Show Notes
All Norse gods and goddesses are subject to some level of mischaracterization in popular media, but Loki's frequent shapeshifting into female form have made him a particularly attractive target for embellishment of the story. In this episode I won't be telling you what you should think about Loki, but I will be compiling every little detail we have that could possibly relate to his gender and sexuality, and examining them through the lens of the ancient Scandinavian mindset. Spoiler alert: ancient people didn't conceptualize gender and sexuality the way we do today, but there's no reason why you should be forced to view Loki the way ancient people did a thousand years later. The myths are what you make of them.
Sources:
“Coming to terms with Navajo Nádleehi: a critique of berdache,’gay’, ‘alternative gender’, and ‘two-spirit’” by Carolyn Epple, 1998
“Lokasenna: The Norse Poem of Loki’s Locker Talk” by Jackson Crawford on YouTube, 2017
“Loki” by Jens Peter Schjødt in “Pre-Christian Religions of the North” Volume III, 2020
“Níð, Ergi and Old Norse Moral Attitudes” by Folke Ström, 1974
“The Unmanly Man: Concepts of Sexual Defamation in Early Northern Society” by Preben M. Sørenson, translation by Joan Turville-Petre, 1983
“The Poetic Edda”, original translations in this episode by me
“The Prose Edda”, original translations in this episode by me
Contact:
Write in: waelhraefn (at) gmail (dot) com
Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/Nvw5hmkRsW
Music:
Celebration by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com) Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
More from Norse Mythology: The Unofficial Guide
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