Miscellaneous Myths: Loki's Wager

Norse mythology is a little frustrating to research. We only really have two sources to draw on. There's the Poetic Edda, which is a collection of anonymous old Norse poems, and the Prose Edda, which was written in Iceland by Snorri Sturluson. And both of them date to at least a century after the region was fully Christianized. And while there's a lot of content in these eddas, the fact that none of it is pre-Christian has frustrated researchers for centuries, because it can be very hard to tell how much of it is original, and how much of it is a Christian addition. For instance, there's a very jarring segment in one 14th century attestation of Ragnarok that mentions that there's this god of gods who can't be named by the skulls, and created everything and comes to the surviving Æsir after Ragnarok, and is only ever referred to as Fimbultyr, which literally just means mighty god, and is only used as an epithet for Odin outside this specific context. Scholars mostly agree that this whole there was another god the whole time and they're super cool and we can't say their name and also they were cooler than all the other Æsir and they created the whole universe is probably an extremely obvious bit of retroactive Christianization. But the real frustration is, without earlier sources to compare to, it's almost impossible to tell for sure what else might be a similar retcon. And this really gives us trouble when it comes to Loki, who has a tendency to get rewritten as actually Satan due to his role in triggering Ragnarok and also his general bad attitude. Many later translations of the eddas will go out of their way to call Loki a serpent, an epithet that he never has outside of that context. So it can be hard to tell how much of Loki's genuinely malicious attitude is a later addition, or if he was just supposed to be some kind of relatively harmless mischief maker in the original version. The fact is, aside from killing Baldur, Loki mostly just causes problems on purpose and then gets cartoonishly walloped by the consequences. He's not some glamorous prince of darkness, he's a Looney Tunes antagonist. And very few stories illustrate this better than that time he nearly got his head cut off for no reason. So our story begins, as so many do, with Loki getting bored and deciding to make trouble. And for today's zany scheme, he decides to cut off Sif's hair. Now, two things about Sif. One, her long golden hair was one of her most striking characteristics, and possibly representative of fields of golden wheat representing a fertility aspect to her divinity. And two, she's married to Thor. So neither of them take this sudden hairstyle adjustment very well, and Thor promises to break every bone in Loki's body unless he finds a way to fix it. So Loki runs off to the dwarves, who in Norse mythology are magical smiths capable of crafting some pretty incredible things. Loki commissions them to make Sif some replacement hair, and they craft a set of magic golden hair that'll grow just like the real thing once she puts it on. And then I guess they get bored or something, because they also take the time to forge the legendary spear Gungnir, and the legendary boat... Oh god. Scythblathnir. Ugh. Whose most noteworthy quality is its ability to fold up and fit into a pocket when not in use. But I guess when there's no one else around to make trouble for, Loki will make problems for himself, because he makes a bet with Brokk the dwarf that his brother Sindri can't make three artifacts even cooler than the ones they'd already made. The wager is Loki's head, and with the stakes needlessly elevated, Brokk and Sindri get to work. Loki wastes no time in cheating, obviously, and turns into a stinging fly to distract Brokk while he works the bellows. But Brokk stays stoic throughout the forging of the first two artifacts, and only momentarily cracks to swat at him when they're prepping the metal for the third one, causing some of the iron to become unusable. With the three artifacts forged, Loki, Brokk, and Sindri head to Asgard to present the goods. Thor and Sif are very satisfied with the hair, Odin is happy to have a new spear, and Freyr gets the amazing collapsible boat. Then Brokk and Sindri unveil the three bonus artifacts. The first is a golden boar named Gullenbursti that can run over water or air and also glows in the dark. The second is a magic ring for Odin called Draupnir that drops eight copies of itself every nine days. And finally, the third artifact is a hammer that they present to Thor, capable of incredible feats of smiting that'll never miss its target and is guaranteed to return to the hand when thrown. The only flaw in it is a slightly shortened handle, but despite this shortcoming, Thor is extremely happy with the newly forged Mjolnir, and they all agree that this artifact is the greatest of them all. So Loki realizes he just lost the bet and promptly skedaddles, although Thor catches up to him pretty quickly and retrieves him. Then when Brokk moves to cut off his head, Loki's like, I said you could have my head, but I never said anything about you taking my neck. Brokk is pretty unimpressed, but he does manage to compromise. Loki keeps his head, but the dwarves do sew his mouth shut first. It doesn't last long, of course, but that was probably the quietest afternoon Asgard had seen in a long time. At the table there'll be time enough for counting when the dealing is done