Wakdjunkaga, Loki, Tortoise, Hare: already, early in the course, we've met several tricksters of myth and folklore.
But for one reason or another, we did not have a chance to talk about Loki, the trickster figure of Norse mythology.
I wonder what thoughts you have on Loki? You know what caught my eye and intrigued me? When he was in hiding from the gods and goddesses, after having instigated the death of Baldur, he was taking the form of a salmon. But in the evenings, he worked on constructing a net or weir for the capture of fish, and it was the remains of this very contraption that the gods found in the fire (where Loki had thrown it, as he escaped) when they arrived at Loki's hiding place. They concluded that such a net would be the very thing to catch Loki, in his transfigured form.
Loki is the author of his own undoing? How strange. I'm also interested in the concept of the trap as something closely associated with tricksters.
By the way, there's a fish company that calls itself Loki Fish, which I think is pretty clever. (www.lokifish.com)
--Abbot
Hi, me. I'm posting a comment to myself to encourage my students to start a conversation on this and other blog posts, and to add their own blog entries as well. As for Loki, what about the fact that he is able to kill gods (e.g. Baldur) and also to make them age (e.g. when he steals the apples of immortality)?
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