Finally Making That Post About Loki
Finally making that post about Loki
I hate how many people look at Loki (especially with a post-Marvel lens) and act like the Christian writers turned him from a generally heroic gender-fluid god into a Satan-esque villain. It’s like these people only read the parts of the myths that support this claim and then ignore every other myth that Loki is in.
First off with the gender-fluid stuff, he only turns into a female three or four times (one of them is theorized to be Loki but never outright confirmed). All of these times are a different race (Horse, Aesir, Jotun), and all situational. The horse is to lure away Svadilfari and stop the builder from finishing Asgard’s wall , the Aesir (never stated what race his is here) is to accompany Thor as his bridesmaid to make sure the plan works (and probably watch Thor be embarrassed by the dress he’s wearing) (Þrymskviða), another as the Aesir to learn about Baldur’s weakness to mistletoe, and the final one is to stop Baldur from coming back to life after Loki got him killed. I’m pretty sure Loki turns into a bird more often. Finally in the Lokasenna, he and Odin insult each other for doing unwomanly things, Odin doing magic and Loki giving birth to children (yes plural), and then Frigg (or Freyja) pretty much tells them to leave their skeletons in the closets.
Secondly, there is a post I’ve seen a couple times (and it is what inspired me to make this post) by @incorrectnorse-quotes where they got a message saying Loki is a faithful husband. The problem with this is that it forgets that Angrboda exists. Loki has had sex with three people that with children coming from them, and he claims a fourth. The three he has children from are; Svadilfari (Sleipnir), Angrboda (Fenrir, Hel(a), and Jormungandr), and his wife Sigyn (Vali and Narfi). He (and Odin at one point) claims to have had sex with Thor’s wife Sif. That claim is said by Loki during the Lokasenna, after Sif says he can’t say anything bad about her.
Finally while I agree that he isn’t the devil figure some make him out to be, he definitely isn’t what I would consider a good person (some people seem to think he is the nicest person in Asgard). For example, he once completely plucked out a woman’s (Sif’s) hair, for no given reason (an event which led to the creation of Mjolnir). Another example is the murder of Baldur (which we are probably missing some context to, but I’m working off the context we have), where he gets Baldur killed for “complaining about nightmares of his death.” My final example comes from the Lokasenna again, where the entire story is “Loki crashes a party, uses an old oath to stop from getting kicked out, insults almost everyone at the party (except Thor), admits to killing Baldur, then leaves.”
Also I’m not sure what version of the builder myth OSP was using, but in the version I'm familiar with the Aesir only agree to a deal with the builder (after shorting his time from three seasons to one) because of Loki’s advice, which is why they have him fix the problem.
All things considered, Loki seems to be Asgard’s resident asshole and occasional problem solver.
For a more in depth look I’d recommend this essay by Reddit user u/rockstarpirate, where he talks also about Norse gender views. (Warning it’s 21 pages)
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Extremely specific scenario time:
Three dwarves - Gotrek Gurnisson, Senshi of Izganda, and Gimli, son of Glóin - are all put into the same room. The room is empty save for one table with three chairs, all appropriately dwarf-sized. None of them have their axes, but there is a loaded gun on the table. None of the three have been instructed on how to use it. The three of them are here to settle one question once and for all:
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SLAYERS!
They have to be my favourite part of the dwarven army and the most original and interesting thing that differentiates them from their more classically Tolkien-esque counterparts.
They are dwarfs who swore off their lives to erase a stain from their honour, to atone in death for the sins of the past, no matter how small or grand they were because for warhammer dwarfs honour is all.
What is interesting is that there are three distinct reactions to taking the slayer oath. Some dwarfs fall into depression, shunning away from everyone but fellow slayers and priests of Grimnir, others become happy and extroverted because in death you do not need to worry about society's restraints, and of course there are those slayers like Malakai Makaisson or Snorri Nosebiter who simply go crazy. The only common thing that binds them is their oath, something more than sacred for them, that orders them forward in search of great doom that will send them to the halls of their ancestors.
In one of the Gotrek and Felix books they meet a lich priest of the Tomb Kings, when he was inquired by Jaeger as to why the dwarf helps the undead the priest answers that matters of the dead do not concern the living. He then explains that when Felix is brimming with life to the point of bursting, Gotrek's line of life was already severed which shows that slayer's oath is more than mere words etched in stone.
There are some musings as to why something like the cult of Grimnir exists in dwarfen society. Some claim that is nothing but a natural consequence of how the dwarfen psyche works a sense of honour taken to its most dangerous extreme, others say that it's a release valve for society that lives under constant pressure of expectations, restrictions and traditions, and there is also a third theory posed by Bitter the slayer who said that Grimnir took his axe and marched north because he could not stand constant nagging of his family.
When you look at the whole picture you start to realise how selfish the oath is. You, for your own sense of honour, abandon all you hold dear and seek death in battle, essentially wasting your skills, knowledge and wisdom throwing it all away at the pyre of glory. At the same time there is something tragically romantic about the whole thing, mighty doom seekers traveling the length and breadth of the world, oftentimes accompanied by human or dwarfish remembrancer poets, to find glorious death slaying enemies of order. I can't help but feel sympathetic to those crazy orange crested maniacs.
