sophus Bugge theorized in 1880 that all the stories in the Eddas were actually Christian, without any prior mythological basis, and that Loki was simply, literally, Satan. And although that theory was rejected by almost everyone, Loki as Satan was not so easily dismissed.

It is not the most unfounded analogy: he is the evil deity, the god who betrays the other gods. It is not so difficult to compare it with a fallen angel or the figure of Judas. Except these interpretations assume his role in Baldr's death as the ultimate and unforgivable betrayal, and completely ignore any other stories about him. Some of these translations add prologues calling Loki a "vile serpent", which is completely fictional; The only significant epithets for him in the Edda are "slander" and "son of Laufey", and he is never a snake. He and the snakes don't really get along.

If Snorri had wanted to turn Loki into a Satan figure, he would have done so. But because Snorri focused on Ragnarok for his own reasons, later analysts also focused on Ragnarok, and without Snorri's context of "cleansing up the old world to make way for the world we live in now," it seems something very bad, a tragedy. And it seems as if it was all Loki's fault. With this change of perspective, Loki goes from "a.""necessary annoyance" to "completely antagonistic", which makes the complex and surprisingly sympathetic framing of Loki from the Eddas replace a much more basic cartoonish combination.

He remains a liar and a deceiver, but his role as problem solver disappears and he is replaced by more satanic implications as manipulative and evil seducer, because the mythological Loki literally cannot manipulate his way out of a box But now that Loki explicitly confronts the Æsir, another possibility arises, because the Æsir still do not seem truly heroic, nor do they always break oaths drunk, there isn't any. It takes a lot to portray them as structurally problematic, especially when you add the subtextual implication that, on top of all their other flaws, they have to be idiots to keep someone like Loki around. if the Æsir are evil, then Loki, their opponent, has a chance of being good.

Loki is an easy rebel against the system because he is really just an agent of chaos. And with a few tweaks, it's not difficult to transform him into a misunderstood rebel antihero. Even after demonization, Loki still walks the line between sympathetic and unsympathetic. The character of Loki is fundamentally transgressive. He breaks rules and crosses borders. He is practically the only Norse god who changes gender regularly, and even his ancestry crosses a line: a Jotunn father and an Æsir mother, mixed ancestry that no one else seems to share. He travels a lot, occasionally accompanying Thor, but more often borrowing Freya's feather cloak to travel to Jotunheim or the dwarven kingdom.

He doesn't easily fit into a realm, and the divine domain of him is also a bit...uncertain. It's strange to overlook it, right? He is a god, but why was he worshiped? Tyr and Odin, gods of war, were prayed to and sacrificed for victory in battle; Freya and Njord, gods of fertility, were sacrificed for peace and a good year; Thor, god of storms and rain, was sacrificed in times of famine or illness. But I can't find any major sacrifice for Loki, nor any agreement on what exactly he was the god of. Lies and deceit were his personality, not his divine domain: Thor was not the god of getting drunk and hitting things.

He worshiped the gods because they played a role in the daily lives of the Normans. What was Loki's role? Unfortunately, that's hard to say. If he was not offered festivals or great blood sacrifices, it was not really written down. Maybe he was worshiped in smaller, more domestic ways, maybe he was one of those antagonistic gods that people prayed against, but there's almost nothing to go on. This is the time where, with no other clues, I would like to delve into the etymology of his name to see what it originally meant on the most basic level or to see if he was based on an older god, but unfortunately there isn't really that information. neither.

Loki's name is short and simple and the etymology is hotly debated. Because of his similarity to the Old Norse word logi, meaning fire, some have suggested that he was a fire god, and while he may have been some kind of hearth spirit, of which more later, he does not appear to have been a fire. . God. The words are similar, but not related. Additionally, in the Útgarða-Loki myth, he loses an eating contest to Logi, the personification of fire. That wouldn't make sense if he were the same being. So he's not Logi, what else could he be?

There are some possibilities. It could be derived from the Proto-Germanic root luk-, a root used for words related to loops, such as knots, hooks, and locks. It is also used in words for spiders and things related to spiders; In Swedish and Faroese, the word for "spiderweb" is literally "Loki's web." So... Loki is a spider? While that is possible and wonderfully creepy, there isn't much evidence in folklore. But Loki doesn't have to be a spider to have something to do with knots or webs. Loki's name could mean something much simpler, like "tangler," which would fit well with his mythical role as the inventor of the fishing net, which was later used to trap him: it traps other people and himself in equal measure. extent.

This also makes sense if "Loki" is more of a title than a name. Útgarða-Loki, the giant illusionist opposite of Loki and Thor, is very confusing on paper. He has no apparent relationship with Loki, and they do not appear to know each other, but his name, Útgarða-Loki, means "Loki of the Outer Courts". If Loki himself means "entangler", then the distinction makes more sense: Útgarða-Loki traps them in illusions and impossible tasks, "the entangler of outer places". If it's a general term for tricksters and disruptors, that would help explain why these otherwise unrelated characters share such a unique name.

The name Loki has also been preserved in some popular phrases in Scandinavia, such as mirages and other heat distortions which are sometimes described as "Loki sowing oats or herding his goats". If the term retains elements of deception or illusion, it makes sense to use it in that context. But popular customs can tell us more about him than just his name. Loki may not have been given grand celebrations or dramatic social sacrifices, but elements of his nature seem to have persisted in everyday folk customs, which paint a more domestic picture. Some expressions describe Loki as being responsible for heat waves, sudden bursts of fire, cobwebs and other types of ephemera often attributed to small nature spirits called vættir.

Some other surviving Norse traditions involve throwing a child's baby teeth into the fireplace and asking Loki to take care of the child. Particularly interesting is that many phrases and traditions about hearth fires and their care seem to contain a reference to Loki. Now, this does not automatically mean that the Loki associated with the hearth fire has any relation to the god Loki; As we already discussed with Útgarða-Loki, he wasn't the only Loki walking around, but some pretty compelling evidence has been gathered. This essay suggests that they are probably the same figure, and further that the spirit of the hearth, Loki, may have later been adapted in medieval Norse folklore as an unlikely hero called Ash-Lad, an intelligent but lazy fellow who looked after the hearth fire all day. until he is forced to become a heroic adventure.

If this is true, it suggests that Loki's divine role was that of a mischievous but ultimately benevolent protector of home and family, which is honestly quite plausible given the number of children he canonically has. But unfortunately, like everything Loki related, this is pretty confusing and hard to pin down. The connection is possible, but impossible to prove. Where are we then? Loki has many, many stories, but they all have a partial narrator, an incomplete story, or both. We do not know when he first appeared nor what role he played in society, we cannot link him with previous deities, we can hardly estimate his personality.

Loki is a mass of contradictions. And you know what? Alright. This is one of the many ways gods can develop: they fragment over time. Typically, the only gods with a perfectly consistent linear history are those that were intentionally constructed by someone with an agenda. But in a living mythology a god is worshiped day after day. They play a role in people's lives. And people's lives change, and therefore their needs change. The role a god plays can change greatly over time as society changes. Without an artificially constructed coherent canon for Loki, we can't really get a good idea of ​​a linear story for him, but the fact that the gods have linear stories is largely an artificial addition from other people.

Loki is extremely confusing... and that's okay. Nobody ever said he had to be simple. And the sad truth is that sometimes information is lost, and once it's gone, we can never get the full picture. Trying to fill in the gaps with information that doesn't exist is a recipe for conspiracy theories. And to be honest, I don't think there's anything more characteristic of Loki than centuries of scholars trying to discover his true nature. Can't a man change his shape in peace? Real quick, before we go, we have a new pin for you, and this one isn't a Greek god!

You can get this new Loki pin in our Crowdmade store for a limited time and it comes with this fun sticker set! And I'm going to say this in all seriousness: I think this is the most beautiful thing I've ever done. Okay, thanks, bye!