Even after shedding the trappings of my childhood religion and becoming functionally atheist, certain events can still inspire religious fear or guilt. For example, not attending sunrise services on Easter will sometimes suckerpunch me with guilt — who am I to buck 2,000 years of tradition just to sleep in? A friend of mine who was raised Jewish feels a constant tension between her actual beliefs and her familial obligations on major holidays.
And then there was the most unexpected jerk back to my childhood beliefs: a video of Tom Hiddleston lashing a crowd into orgasmic screaming while dressed as Loki at Comic-Con.
I didn’t see this happen live–I was miles and days away from the actual event. The darkness was scripted, the beginning of the monologue cribbed from a movie I’d already seen. But when Loki roared “SAY MY NAME!” I felt that same frisson of fear/lust/joy, as if the audience’s ecstatic scream could really summon the god.
I also found myself thinking reflexively, Don’t do it! He’ll fuck with you if you say his name aloud!
When I was a teenager, struggling against my own misanthropy to find out how to actually live with people, I was into Norse mythology the way Tina from Bob’s Burgers was into sex friend fiction. I collected illustrated editions, multiple translations, and eventually delved into the original source material, the Prose and Poetic Eddas. My mom never tried to check my obsession, though she was obviously confused. As for the kids at school, well… reading an Icelandic text on a long-dead religion wasn’t exactly the key to popularity.
Until then, my religious life had been dictated by my grandparents, as my mom lived with them while she put herself through grad school. The result was that I was raised in an uber-conservative pocket of Methodism where I wasn’t allowed to do anything resembling “work” on Sundays (even a sewing project that I was enjoying), and my mom was called in for a parent-teacher conference when I tried to incorporate dinosaurs into drawings of the Garden of Eden. Then, long after we’d moved to our own house and without either of us talking about it, Mom and I agreed that we never had to go to church again unless I wanted to.
This was both an immense relief, as I no longer had to sit through things that I couldn’t ask questions about, and a source of a strange, unsettled feeling, as if I could feel God looking over my shoulder and disapproving over my new path in life. I’d hunch sweatily over the keyboard of the family PC and scroll through websites with red type against black backgrounds, describing modern-day sacrifices to Odin, Loki, and Thor. (Loki, I learned, had a particular interest in Twinkies being burned for him as “sacrifices.”) I was too scared and dreamy to put any of this into practice — I may have, at one point, found a flyer for a local coven at a coffee shop and didn’t go because simply having a paper about a Wiccan meeting was so far away from how I was raised that I thought it would burn me. But I read everything I could find on the 90s version of modern Norse god worship, which was most often filed under “Asatru.”
Re-reading them now, I’m a little horrified at the possible implications of some of the myths I nearly memorized (did Freya really have sex with four dwarves for a necklace, or was she raped?) But I also see why I was attracted to their roughness and weirdness as I struggled to decode what “real life” was outside my grandparent’s house. The Norse gods were far less pretentious than the Christianity I had been raised in, and offered more practical advice: instead of a Ten Commandments, Odin’s Havamal gives a series of aphorisms with tips on how to treat houseguests well, explains what can happen if you drink too much, and warns that staying up all night worrying isn’t the best idea. The gods’ messy love stories and ongoing feuds and alliances with the Frost Giants also was more closely aligned with my confusing world of burgeoning sexuality and hot-and-cold friendships than the Hallmark-card-style advice that I had been given previously. Even as an adult, I still believe that love can be one-sided and coerced, problems can be solved by changing your gender, and you can try your hardest and still not bring the things you love back from the dead.
Among all the Norse gods, Loki was (and still is) my favorite, though I am still sometimes confused by the bug-helmeted Kirby version. (“Vikings” eyeliner-wearing, “slightly manic boatbuilder” Floki is much closer to how I imagine the god.) “Cleverness” is the aspect I feel that most people associate with Loki, but even in the myths he ended up in so many surreal situations involving toxic emotions or failed thefts I find it hard to believe he put much forethought into his life. Instead, I prefer to think of him as the god of “fuck you”s– “Fuck this gender, I can become a mare if I want to” and “Fuck you, Odin, for forgetting I helped make the universe” and “Fuck you, I have monster children.” He was weird and gluttonous and extremely sexual — I learned the word “scrotum” from a retelling of the myth that graphically described how he entertained the gods during a difficult political period between the Aesir and the Frost Giants. I also got in trouble at school for turning in a short story assignment shamelessly cribbed from the myth where Loki turns into a filly, complete with a description of him giving birth to the eight-legged horse Sleipnir.
But ultimately, I abandoned reaching towards Wicca because I felt like I couldn’t trust the gods. Jesus stood between me and the angry God of the Old Testament, but there was no one in the Norse pantheon worth invoking that didn’t have some deeply held resentment in their past. Thor was continuously enraged, Loki was a bitter outcast, and Odin showed such a disturbing singularity of purpose that he was willing to hang himself.
The whole thing gave me the feeling that, if any gods did exist, their powers were too wild and unpredictable for it to be worth invoking them in my daily life. Around this time, I read somewhere about a man who made a pact with the gods that as long as they didn’t bother him, he wouldn’t ask them for help, and I adopted this idea for myself. (Though in hindsight, the chances that a superhuman entity couldn’t find me if it wanted to seemed slim.)
Many years passed, college came and went, and I almost forgot about my Wiccan phase. Thus, when my Tumblr dash suddenly became flooded with fan art of Thor and Loki making out, I was perhaps not quite as unsettled as a Catholic coming across nun porn, but was jerked right back to all that time I’d spent typing in a dark room with sweaty palms. I’d known the Thor movie had happened, peripherally, but for some reason I’d never considered that it would spawn a fanbase far-reaching enough that it would touch my little curated corner of geekdom.
And then the unthinkable happened: the teens of 2012, hungry for more of the story than the Marvel movies could give them, were suddenly reading the same kinds of obscure texts that I’d poured over as a teenager. I felt both vindicated and a little jealous (is this where bitter policing geeks come from?) as people in a fandom I felt too old to join made the kind of jokes only a Viking geek could appreciate. If only Marvel had made Thor and The Avengers in the 90s, I thought, then my teen years might have been a little easier!
This resurgence of interest in the gods has also made me wonder if I should wade into the happy side of Loki worship — the fandom — or take the more serious route and actually find an Asatru group to join. But old habits die hard, and I’m unable to forget one practitioner’s caution that, if you invoke Loki, God of Chaos, you can’t control what he will bring into your life.
As a teen, I had two hobbies. One I chose — reading fantasy novels — and another I had thrust upon me: attending medieval reenactment events with my dad. Sometimes these trips could be fraught, as dad made no secret of the fact that he didn’t think much of me being raised Christian and was disturbed by my lack of social skills and single-minded absorption in fantasy. However, his idea of a remedy was to take me with him on his trips with the Longship Company, a group dedicated to building and sailing replica Viking ships.
As a dreamy teen that sometimes turned on the music in my room and walked in circles in order to invoke a trance state, and who read college-level texts on Viking religion, it wasn’t always clear how weekends we spent rowing a replica Viking ship around Chesapeake Bay would help me fit in. But it was awesome exercise, and I learned the rudiments of sailing, water safety, and CPR. We also used myriad strategies to get us all to row in time with one another, from old sea shanties to simply repeating one word over and over again. Since it was a Viking ship, the word of choice was “Odin”, and we’d draw out the syllables as we rowed: “OHHH-DIN…OHHH-DIN.”
The end result of all of Dad’s hobbies was that we were eventually invited to join the “largest Viking fleet in the world” at a celebration of Leif Erikson’s landing in Norstead, Newfoundland. As it was the first time the crew would be rowing on the open sea, I wasn’t allowed in the boat, and instead watched from the shore with my stepmother. At one point I remember her saying “Why don’t they raise the sail?”
It turned out that the group had been rowing using the usual refrain of “Ohhh-din, Ohhh-din” when one joker decided to mix it up and throw in another god’s name. “Lohhh-key, Lohhh-ke–”
The mast broke.
To this day, under any circumstances, I still have trouble saying Loki’s name aloud.
Tags: comic con, erica stratton, loki, norse mythology, replica viking ships, sleipnir, slightly manic boatbuilder, the avengers was not a good movie, trickster gods
Oh, this is really delightful. You have kind of put your finger on why I am actually not a big fan of the Loki of the Marvel film universe, too? Like not enough actual chaos from the chaos god, just a lot of moping. Hiddleston seems like a lovely fellow, which makes the fandom understandable, and more power to them/him (and the difference is handwaveable, anyway, with “well, they’re not ACTUALLY the gods, they’re aliens who everyone THOUGHT were gods, so if they’re different from the myths, it’s okay”), but he just doesn’t work for me.
Also, I am on the verge of writing friend fiction myself because I cannot deal with what a great YA novel the story of your longship experience would make. Sorry.
…. I think this YA novel might need to happen!
My father pulled me out of Hebrew school (the only temple in town was Reform and so they weren’t actually teaching me any Hebrew) and I prayed to Artemis daily when I was in elementary school. Any god who was looking after young girls seemed like a god I wanted to be in with.
Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt, was always my favorite Greek goddess. I was her for Halloween a couple of times when I was like 8 or 9, not that any of the other kids got it, as I was a tiny nerdling obsessed with Greek mythology. She’s kind of the patron goddess of misandrists (or one of them), isn’t she?
This piece was SO GREAT.
(Loki fans kind of frighten me a bit.)
Have you heard of “Loki’s Wives”? http://sexgodsrockstars.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/…
(Though to be clear, these are the pagan fans, not the Marvel ones!)
Just a quick point of clarification: Most people who identify as Loki’s Wives (or Husbands) are more than just “pagan fans”. These are people who have taken oaths of one sort or another to/with Loki, and pursue a devotional relationship with Him that is based on a Lover/Beloved dynamic (whereas Christianity promotes a Parent/Child dynamic most of the time with their God). There are lots of Pagans who worship Loki, or generally like him, or wish they had more of a reason to seek him out, but being a God Spouse is more complicated than that.
It is something that was recorded in the Eddas (and there may be other historical references to similar arrangements), wherein mortals would declare a God their “fulltrui”. In fact, many warriors would eschew marrying a mortal woman and would instead dedicate themselves to Freyja. Others might dedicate their weapon to a God or Goddess, and treat that oath as a binding of sorts.
The entry linked here (from my other blog) was commenting on a recent development in Northern Tradition circles; that with the release of the Thor and Avenger movies, combined with fledgling online places (like Tumblr) that aggregated and discussed existing information about Godspousery, there was a fairly large surge of younger cis gender women declaring themselves oathed to Loki. This in itself isn’t the real issue (other than the conflation of Tom Hiddleston and a God); but that specifically because their writings sounded an awful lot like fanfic (and in some cases, these lines were being blurred on purpose), it was making the existing, pre-Thor Lokeans have an even more difficult time being taken seriously in Pagan and Norse communities. (And we had it pretty hard to begin with.)
Anyway, just wanted to make that a little more clear. Like the post!
“It is something that was recorded in the Eddas (and there may be other historical references to similar arrangements)”
Not to godspousing. No. That’s a completely 1990’s-> onward thing that most actual heathens consider to be horribly off putting manic delusions of adequacy from people that need to get out more or maybe start taking medicine.
Hahaha, great ending. I have a mild fondness for the Norse gods myself, but I didn’t care for Thor OR Loki (too greasy-long-haired for my liking) in the Marvel version.
I have a lot of affection for the Thor movies (Avengers was just okay), but Loki’s hair keeps getting more and more hilaribad with each installment.
Seriously, did Loki kill the last hair stylist in Asgard? Even Sif’s practical hair twists have disappeared from the realm. WHY.
I think this sums up Loki’s hair situation the best: http://cheezburger.com/7376146432
Oooh, I liked this. During my teenage pagan period, the only people I ever met who were into the Norse pantheon were men, and I kind of assumed it was because there was something about the Norse concepts of masculinity that appealed to them (and less charitably, I wondered if they just liked having a section of paganism that wasn’t full of women and goddesses all the time). It’s interesting hearing from a woman who was drawn to it, too, and why it worked for you and the parts that didn’t.
No spoilers, but everyone who has read Lev Grossman’s Magician King is invited to join me the corner for therapy, yarn crafts, and occasional rocking in the fetal position.
I don’t know whether people who live in industrialized societies really understand trickster gods. We tend to tell stories where they mean mischief and tomfoolery and Mardi Gras-type controlled shenanigans, but those figures are born in societies where one bad winter meant that half your peer group starved to death. People anthropomorphized chaos and tried to propitiate it, but the message of story after story was that chaos does what it wants on its own terms; maybe the dice roll for you, but maybe it’s snake eyes and your crops freeze in June. “HAHAHAHA it’s funny cuz we’re gonna die.”
Oh lord, the Magician King. Julia’s half of the novel is burned into my brain forever.
I have trouble talking about that book to people who haven’t read it yet, because the plot unfurls so beautifully and everyone deserves to be surprised by where Grossman takes it, but OH MY GOD.
Palate cleanser: “I Wanna Be a Magician,” by Parry Gripp.
YEAH! I rarely feel this way about books, but it’s one that I wish I could reread for the first time? And let it devastate me repeatedly. Uuuugghhhh I need that third book already. (PS! THIRD BOOK!)
YES. It’s still great to reread, but it was just so crushing the first time I read it.
I didn’t know there was going to be a third book. AWESOME.
You have piqued my interest, and now I am going to read it.
Read The Magicians first, if you can. It’s basically Brooklyn hipsters at Hogwarts and is wonderful in its own right; it’s a book for everyone who grew up reading fantasy novels and wishing that they could go away to a magic school but suspecting at some level that it would not be all jolly fun and congenial pet ghosts and parchment essays. The worldbuilding is extremely satisfying.
Same.
I have a rough relationship with those books. On the one hand, he creates this huge vivid world and I love his meta commentary on other kids-and-magic stories. On the other hand, they are SUCH dude books for dudes and I really resent Julia’s Inevitable Rape. Blah blah blah trickster god ok whatever, I’m just super tired of that being the go-to defining life moment for a woman, and the way he wrote about in the book was especially creepy.
Have you been watching The History Channel’s Vikings show? IT’S SO GREAT. Also I was similarly obsessed with Greek mythology when I was about the same age, though for very different reasons.
Oh man, watching Vikings gave me such nostalgia! … and then I realized what a strange childhood I’d had. XD
But I also see why I was attracted to their roughness and weirdness as I struggled to decode what “real life” was outside my grandparent’s house. The Norse gods were far less pretentious than the Christianity I had been raised in, and offered more practical advice
YES. OH WOW. Yes. I loved the Greek myths as a kid for exactly this reason! When’s the next time you’re going to be led into a desert and tempted by Satan, who makes a lot of convincing points that you can’t agree to because reasons? Probably never. But boys running after you and harassing you until you’re like FUCK YOU and turn into a tree? I can get behind that, especially if that tree can beat the shit out of people.
Also FLOKI. Floki is the perfect Loki. Not that Hiddleston isn’t amazing, but Floki has just enough eyeliner to make me believe in anything he has to chirp about.
What a great post! The intersections between pop mythology and established/historical/whatev mythology are very interesting to me.
(as someone who half-seriously considers Wonder Woman a viable deity)
“(as someone who half-seriously considers Wonder Woman a viable deity)”
Wait, she’s not? D:
nah, she totally is.
is this where bitter policing geeks come from? YES. Terrifyingly, yes.
I have also always been into Norse mythology (actually, pretty much any mythologies I could get my hands on, but the Vikings had it goin’ on as far as I was concerned), so much so that I continued to study it in college and grad school. I’m all right with the Marvel movies, because the comic books only touched lightly on the actual myths (also, because eye candy, but I digress).
This was soooo great to read, though! I’m a wee bit jealous of your Viking rowing experiences, but it’s just so great to know I wasn’t the only mythology nerd in the 90s!
“it’s just so great to know I wasn’t the only mythology nerd in the 90s!”
Seriously, is there some kind of club for this? Or a Yahoo support group? 😛
Don’t do it! He’ll fuck with you if you say his name aloud!
This is why I always question the wisdom of naming pets Loki. Especially cats. Don’t you know what you’re getting yourself into?
Here in Denmark, Balder has become one of the most popular dog names in recent years. I don’t know whether it’s because it just sounds cute or if people think their dogs are devastatingly beautiful. I hope it’s the latter.
If I was ever at a dog park and two of the dogs were named Loki and Baldur, I’d be VERY uneasy!
You are so great, Erica Stratton.
Also, still waitin’ on that Toast-created mythological dating guidebook (am I a Sleipnir??), folks.
I LOVED this piece. I loved this piece so much. I just want to crawl into Norse myths and live there forever, and studying mythology is the most legitimising thing I have ever done.
I love Norse myths but I’ve only read the Children of Odin. Can I have some book recommendations from the Loki expert? I’ve actually never seen the movies but I find myself more intrigued by the parts of it that you highlighted in the article. Great piece!
It’s been long enough that I wouldn’t consider myself a “Loki expert”, but I do remember really liking Kevin Crossley-Holland’s retelling of the myths. They don’t deviate from the original Eddas but have little touches of dialogue and mood that make it feel more like you’re reading about actual people than translations of Icelandic texts: http://www.amazon.com/Norse-Myths-Pantheon-Folklo…
Just a quick point of clarification: Most people who identify as Loki's Wives (or Husbands) are more than just "pagan fans". These are people who have taken oaths of one sort or another to/with Loki, and pursue a devotional relationship with Him that is based on a Lover/Beloved dynamic (whereas Christianity promotes a Parent/Child dynamic most of the time with their God). There are lots of Pagans who worship Loki, or generally like him, or wish they had more of a reason to seek him out, but being a God Spouse is more complicated than that.
It is something that was recorded in the Eddas (and there may be other historical references to similar arrangements), wherein mortals would declare a God their "fulltrui". In fact, many warriors would eschew marrying a mortal woman and would instead dedicate themselves to Freyja. Others might dedicate their weapon to a God or Goddess, and treat that oath as a binding of sorts.
The entry linked here (from my other blog) was commenting on a recent development in Northern Tradition circles; that with the release of the Thor and Avenger movies, combined with fledgling online places (like Tumblr) that aggregated and discussed existing information about Godspousery, there was a fairly large surge of younger cis gender women declaring themselves oathed to Loki. This in itself isn't the real issue (other than the conflation of Tom Hiddleston and a God); but that specifically because their writings sounded an awful lot like fanfic (and in some cases, these lines were being blurred on purpose), it was making the existing, pre-Thor Lokeans have an even more difficult time being taken seriously in Pagan and Norse communities. (And we had it pretty hard to begin with.)
Anyway, just wanted to make that a little more clear. Like the post!