Gods and Myths of Northern Europe

female figure catches it in a bowl to keep it from his face (see page 37). At Gosforth we have a cross where heathen motifs concerned with the end of the world – Heimdall’s horn, the killing of the serpent and so on – appear to have been deliberately chosen because they can be presented in accordance with Christian teaching also, and interpreted as the victory of Christ over the powers of hell, and the coming of the Last Judgement. The fact that the bound figure is found among these suggests that Loki here is equated with the bound Devil of apocalyptic tradition, and that he was therefore a figure familiar to the early converts. Olrik made a detailed study of folklore connected with the bound giant of the Caucasus region,¹ and while few now would follow his conclusions all the way, he has shown that the idea of a bound giant is a pre-Christian conception, and seems to have existed independently of ideas about the binding of Satan from Christian sources.

Jan de Vries² has made a full analysis of the sources in which Loki is mentioned. Many of these are late, and the stories of Loki’s tricks contained in them are likely therefore to be late additions to his character, told for the sake of entertainment. He came to the conclusion that the chief characteristic of Loki likely to go back to earlier myths is his talent as a thief. Again and again he steals or hides the treasures of the gods: the apples of youth, the belt and gloves of Thor, the necklace of Freyja. This side of Loki’s character was certainly familiar to the early poets, while Dumezil would go even further, and trace the conception of Loki as the master thief back to remote antiquity, among the fundamental mythological concepts of the Indo-European peoples.

Attempts have been made from time to time to see in Loki some link with a fire god, on the grounds of the resemblance between his name and Logi, ‘fire’. There seems however to be little real evidence to support this. When, in Snorri’s tale of Thor’s journey to Utgard, Loki takes part in an eating contest with Logi (see pp. 33–4), this seems to mean no more than that the Norse storyteller was also aware of the superficial resemblance between the two names. Loki does not behave like a fire-spirit, and indeed he seems to be as much at home in the water as on the earth, so that some scholars have even tried to see him as a water-spirit. Other theories which try to establish Loki as an early god in the Germanic world have not been very successful. In the nineteenth century a charm was recorded by a clergyman from Lincolnshire, who claimed to remember hearing it spoken by an old countrywoman when he was a boy:¹

Thrice I smites with Holy Crock,

With this mell [hammer] I thrice do knock,

One for God, and one for Wod,

And one for Lok.

It is tempting to see this as a folk survival of belief in three heathen gods, Thor of the hammer, Woden, and Loki, and some Danish and German scholars accepted it as such, and built up elaborate theories accordingly. But this isolated scrap of doggerel, which moreover was recorded in at least three different versions by the clergyman in question,² is an extremely fragile foundation on which to base assumptions concerning the beliefs of the Danes in Lincolnshire in the ninth century. A verse claimed to have been heard once in boyhood and not recorded until many years later needs corroborating evidence before it can be generally accepted.

Loki, the thief, the deceiver, and the sharp-tongued scandalmonger who outrages the gods and goddesses by his malicious revelations in Lokasenna, yet who nevertheless seems to be accepted as a dweller in Asgard and a companion of the greatest gods, is hard to comprehend. However, it was in view of these queer contradictions in his character that resemblances were pointed out between Loki and the supernatural Trickster who plays a great part in the myth and folklore of a number of North American tribes.¹ The trickster is greedy, selfish, and treacherous; he takes on animal form; he appears in comic and often disgusting situations, and yet he may be regarded as a kind of culture hero, who provides mankind with benefits like sunlight and fire. At times he even appears as a creator. He can take on both male and female form, and can give birth to children. He is, in fact, a kind of semi-comic shaman, half way between god and hero, yet with a strong dash of the jester element, foreign to both, thrown in. The figure of the trickster was clearly a popular one among storytellers, and tended to attract to himself all sorts of folk-tales.

There is no doubt that this figure bears a resemblance to that of Loki at many points, and particularly at those points which are most difficult to fit in with any other interpretation of his character. Loki also seems to have become the hero of many folk-tales, told for entertainment purposes only, and many of them late in date; in these he usually plays a comic role. Sometimes the Indian legends about the trickster contain two creator figures, one good and impressive, and the other, the trickster, appearing as a kind of parody of him: a creator whose schemes frequently go awry. Loki as the ambivalent mischief-maker might similarly be seen as a kind of Odin-figure in reverse. It is certainly easier to understand some of the puzzling elements in him if we regard him as a parody of the great creator-gods rather than as consistently in opposition to them. Certain elements in the myths and poems suggest that at one time he was a chthonic figure, connected primarily with the world of the dead, and this would be comprehensible if we see him as a kind of shadow of Odin. Besides his links with Hel, the serpent, and the wolf, and with the horse that carries Odin to the realm of the dead, he appears alongside the giants at Ragnarok, steering the ship that brings them over the sea. In Svipdagsmal he is said to have made the magic weapon Laevateinn, ‘beneath the doors of the dead’.

It is important to remember that there was also a Loki of the outer-regions, Utgard-Loki, who dwelt somewhere to the east of the land of the gods, and was visited on one famous occasion by Thor. This Loki is a giant of tremendous size and power, but his power is not really greater than that of Thor: it depends largely on his cunning and his capacity to perform sight-deceiving magic which makes things appear other than they are. The straightforward Thor is taken in and humiliated, whereas Odin, we feel, would have been perfectly at home in this bewildering world of sleight and fantasy. Comic fabrication though this story may be, it perhaps contains an element of truth in the way in which the Loki giant is set up against Thor. In a similar story in Saxo, but one presented very differently, travellers penetrate into the realm of a terrible giant, who is lying bound in the midst of darkness, like Loki. This giant lies in a land of cold, corruption, and tainted treasures, in fact, in the realm of death itself.

No estimate of Loki can be complete which does not take into account the grim and terrifying background of death to which Loki seems at times to belong. If he were originally a giant of the underworld, with skill in deceiving and disguise, it is conceivable that he would gradually develop in later literature into the figure of the agile trickster, stirring up mischief and parodying the more dignified gods, and so have won a place of this kind in Snorri’s Asgard. Continually following Odin and Thor, yet mocking at them and the goddesses, he has turned into the hero of a series of diverting, sometimes unseemly stories. Only at Ragnarok is it clear where Loki’s real allegiance lies, when he seems to relapse again into the figure of a bound and monstrous giant, breaking loose to destroy the world. Then the nimble-witted Thersites of the court of the gods is replaced by a remote and terrible power. Concerning his relations with Balder, there will be more to say.

7. Balder

The last of the enigmatic gods to be considered is Balder, whose fortunes, according to Snorri, were closely linked with those of Loki, so that they cannot be considered wholly apart. Here the problem is not so much one of diversity, as with Heimdall, nor of inconsistency, as with Loki, but is one caused by the fact that we have two widely different pictures of Balder’s death, given by Snorri and Saxo. There is little evidence of any early cult of Balder, and the question appears to be largely one of literary sources and traditions linked with his name.

The earliest mention of Balder is in the Second Merseburg Charm, where he is mentioned along with Phol and Wodan:

Phol and Wodan rode to the wood.

Then Balder’s foal sprained its foot.

Then chanted Sinhtgunt and Sunna her sister,

Then chanted Friia and Volla her sister,

Then chanted Wodan, as he well knew how. …

This however does not prove that he was known as a god in heathen Germany. Here we have mention of Wodan and his wife (Friia) and perhaps a fertility pair, Vol (Phol) and Volla. Sunna and Sinhtgunt have been taken as the Sun and Moon, but Balder, which (like Freyr) means ‘lord’, could be no more than a title, and the horse could have belonged to Vol, the fertility god, the only character in the rhyme who does not take part in the spell. Alternatively, Balder might be a hero, aided by the gods and goddesses. The name