Loki, the Fun God turned Murderous Pariah

The Birth of the Universe is the fourth episode in the Ragnarök season from Ubisoft's Echoes of History podcast series.

Description

In Norse mythology, Loki has a place of his own. Taken into Asgard as an infant, he grew under the protection of Odin. Rival and friend of Thor, he prefers illusions to sheer force. His magical talents are very useful in Asgard. Little by little, however, Loki turns evil and his tricks do not amuse anyone anymore. In the end, the god of discord will turn against the other gods fighting Ragnarök.

Transcript

• Gylfi: What was I saying before? Oh, yes, it's coming back to me. Does this Loki inspire confidence in you? Not me. To be called the god of discord, there must be something wrong, right? And if I feel it, it must be true. After all, don't my subjects say of me, Gylfi, king of Sweden, that I possess great wisdom? Therefore, I took advantage of my time in Asgard to grill the gods about this Loki...
• Lance Geiger: I'm Lance Geiger, the History Guy, and you're listening to Echoes of History: Ragnarök, a podcast inspired by the video game Assassin's Creed: Dawn of Ragnarök. How much do you know about Odin, Thor, Loki, and their companions? Do you really know them? Dive into Norse mythology alongside gods, elves, magical creatures, dwarves, and giants, a fantastic universe that guided the destiny of the valiant Vikings as much as it inspired the greatest authors. Episode four, Loki, the fun god turned murderous pariah. The character of Loki is omnipresent in Norse mythology. He's in all the fights, with all the tricks of the trade, roaming the universe under several identities. One of his main powers is to transform himself into almost anything. According to his needs, he can be a woman, a horse, a bird, a seal, and even a salmon. The rest of the time, Loki is a rare beauty and his angelic aspect undoubtedly plays a role in the confidence he inspires, in spite of his assumed deceit. It is said that you should keep your friends close, and your enemies closer; thus, Odin keeps Loki close to the gods in Asgard, even though he belongs neither to the Æsir nor the Vanir, the two families of the gods of the Nine Realms. Loki is, in fact, the fruit of the love of a couple of giants taken in by Odin. He makes a blood pact with him, each must help the other or lose his honor.
• Annelie Ireman: Loki is the disruptive element that Odin does not seem to control totally.
• Lance Geiger: Annalie Jarl Ireman, lecturer in Norse studies at the University of Caen.
• Annelie Ireman: We can already ask ourselves, "How can Loki continue to live amongst the gods, since he's not a god, he's in the race of giants?" But he lives among the gods as their friend, as one of their equals. Loki is, in fact, cunning, brave, and appreciated. He often helps the gods, he makes them laugh, too. They like him very much, despite his pranks that sometimes annoy them, and Odin seems to particularly like him, maybe because he recognizes himself in Loki. Odin, too, is selfish and treacherous sometimes.
• Lance Geiger: Married to Sigyn, with whom he has a son, Loki is above all the father of three monstrous children conceived with the giantess Angrboða: the wolf Fenrir, the serpent Jörmungandr, and Hel the goddess of death. These cumbersome offspring will give the gods a hard time.
• Eric Lacey: The gods play out the same drama in many ways to be instructive and to help people navigate between their own social tensions.
• Lance Geiger: Eric Lacey lecturer in language and literature at the University of Winchester.
• Eric Lacey: How does someone like Loki—and Loki's especially interesting here—how does he navigate his own loyalties to his family versus his loyalties to the gods, which are also his family, but the family he's born into as opposed to the family he creates?
• Lance Geiger: As a child, Fenrir is taken in by the gods of Asgard, but over the years he becomes so powerful and aggressive that only Týr, the god of war and justice, can get close to him. The gods all agree on one point, Fenrir must be put out of action. As it is impossible to immobilize him, they use a ruse and the wolf is challenged to play an odd game: let himself be chained to better prove his strength by breaking the link. Amused, the wolf accepts and immediately breaks the chain Læðingr, which the dwarves had made especially for him. Defeated, the Æsir renewed the challenge with a second link, Dromi, twice as strong as the first, but still it cannot resist Fenrir's phenomenal strength. The gods give each other worried looks and decide to send a messenger to the dwarves of Svartalfheim to order an unbreakable chain. The blacksmiths set to work and make Gleipnir, a thin silk ribbon made from the noise of a cat's footsteps, a mountain's roots, a bear's sinews, a fish's breath, a bird's spittle, and a woman's beard. But in front of this chain which seems so fragile, Fenrir is wary. The wolf smells a trick and only agrees to let himself be tied up on the condition that an Æsir leave his arm in his huge mouth as a sign of good faith. Only Týr, the one god who's been able to approach the wolf since his birth, dares to take this insane risk, so Fenrir lets himself be chained, and this time it works. The more he struggles, the more the links tighten. Finally, the wolf gives up and snatches Týr's hand. With Fenrir captured, there's one less threat to Asgard.
• Annelie Ireman: Odin knows he will be killed by Fenrir, and yet, he keeps him close to begin with. We imagine he wants to keep him nearby to keep an eye on him—it's better to have your enemy close—and then Fenrir will be kept until Ragnarök, when his unbreakable chains will break and they'll fight. And as all this is predicted, Odin could not have killed Fenrir when he was a little boy, because Fenrir is here to kill Odin.
• Lance Geiger: Odin then takes care of the snake Jörmungandr. How will he deal with this reptile whose size promises to be gigantic? There's only one solution: get rid of it as soon as possible. The moment he was born, Jörmungandr was thrown into the sea that surrounds Midgard, the realm of men. He grows so large that his body ends up circling the Earth until it bites its own tail. Jörmungandr becomes a formidable opponent, and even Thor begins to distrust him. As for Hel, she is sent to rule the world of the dead, where she collects the souls of all the dead who have not fallen in battle. In the darkest of her world, located under one of the roots of Yggdrasil, she patiently builds a gigantic army. The one whose body is half rotten works in the shadows to prepare for Ragnarök. Every one of these cursed children has an influence on Loki.
• Eric Lacey: Loki gets more and more evil because these children grow up to become colossal threats to the gods, to the universe, to mankind. And this is probably where we see the greatest shift in Loki, as he starts to align himself more with his children, as he goes out of his way to protect his children. And in this way, I still think that he's an interesting, flawed god, because it's a man with torn values. Who does he owe greatest allegiance to? And what happens when there is a tension between what his children want and what his brothers, sisters, and father want? So you do have to feel for him a little bit.
• Lance Geiger: While his three children brood on their anger, Loki starts to change, little-by-little. Before used to help the gods, especially Thor, he now accumulates offenses. He even commits the worst crime, murder. It all begins when, one night, Baldr, son of Odin and god of light, loved by all, has a terrible nightmare that announces his imminent death. Deeply upset, he goes to find his mother Frigg to talk to her about these images that haunt him. Frigg doesn't take her son's dream lightly and uses her powers over nature. Every stone, every plant, every animal, and even the earth, water, and fire must swear to the goddess that they will never harm Baldr. He is saved. Moreover, relieved to know that he is now out of danger, the gods have fun throwing all sorts of things at him without him suffering even the slightest scratch. A deity of light who spreads love and peace around him: remind you of Jesus, perhaps? Unsurprising, Baldr is a character very much influenced by the arrival of Christianity in Scandinavia at the time.
• Annelie Ireman: Originally, he was probably as war-like a god as the other Æsir because the Æsir represented a very manly heroism, and when the new religion came to the north, this new god—Jesus—was first added to the others because there were so many gods. One more, one less, it didn't make much difference, and since Snorri wrote his Edda in the 13th century after Christianization, Snorri will be marked by the new values, the new habits. And he insists on the gentleness, the kindness of Baldr, whom he describes as luminous, beautiful, and wise, and that establishes a connection between him and Jesus.
• Lance Geiger: In his corner, Loki is the only one not to rejoice for Baldr and wonders how such a miracle is possible. To find out more, he who likes to disguise himself so much slips into women's clothes to go and find Frigg and in a way question her. Reassured by the appearance of this woman, Odin's wife confided that only a branch of mistletoe could still hurt her beloved son. Judging this plant too young and too frail, she didn't consider it necessary to make it take an oath like the others. This is all Loki needed. He immediately goes to get the mistletoe and returns to the field where the gods and Baldr are playing what is now their favorite game. The god of mischief innocently approaches Höðr, Baldr's blind brother who is unable to participate in the festivities and who suddenly stays away. Loki is a good actor, pretending to sympathize and offering to guide Höðr so that he, too, can throw a projectile at Baldr—only it is the branch of mistletoe that Loki puts in his hand. Baldr falls dead, struck by the only thing that could hurt him. In Asgard, there's widespread dismay. The gods are desperate, Odin is furious, Frigg is inconsolable. Hermóðr, another of Baldr's brothers, is immediately dispatched to Helheim to try to bring back the beloved god. The goddess Hel agrees to free Baldr and send him back to Asgard on one condition: every being in the universe must mourn the death of the god of love. Messengers are sent to the four corners of the world to ask all living beings to shred a tear for Baldr, and everyone complies all except a giantess named Þökk. She did not love Baldr when he was alive, and so she will not mourn his death, an act which in fact condemns Baldr to remain among the dead for eternity. Except that behind the features of this giantess with a heart of stone hides the master of disguises, Loki.
• Eric Lacey: Loki's trickster nature seems to help the gods initially, and then gets a little bit darker, really with that moment where he kills Baldr, and that's probably part of the encroaching influence of Christianity. And then from this point, it gets worse and worse, he aligns much more with his children.
• Lance Geiger: The betrayal of the god of discord does not escape Odin. The father of the gods sees everything that happens in the universe and immediately orders the gods to hunt down the traitor. They find him in a house perched on top of a mountain, where he had taken refuge. This time, the punishment will be heavy for Loki, he went too far. He is tied to sharp rocks that sink into his shoulders, his kidneys, and his feet. Then he is placed under the mouth of a poisonous [sic] snake whose poison drips on him. Sigyn, his wife, does everything she can to protect him. To prevent the poison from reaching him, she holds a cup over her husband, but when she has to empty the container, she cannot prevent the venom from dripping, which causes Loki painful burns. The pain is so great and he struggles so violently that he causes terrible earthquakes. From the kind jester who amused the gods with his antics and helped them with his craftiness, Loki has become a fratricidal killer, banished from Asgard for his misdeeds. Humiliated personally, and through the fate reserved for his children, Loki does not even have the right to die. So, chained, he prepares his revenge. He waits for his time to come, and when it comes, he will unleash his anger onto Asgard.
• Eric Lacey: And there's a temporariness to it, because the gods know that, one day, Loki will escape, and that day will be Ragnarök, and then Loki will take his, his vengeance for his dire punishment. And it breeds this cycle of violence that is very, very familiar in old Norse society. There was law, but there's also the rule of law of vengeance. So, if somebody killed a person that you—that was a member of your family, they either had to pay for it with cash or they had to pay for it with blood, and we see, in some ways, Loki's place in Ragnarök being part of this paying back for his torture at the hands of the gods in blood by going out to kill them.
• Lance Geiger: The prophecy of Ragnarök has foretold it, and now here we are. Thinking they were simply punishing Loki for his crime, the gods have actually triggered the beginnings of the apocalypse.
• Gylfi: So who was right in the end? Once again, it was me, Gylfi. I told you Loki was devious! Even though I never imagined he would go so far. That story with Baldr, such a horror. You really have to be driven by the darkest evil to kill such a pure god. And I think of poor Höðr, who didn't realize anything. It's made quite a mess of Asgard, and something tells me that this is only the beginning.
• Lance Geiger: Thank you for listening to Echoes of History: Ragnarök, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by Paradiso Media.

Cast

(By order of appearance, host indicated with italics)

• James Brack as Gylfi
  • David Sighicelli (French)
  • Mark Bremer (German)
• Lance Geiger as himself
  • Benjamin Brillaud (French)
  • Marios Gavrilis (German)
• Prof. Gísli Sigurdson as himself
• Prof. Eric Lacey as himself
• Prof. Annelie Jarl Ireman as herself

Gallery

• File:ECHOES OF HISTORY - RAGNARÖK EP 4 - Loki, the fun god turned murderous pariah

Behind the scenes

In this episode, Lance Geiger incorrectly describes the snake above the restrained god's head as being poisonous and dripping poison onto him, when the correct terms should involve venom. Poisons are passively delivered toxins often delivered through injestion, inhalation, or absorption through the skin, while venoms are actively delivered toxins sent through evolved apparatuses of fangs and stingers.