by Terry McCombs

Loki appears in more than a dozen Eddas and skaldic poems, behaving in ways that contradict each other, defy categorization, and confound any simple moral framework. He is the oldest and the youngest of the Norse gods. He is Odin's blood-brother and the agent of Ragnarök. He helped give birth to Sleipnir (Odin's eight-legged horse) while in the form of a mare. He killed Baldr — and in some versions, did so at Odin's own request, because only through death could Baldr survive the end of the world. Terry McCombs, writing his God/dess of the Month Club column for soc.religion.paganism in February 2008, makes the case that Loki's modern reputation as pure evil is an artifact of medieval Christian scribes who required white hats and black hats, and could not tolerate a figure whose only constant is change.

McCombs traces Loki's etymology (the Indo-European root LUK — "to close," "lock," "lid," "end," "to light," "lightning"), his family (Farbauti, Laufey, three wives, a horse son, a wolf son, a world-serpent son, and Hel herself), and his enduring relevance as the archetypal Trickster: the line-crosser, the boundary-breaker, the one who does things that seem good, evil, or simply insane — always with a purpose that most people, then or now, cannot fathom. The profile was filed on February 29, 2008 — a date Loki would have appreciated.

NAME: Loki. Said by many to mean "allure" or "fire," but which comes from the ancient Indo-European root LUK, meaning "to close," "lock," "lid," "end," "to light," and "lightning." Or perhaps the Indo-European root LUK comes from Loki — McCombs notes he wasn't there. Other names: Loptur, Loder, Loke, Lokkju, Lopti, and Loge (Richard Wagner), as well as names translating as "sly-one," "sky traveler" or "sky walker," and "shape-changer."

SYMBOLS: Two snakes parallel to each other, heads and tails of each opposite, shedding their skin and forming what looks like the letter S — found carved on large rune stones in Urnes. A salmon. The number 3.

USUAL IMAGE: Slim male with red hair and, depending on the rock carving in question, a curly mustache and sometimes a pointed beard, as well as scarred lips in some depictions — from an incident with some dwarves.

AREA OF INFLUENCE/CONTROL: Trickster God of the Norse. Also said by some to be associated with fire — with a volcano named after him in Iceland, who could really disagree?

HOLY BOOKS: Loki is mentioned in more than a dozen Eddas.

HOLY DAYS: Any that existed are lost to time. However, in February 2008 there were suggestions of a "movement" to call Saturday "Lokisday," since in English four days already have names based on Norse deities, while Saturday stands out as named for the Roman god Saturn. It was seen as appropriate that the end of the week should be named for a Norse god whose name may have meant "end," and who in two out of three myths was named as the instigator of Ragnarök.

RELATIVES: Farbauti (father), Laufey or Nal (mother), Byleist and Helbindi (brothers — "Helbindi" meaning "One Who Blinds With Death," also a title of Odin); in some accounts Odin and Honir (brothers); Glut (first wife), Angrboda (second wife), Sigyn (third wife); Esia and Einmyria (daughters by Glut); Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged steed (child he gave birth to while in the form of a mare); Fenrir the Wolf, Jörmungandr the Serpent, and Hel goddess of Niflheim (children with Angrboda); Narve/Nari and Vali (sons with Sigyn, not to be confused with the assassin archer god Vali).

SYNODEITIES: All Trickster deities — though not all Tricksters are alike by any means.

Details

Loki, I'm afraid, doesn't get any respect. A complex god who appeared in dozens of Eddas and skaldic poems showing him behaving in a vast variety of ways — some diametrically opposed to other tales of the gods — he has been reduced in modern times to what Benét's fourth edition of the Reader's Encyclopedia puts it: "In Scandinavian mythology, the Satanic Aesir god of strife and evil," noted only for "fathering three monsters," "being the foe of the good gods," and "bringing about Ragnarök."

This, however, is not because Loki was evil — but because the narratives of the deeds of the Norse gods were not written down to become fixed until the Christian era. While the sagas were tales of beings capable of nuance and depth, the fetish those recording them had for an utterly black-and-white worldview gave us the Loki pronounced in Benét's Encyclopedia.

Who then is the "real" Loki?

That is an impossible question to answer — or at least impossible to answer and make everyone happy — because during the millennium or more that these deities were worshiped from the Arctic Circle to Central Europe, they changed from land to land, people to people, and even from tribe to tribe.

Unlike the accepted tale of today — where Loki's treachery brought about the death of Baldr the Sun god — we find other versions where Loki does not even appear. Or where Baldr, rather than being the perfect being, is a thug. Or even one where Loki does the deed, but not as an act of evil: at the request of Odin, who knows that the only way for Baldr to return and create a new world after the End is for him to be sent to the only one of the nine worlds that will not be destroyed during Ragnarök — Niflheim. So that Loki's killing of Baldr, and his punishment for the deed, is not an act of evil but an act of self-sacrifice for the greater good.

But things like that — and others, such as him being both the oldest and the youngest of the Norse gods — was just not something that your average medieval monk putting them down in Latin could wrap his tonsured head around. For that matter, neither can most of us, with our need for white and black hats.

The only constant that can be truly said about Loki is that there are no constants about Loki other than change.

As a Trickster God, he is a line-crosser and a boundary-breaker, capable of doing things that seem good, evil, or simply insane — but always with a purpose. That most people, then or now, cannot fathom what this purpose might be leads to so many taking the easy route and labeling Loki, as they label so many Tricksters, as evil.

Colophon

Originally posted to soc.religion.paganism on February 29, 2008 — a date McCombs would have noted was itself a boundary-crossing day — as part of his long-running "God/dess of the Month Club" series. McCombs posted monthly cross-cultural deity profiles to this newsgroup from 2003 onward. This profile covers Loki as the March 2008 entry, filed on Leap Day. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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