Episode 16 - Loki and the Question of Gender

Norse Mythology: The Unofficial Guide

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
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Music:

Celebration by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com) Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/