The Messed Up Origins of Loki, the Trickster God | Norse Mythology Explained - Jon Solo

this episode is brought to you by manscaped [Music] what is going on solo fam my name is john solo and in this long awaited episode of mythology explained we are exploring the strange terrible and messed up origins of everyone's favorite trickster loki god of mischief as some of you may remember i ran a poll back in february asking you guys which of the norse gods you wanted me to cover after odin and i wasn't surprised at all to see loki win by a landslide but to me that was just too obvious of a choice if i was going to cover loki i wanted it to be low-key so instead i covered balder who came in dead last in the poll and figured i'd let you loki stan sit and stew for a month or so meanwhile i took that time to research everything i could about the honorary acer reading every myth and poem he's featured in and i've gotta say i don't really like him i know that's a bold statement but as someone who's grown much more familiar with the god from the original norse myths as opposed to the marvel universe or any of his other incarnations i've gotta say he's a lot less charming than most people like to imagine sure he may be as handsome as i am with a silver tongue to boot and yes his hygienes do make for some comical situations but if you were one of the acer and actually had to deal with loki's shenanigans first hand i'm fairly confident you'd want to pick up meowl near and send his head flying a few football fields away but don't worry loki stands that never actually happens instead he suffers a fate significantly worse than that however before we get to loki's torture and the many pranks that precede it i've got to say thanks to this week's sponsor manscaped so i think we can all agree that for loki to cause as much trouble for the gods as he did he must have had balls of steel but even steel balls need to be properly cared for and while normally i'd take this opportunity to promote manscape's fast line of products to keep your package looking perfect things like 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holding off on scooping their perfect package 3.0 now is the perfect time to make the switch just go to manscape.com and use code solo20 at checkout to get 20 off and free shipping anywhere in the world your balls and your bod well thank you not a bad tie-in if i do say so myself on that note we are ready to get started though as always make sure you smash those like and subscribe buttons like you're the hulk [Applause] and now the messed up origins of loki now i don't think it needs to be said that marvel's portrayal of the trickster god is not very true to the mythos in terms of his personality and general attitude i think they hit the nail right on the head and the main conflict created by loki in the first movie is a great representation of his schemes and myth but the specifics of his backstory are where it feels the most disconnected for example in the marvel cinematic universe odin adopts loki as his son after he defeats the frost giants along with their leader laufey who is actually loki's real father but chose to abandon him due to his small size in the actual mythos his father is a giant but that giant's name is farbauti which means cool striker meanwhile his mother is the one named lauffy and maybe the real reason he was integrated as one of the acer gods unfortunately no one knows for sure how he became a member of such an exclusive club but in story sterlison's prose etta which is one of the few surviving sources we have for norse mythology he mentions lauffy in a list of goddesses so it's possible she was his way in regardless he wasn't thought of as odin's son but instead more of an adopted brother and actually in some versions of the myth that details how humans were created he fills in the role typically assigned to odin's brother vay as the one who gave humans the gift of heat only in this case he's referred to as lother which is theorized to be an older name for loki confused yet if so don't worry even the norse experts are baffled by the mythos sometimes all that's really important is that loki and odin have a relationship that goes back farther than many of the other gods in the pantheon which is part of the reason that he tolerates him despite the amount of trouble he causes and wow does he cause some trouble while he is described as being fair and beautiful a face just like your boy tom hiddleston he's also said to be evil in disposition and very fickle minded to the point where he surpasses all other men with his ability to cheat and deceive and i don't think i need to point out these are not respectable traits for anyone to possess which may have something to do with the fact that we've never found any evidence that loki was worshiped like the other gods which isn't very surprising when you think about it after all he often gets the other aesir who we know were worshiped and respected into deep even life-threatening trouble that he then has to get them out of with his trickery in fact i've got a great example of such shenanigans coming up next section so let's just get to it so we already went through who loki was descended from but now we should talk about his descendants because almost everyone plays an important role in norse mythology the first two that i should mention are vali and narfy we don't know who he made volley with but narphie is a son by sagan the goddess who's considered to be his main squeeze though all three of them are only really involved in one particular myth that we're going to talk about later next are his three children by anger botha the giantess their names were yerman gunder hell and fenrir these are the ones that in the words of the old texts are going to cause much mischief for the gods one day and that's putting it lightly you see that mischief they're going to play a hand in is ragnarok aka the end of the world as we know it and odin knew about this from various prophecies and dreams that he and the other gods had so something had to be done that would let them keep an eye on these chileans so odin sent some of the acer to retrieve loki's children from the land of the giants where they were being raised and then moved them to places that would be somewhat less problematic jorman gunder also known as the world serpent was thrown into the mid-guard sea where he would eventually grow to be so large that he encircled the whole world and could bite his own tail he and thor are destined to fight to the death once ragnarok comes hell loki's daughter who looks half like a corpse and half like a healthy young lady was given the job of overseeing the spirits of the dead from each of the nine worlds most people interpret this as her being sent below the earth into the region that would become known as helheim but for some reason snorri writes that she sent to niflheim which is the primordial world of ice interestingly snorri is also the only one who describes life after death as being full of cold bitter winds and misery unless you died in battle in honor of odin i'm not nearly smart enough to say there's for sure a connection there but to me it sounds like he sort of repurposed niefelheim after it served its initial purpose of combining with the heat of muspelheim and forming the mass of ice in the gnungagap by the way if none of the words i just said make any sense to you i've got a video or two that can help you out now loki's third child with anger botha fenrir had the special attention of odin because he specifically was prophesized to kill the all-father during ragnarok as a result they had to put him somewhere that they knew he wouldn't be a threat to anyone and bound him up on an island in the middle of a lake with a sword lodged in his mouth to prop it open in so much saliva flowed from his open mouth that it formed a river called van which is old norse for hope kind of an ironic name don't you think now there's one more son of loki that a lot of you have been asking me to talk about since i started covering norse mythology a few months ago his name is sleptner and he has what may be the weirdest and funniest conception myth we've ever talked about see in the early days of asgard just after midgard and valhalla were established a builder came to the acre and offered to build a wall that could protect asgard against mountain giants and frost giants and he offered to do it in just three seasons in exchange he wanted the beautiful goddess freya as his wife along with the sun and moon it was quite a hefty paycheck that the ace here weren't exactly willing to agree to that is until loki convinced them to change the terms the builder would only have one season to build the wall and he could only have help from his stallion's fatal fari with the odds seemingly in their favor the gods agreed but they soon learned there was more to this builder than initially appeared he started working on his project on the first day of winter and made a lot of progress surprisingly quickly largely due to the help of his noble steed however the acer couldn't back out of the deal or impede the builder in any way as they made a number of sacred oaths and soon they started to blame loki for this predicament and told him that if he didn't figure out how to save freyja they would kill him well nothing motivates loki like the possibility of suffering repercussions for his actions so that same evening he enacted his plan while svathofari and the builder were collecting more stone a rather attractive lady horse ran out of the forest distracting svathofari and causing him to chase after her and disappear into the trees without his most necessary assistant the builder knew he could never move the massive stones that he was using to build the wall and became furious so furious that he revealed his true form as a mountain giant well now the acer had exactly what they needed claiming the builder hid his true nature and that the agreement was made under false pretenses they said they didn't owe him anything and told them to kick rocks as you would expect the builder wasn't too happy about this but before he could do anything about it thor decided to give him a payment of his own and send his hammer flying right through his skull smashing it the bits meanwhile the tech said that loki had such dealings with svathofari that a few months later he gave birth to an eight-legged foal that would go on to be called slept near and become odin's trusted companion you heard that right boys and girls loki flicked a horse or i guess i should say that he let the horse him either way i would love to see the marvel cinematic universe explain how slept near came to be as we saw in the last section loki tends to make decisions that put the aesir in some kind of danger but sometimes these decisions have unexpected positive consequences and this is one of those times the following story which doesn't have an official title but is often referred to as loki's wager comes from the second part of the prose edda in a section called that skaldska parmal skaltskaparmal i have no idea but it translates to the language of poetry it has an overarching narrative that follows dialogue between ajir the personification of the sea and bragi the god of poetry where they discuss a number of norse myths along with the nature of nordic poetry to put it simply you can think of it as a thesaurus of poetry or even more simply an answer key that explains what is meant by certain terms for example ajir asks how the sky shall be referred to in bragi responds with all of its nicknames amir's skull burden of the dwarves land of sun and moon and stars you get the idea while somewhere in this section ajir asks why gold is called sif's hair and the answer is explained by breaking down the following myth one day thor wakes up to see that his wife the typically golden-haired goddess if is completely bald and it turns out that loki is responsible so thor threatens to break every single bone in the trickster's body if he doesn't fix the situation so the newly motivated loki goes to the dwarves known as evaldi sons and persuades them to make three gifts for the gods skid blodner the ship gun year the spear and of course beautiful new hair meanwhile he also goes to the dwarves named brock and syndry or e tree and wagers his own head that they wouldn't be able to make three treasures equally as good as the other dwarves while brock and syndry figured the head of a god would definitely be a useful crafting material somewhere down the line so they agreed and got to work first cindy laid a pig skin in the furnace and told brock to blow the bellows and not stop before he could take the skin out of the furnace but while they were working a fly landed on brock's hand and stung him fortunately he was able to focus on his craft and the new item turned out flawless but they still had two more to go sendri put some gold in the furnace and gave brock the same instructions and this time the fly landed on his neck and stung him even worse even still though he managed to stay focused and their finished project was perfect so they get back to it and what do you know but the fly lands on brock's eyelids this time and stings him so much that blood starts running into his eyes and while he only stopped bellowing for a second so we could wipe it away that alone was enough to damage what they were working on despite that though their time was up and they had no choice but to deliver their imperfect goods to asgard for the contest where they'd be judged by odin thor and frey loki presented the treasures made by of aldisons odin received gunyar the spear that would never miss its mark frey was given skith blothner the ship that would always have a fair wind and could be folded together like a napkin and thor received the golden hair which he gave to sieve and grew as soon as it was placed on her head as you would expect the gods were all impressed and pleased with their gifts but then it was time for brock to produce the treasures that he and syndry made the god frey received the boar named golden bursty that they made from the pigskin this bad boy could run through the air and overseas faster than any horse could on land and its golden bristles could shine through any darkness the all-father was given the golden ring drop near which every ninth night would produce eight other golden rings as heavy and solid as itself and last but not least thor received the hammer meow near which could never be damaged no matter how hard he swung it would always return no matter how far he threw it and could even shrink down so he could hide it anywhere on his person but jon i thought you said they messed up one of the projects oh but they did see the hammer was supposed to have a much longer handle but thanks to loki i mean the fly's interference the handle was much shorter than expected despite that imperfection the gods all agreed the hammer was the best of all the treasures and to loki's horror declared brock and syndry the winners meaning he owed them his head naturally the trickster tried bribing his way out of the deal but brock said there was no way that was going to happen then loki said that brock would have to catch him first and zipped away in his magic shoes that could run through the air and over the sea it was up to thor to catch him and bring him back but then loki tried breaking his agreement on a technicality saying he owed them his head but they weren't allowed to touch his neck meaning that collecting the debt would be impossible at this point brocket had enough and decided he'd meet him somewhere in the middle instead of harvesting his head he simply sewed his mouth shut to give everyone some peace and quiet an appropriate punishment for loki if i do say so myself but check this out back in 1950 a stone was discovered on a beach near snaptune denmark that was carved around the year 1000 and featured a mustachioed face along with scarred lips that has since been identified as loki and considered a reference to this very story the stone was believed to be a hearthstone in the nozzle of the bellows like the one brock was using would be inserted into the hole in the front of the stone while air from the bellows pushed flames through the hole on top it really makes you think about the theory suggested by jacob grimm of brothers grim infamy that in the early days of the mythos loki may have originally been a god of heat and fire that was eventually combined with another deity it would make sense when you put that theory together with the idea i mentioned earlier that lother the god who gave humans heat may have been loki also this may be a bit of a stretch but that carving makes me wonder if that's at all close to what brock and syndry had in mind when they tried to take loki's head like what better way to spread your reputation as legendary blacksmiths than have visitors to your workshop see that you're using the head of a god as a hearthstone one of loki's best known myths centers around the death of balder the most beautiful and perfect acer to have ever lived now we actually talked about this in great detail last episode so if you want to hear it in its entirety i'd recommend you watch that but here's the condensed version basically what happens is balder has terrible dreams about him dying in the world ending soon after and because in norse culture dreams were prophetic the other racer were pretty concerned about this as a result his mother traveled around the cosmos and extracted promises from everything fire water the earth the air nothing was overlooked except for a single plant mistletoe and loki managed to figure out this one weakness by disguising himself as an old woman and talking to frigg about it the trickster then traveled west to valhalla to collect some mistletoe and either turned it into a spear or a simple dart depending on the version then came up with a plan to kill balder without doing it himself see the acer had recently made a game out of baldur's invulnerability and would take turns trying to hit him with various objects and weapons only for them to miss or destroy themselves to avoid hurting him and it was a great time for everyone except baldur's blind brother had who couldn't participate seeing an opportunity loki gave hodd the dart he made and said this is your chance to be included go ahead and throw it at your brother everyone's going to have a big old laugh when it bounces off only when hod threw it nobody laughed all of the gods went silent as the dark penetrated balder's heart and he fell to the ground dead and if you want further proof that loki's trickery had no limits the gods were given a chance by the god as hell to actually bring balder back under the condition that everything in the world agreed to cry for him and as unlikely as that sounds they almost succeeded until loki got in the way the aesir approached a giantess named thok who many believe was loki in disguise and he she it refused to weep and as a result balder would be trapped in hell until the end of days the story doesn't end here though not long after the death of baldur we have the events of a poem called lokasena which can be translated to loki's flighting for those who don't know a flighting was a contest of insult so basically a norse rap battle and was actually pretty common in their culture we don't have time to go through every single insult he throws out in this episode but to summarize he basically gets wasted and goes for the jugular every time he speaks even if what he's saying isn't totally truthful he claims frigg had an affair with odin's brothers says freya had sex with her own brother makes fun of tyr for having his hand bitten off by his son fenrir and that's just the tip of the iceberg the only reason that odin doesn't kick him out as soon as he starts berating everyone is that loki reminds him that in the days of old they mixed their blood together and swore an oath that they would always drink together eventually thor shows up on the scene but it's just more of the same thing and since thor isn't the most articulate individual all of his insults resort to threatening loki with his hammer after the events of the dinner conclude loki realizes that strategically it may not have been a smart move to insult every single one of the gods so he hides out in a little cabin in the mountains where he spends his days disguised as a salmon that swims in a nearby river it doesn't take long for the acer to track him down though and they punish him and his family in one of the worst ways you can imagine after transforming his son volley into a wolf and making him tear apart his own brother narfy they took narfy's intestines and used them to bind loki to three big rocks then turn them into chains after this the goddess skadi took a serpent and hung it over loki so its venom would drop onto his face and his wife sigin was cursed to stand by him holding a dish to catch the venom it gave him a little relief here and there but every so often she'd have to dump the venom out and when she did that his face was exposed to the snake every time a drop of venom made contact with his skin he would jerk his body so violently that it would cause earthquakes but even still he could never break the cursed chains until the dawn of ragnarok so if you've been watching my norse series since the beginning you'll probably notice that i mentioned ragnarok in pretty much every episode but there's good reason for it the end of life as we know it was a huge part of the religion and a unique part of that so much so that i'm eventually going to make an entire video breaking it down that being said i want to explore the event a bit in this episode because of the special role loki plays and how it unfolds and the creative spin that marvel put on that role in their movie thor ragnarok now according to the actual myth the death of baldur is what triggers ragnarok where in the movie it's the death of odin though loki is technically responsible for both as he's the one who put a curse on odin which took immense strength for him to break and took its toll on his overall health another big difference is that when ragnarok starts in the myth all the chains in the world will be broken that means any bound up monster including loki and his son fenrir will be freed to unleash havoc then loki leads the charge along with his children fenrir the world serpent and his daughter hell who has an army of her own to fight against the fallen warriors of valhalla in the movie odin's death also triggers the breaking of chains but instead of chains it's the lock on his daughter hellas prison and instead of loki being the one who leads the charge against asgard it's her along with her old steed fenris wolf and their army of undead soldiers another point of comparison i actually find to be pretty funny is that in the myth loki is the one steering the ship that takes he and his armies to the battlefield a wide open plane called vigread but in the movie he shows up on a spaceship to save the remaining asgardians your savior is here talk about a change of heart in the movie he's also the one who summons the fire giant surtur by combining his crown with the eternal flame and while sirter does show up in the myth to destroy basically anything that's left over after the battle his arrival has nothing to do with loki now i'm sad to say that despite the importance of loki's character and the influence he has over a multitude of myths his death is pretty anticlimactic with odin we're told he's swallowed whole by fenrir before his death is avenged by vali with thor we learned he managed to kill the world serpent but only took nine steps before collapsing dead himself either from exposure to the serpent's venom or pure exhaustion when it comes to loki's death we get a single line and it goes as follows loki fights with heimdall and they kill each other that's it nine words is all we need apparently i'm not gonna complain too much though we've been talking for a while and it's about time i wrap this up anyway now i'm sure there's a few of you who are waiting for me to touch on other myths involving loki like when he had to steal ether's apples of immortality back from the giants or steal thor's hammer back from the giants but i thought those would fit better in videos dedicated to the characters the gear was stolen from despite that i hope you still learn something new from this episode and are looking forward to what's to come in the meantime though i'm curious after hearing everything we discussed today what is your opinion on loki personally i can appreciate his character from a distance but again if i were actually expected to work with the guy like the acr are i think i'd look into switching teams and joining the vanier gods because he doesn't seem to mess with them nearly as much make sure to comment any and all thoughts you may have down below and if you want to get more content like this delivered to your sub box and recommended feed make sure you hit those like and subscribe buttons for those who can go on social media without wanting to blow your brains out you should follow me on twitter facebook and instagram because those are the best ways to stay updated on messed up origins news i don't post too much on facebook because they make you pay money to actually reach your followers and then lie to you about how many people saw your post but the other two are great choices and for those who can't stand social media and need a way to purify their feed go ahead and follow my son gunther be sure to put a smile on your face whether it's intentional or not i'll see you all again next thursday in another episode of messed up origins until then my name is john solo and remember john shot first [Music]

Channel: Jon Solo

Views: 144,204

Rating: 4.9665413 out of 5

Keywords: messed up origins, jon solo, jon solo mythology explained, jon solo disney explained, jon solo messed up origins, messed up origins loki, jon solo norse mythology, norse mythology explained, norse mythology loki stories, loki death, Loki Trailer, loki sleipnir story, neil gaiman norse mythology, greek mythology, Loki marvel vs myth, norse mythology stories, messed up origins baldur, complete mythology nine norse worlds, messed up mythology, loki's wager, sif's hair

Id: _bgdT8b0N2s

Length: 24min 4sec (1444 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021