If a man is found to be in adultery with another man's wife, then it is the law of the town, that he shall be drawn by her through the town, up one street and down another, by that same limb with which he committed the sin with her, and thus shall be finished with the matter.[397]
This law was well-known (as you can imagine) and turned up in French municipal law from the late 11th century, where it was stipulated that both parties should be naked. The law spread through the 12th century, and reached Scandinavia from Lübeck.[398] As Lindow points out, the humiliation is public (skamstraff) as is Skadi's quest for compensation, and the penalty is for adultery, and she has demanded a god in marriage. Further, physical punishments were reserved only for the lower classes, the thralls, while free men paid fines. Castration in particular was a punishment for thralls, and this tug-of-war would certainly bring that to mind.[399]
Going even further, if we accept the idea of the adultery penalty, Loki is posing as a penniless adulterer, whose partner was a nanny-goat. Its beard in particular is a symbol of gender ambivalence. The fact that it was generally a symbol of masculinity (this seems to have been an era when men generally went bearded, if art be believed) lent force to insults like tađskegglingr "little dung-beard, part of a niđ directed towards Njall's sons in Njals saga. Both parties, in fact, are gender-ambivalent, since the female has a beard and the male has in the past been not just female but a mare. (Calling a man a mare was a killing matter, remember.)
When we consider that the Aesir collar Loki and threaten him when they realize that Idunn is missing, and how Thiazi abused Loki, we think of both Carol Burnett's definition of humour: tragedy plus time,[400] and Karl Marx's observation that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.[401] (Of course, it stops being funny later, when Skadi's prediction comes true and she finally gets her revenge.)
So it would seem that part of what made Skadi laugh was the total humiliation that Loki was willing to undergo, or at least pretend to undergo.
Thirdly, this part of the Skadi myth has echoes from other myths in other parts of the world. These come from Greece, Egypt and Japan, which may seem a bit far-flung, but their themes repeat those of the European tales and bring them into the realm of myth.
From Greece comes the myth of Demeter, whose daughter Persephone was carried off by the god Hades to be his bride. In her grief and anger, she declared nothing would grow on Earth until she had Persephone back. One day she was sitting deep in depression, when a woman called Iambe came along. Iambe makes the goddess laugh, either by saying something outrageously bawdy, or by raising her skirt. In one version, she manipulates her genitals to look like a baby. Shocked, Demeter smiled.[402]
In Egyptian myth, the story of how the sun-god Ra withdrew and returned was part of the larger story of the contention of Set and Osiris. It seemed to come to a logical end when the desert-god Set murdered Osiris, but when Osiris' son Horus grew to manhood, he took up the battle and came to claim the throne of Egypt.
The sun-god Ra chairs a tribunal of the deities to decide whether Horus or Set has the better claim to rule. Unfortunately, Ra is related to Set, and keeps trying to award him the throne. But his own mother, Neith, commanded him to give it to Horus. At this the other gods become angry with him, and the baboon-god Bebon mocks him to his face, saying, “Your shrine is vacant.” Ra goes away in disgust and sulks, and all the other deities are angry with Bebon, for insulting Ra so gravely. Hathor, the goddess of love and pleasure, decides to sort it out, by going to her father Ra, and dancing naked in front of him, showing her genitals to him. He laughs, and the tribunal can resume.[403]
Another myth of rude behaviour comes from further afield – Japan. The sun-goddess Amaterasu hears that her chaotic brother the storm-god wants to visit her. At first she is reluctant, but he promises to behave, and she gives him permission. His violent nature proves too strong for him, however, and he destroys her crops, piles faeces on her throne, and causes the death of one of Amaterasu’s weaving maidens. Amaterasu is so offended she hides away in a cave and refuses to come out. The entire world becomes dark, and the other deities get together to decide what to do. As the anxiously confer outside her cave, one of the goddesses starts to sing and clap, then jumps up on an overturned washtub and begins a striptease, all the while singing and making bawdy remarks. The other deities roar with laughter, and one of them shouts that they now have a better goddess than Amaterasu. She takes the bait and peeps out. Outside is a mirror that shows her to herself for the first time. While she is still dazzled, the deities immediately grab her and pull her out of the cave, and rope it off so she can never retreat there again. This story is a little different from the others, in that everyone else laughs instead of the goddess, but it does have similarities.
The why is simple enough. In each case, the deity is depriving heaven and earth of benefits only they can give. When Demeter refuses to let anything grow, famine results, and even the gods eventually decide that without humans to worship them, they can’t function. In the case of Ra, he fails to recognize the justice of Horus’ case, destabilizing the land of Egypt and leaving it without a ruler. With Amaterasu, the result of the sun failing to shine is obvious. In each case, grief threatens the natural order, and must be assuaged.
The bawdiness is presumably a shock tactic, to startle the grieving deity into a normal reaction. In the numbness and withdrawal of grief, ordinary measures wouldn’t get through. This probably also explains the folktales discussed earlier.
Another, related, myth sheds some light on why the Aesir might want to propitiate Skadi in particular. A Tamil goddess called either Kanniki or Pattini was associated with a tug-of-war game called the horn game, which doubled as a part of a religious ritual to supplicate the goddess. There is a male horn, and a female one, and the game involves pulling on ropes hooked to the horns until one breaks. It seems that the male horn is the one that should break, for the ritual to be successful.[404] Remind you of anything?
The myth connected to this game is equally suggestive. Kannaki loses her husband, and loses herself in grief. In her madness, she tears off her left breast and throws it down, causing the city of Madurai to catch fire. She then wanders distracted, until when she stops to rest, she sees young men, including Krishna himself, playing the horn game. When the horn breaks, she laughs for the first time since her husband died.
Once again we see the pattern of excess grief, in this case leading to madness, needing to be dispelled by rude play. But there’s another element here that I think is relevant to the Skadi story. Kannaki/Pattini is a goddess of pestilence, like many Hindu village goddesses. All of them require propitiation. Skadi, whose name connects to words meaning “shadow” and “scathe" may have been someone the Aesir didn’t want to fight. Carolyn Larrington contrasts the radiantly beautiful giantesses like Gerdr with the mountain-dwelling ones like Skadi. This remote location was the home of ogresses and troll-women.[405] These latter tend to be extremely hostile to the Aesir; two of them try to kill Thor.
The fact that she finally managed to revenge herself on Loki (fixing a venom-dripping serpent over his face when the gods finally bind him) suggests that she doesn’t forgive or forget. Her grim nature also suggests an old folk-belief, that the dead cannot laugh.[406] Thus Loki’s exuberant vulgarity is aimed at revivifying the goddess, of neutralizing her death-aspect. It may also be significant that one of her titles is “Shining bride of the gods”, hinting that her passage into Asgard marked a change from her connection with the darkness and harshness of winter.
Finally, I would suggest that Loki’s vulgarity is, like that of any good comedian, a comment on the situation he and Skadi find themselves in. His tug-of-war reminds of how Thiazi dragged him, stuck to a pole, across the countryside. The nanny-goat, with its beard, reminds us that Skadi is performing a traditionally male role, and his play with his testicles relates to both his role as the “unmanly” god, and may say something about what he feared S
kadi would do to him. (It may be worth noting that in Snorri's list of giantess names, one is Geitla, "She-Goat".[407]) Finally, as mentioned above, the irony of the whole situation is that her husband-to-be isn’t the one having to pass the traditional suitor test – it’s Loki. I think we can safely assume that Njord never did succeed in making her laugh. This, as much as his falling into her lap, may explain Loki’s charge to her in Lks that he had slept with her. When she laughed, she as good as accepted him.
Chapter 20
Why does Loki borrow a shape if he's a shape-shifter?
Loki's means of rescuing Idunn brings up a number of questions, including why he borrows Freyja's hawk-shape to do it. You would think a shape-shifter like Loki wouldn't need it. Further adding to the mystery is the fact that both Frigga and Freyja have bird-shapes, but the only time we hear of them is when they're loaning them out to Loki.
So I suppose the question in this section is twofold: why does Loki need a falcon/hawk shape, and why don't Frigg or Freyja ever put theirs to use? (That we know of, anyway.) But they've both got them, hanging on the back of the door until Loki borrows them.
It is doubly odd because Thiazi, a giant, can fly in the shape of an eagle, and so can Odin and another giant, Suttungr. (Odin stole the mead of poetry and flew off in the shape of an eagle, with Suttung, also in eagle form, in hot pursuit.) Also, one of Loki's by-names is Lopt, which means "air", suggesting that he should be at ease aloft.
One explanation might be that while Odin and presumably Thiazi have magical powers that allow them to shape-shift, Loki's powers lie more in his cleverness. (Although it gets him into trouble as much as it gets him out of it.) Perhaps after the incident with the giant Geirrodr he was deemed too irresponsible to have a flying-shape of his own.
In that story he borrows Frigga's shape and goes flying about, just out of curiosity[408], and ends up being captured and held hostage by Geirrodr. After being starved into submission, Loki agrees to steal Thor's hammer and bring it to Geirrodr, and gets himself into more trouble as a result.
The Geirrodr myth, by the way, has a striking resemblance to Skr, in which Frey sits in Odin's high seat which allows him to see across the nine worlds, and sees, and falls for, the giantess Gerdr. In both cases one deity uses the legitimate power of another deity for a less than legitimate purpose, and both get into trouble for it. (Loki gets captured and held hostage, Frey has to give up the sword he would have used at Ragnarok.)
In the Thiazi myth, on the other hand, Loki is not flying because he wants to, but because he has to. The gods have threatened to bind him if he does not bring back Idunn, and he travels under compulsion. Once again Loki has to put right what he did wrong, and the bird-costume is just a plot device to get him there.
The other myth in which he borrows Freyja's "feather-cloak" is more positive. Thrym opens with Thor realizing his hammer is missing, and requesting Freyja's aid to help him find it. Loki takes on bird shape and goes looking for it, heading for Jotunheim where he encounters the giant Thrym. The giant not only boasts of the theft, but also demands Freyja as ransom, leaving Loki to wing it home with the bad news.
So, on balance we have one myth where Loki's flying is positive, versus one where he gets himself into trouble in his bird form, and another in which he assumes bird form to make up for trouble he's caused already. Not an impressive record.
Odin's journeys, on the other hand, are in search of wisdom and power. Odin's purposeful travelling is as far removed from idle curiosity as can be, since he wishes to find out as much about the doom to come and means of staving it off as he can.
Odin is often thought of as shamanic, and the quest for wisdom certainly fits in there, as does the flying, which is part of shamanic journeys all over the world. (Loki, by contrast, is a trickster figure.) That would explain his ability to take on bird form. We know that Thiazi can use magic, because he used it to prevent the gods' food from cooking, and to stick Loki to the pole. Suttungr we know very little about, but we do know that giants were supposed to have sources of wisdom and magic that others did not. Which brings us back around to Frigga and Freyja.
It makes sense for Freyja to have a falcon-form. She is almost Odin's female equivalent, keen on the use of magic, and equally keen on war.
Frigga, who always seems like a more stay-at-home type, is a more unlikely person to have a bird-form or have much use for it. Although in addition to the tale of Geirrodr, "queen of falcon-form" could be used as a kenning for her (Skld 18-9), so it was a part of her mythos.
There seems to have been some overlap between Frigg and Freyja, although if you look closely it is obvious that they are very different goddesses. Place-name and other evidence suggests that Frigga was originally a Germanic deity, with only one attested place-name in Scandinavia, on the south coast of Sweden. Freyja, on the other hand, has a very strong presence in Scandinavia, and it may well be that the confusion between them and their attributes reflects the fact that both of them, as consorts of Odin, fill similar slots, despite their very different characters.
The final point of significance about Frigga's and Freyja's falcon-shapes is the species of bird involved. Odin, Thiazi and Suttungr all take the shape of eagles. While both are impressive birds of prey, the eagle is a lot larger than a falcon, so there may be some gender marking here.
In that case, Loki's use of a goddess' plumage may very well be another instance of gender-bending.[409] This fits in several ways. First, shamanic ritual often involved an element of cross-dressing, so perhaps there's a faint echo of that here. Second, we all know that Loki is no stranger to the idea of passing as a member of the opposite sex. (See the rest of Thrym, where he throws himself into his role as "Freyja's" maid, although he may be doing it in part to torment Thor.) Third, the falcon-form underlines Loki's status as not-quite-one-of-us: he doesn't get to be an eagle; he has to settle for being a falcon. Fourth, in two out of the three encounters with giants in these stories, Loki gets humiliated, which underlines his lack of status.
So in the end it makes sense for Loki to use a goddess' plumage. The fact that in two cases out of three, including one from the Poetic Edda, it is Freyja's falcon-form he borrows, suggests that it is Freyja's plumage that he always borrows, and it is perhaps fitting that it is the most sexual of the goddesses that this most ragr of gods has to borrow it from.
Chapter 21
Why Does Loki Keep Getting Stuck?
Loki suffers a great deal in the myths from his unfortunate propensity to stick to things, or alternatively to have things stick to him. He also gets taken prisoner and kept in a chest, as well as threatened with "being trapped" unless he returns Idunn, who was also a prisoner, among the giants.
As I have pointed out before, the giants take Loki prisoner twice, and both times are commemorated in the myths that make up Hst. While the poem does not mention Loki's captivity, preferring to focus on the climactic moment when Thor fights the giant Geirrodr, Loki's reckless flight and imprisonment set the whole plot in motion. Both times Loki is out wandering around for what seems to be no good reason. In the Geirrodr myth "curiosity" is his motive, insofar as he has one, and in the Thiazi story he and Odin and Hoenir are out exploring, or possibly just wandering around.
Both giants ensnare Loki by causing him to stick to something; both of them use some topsy-turvy to accomplish it. Thiazi uses his magic to transform the stick Loki would beat him with into the instrument of Loki's captivity and punishment, Geirrodr uses Loki's wandering against him; he sticks the god to the windowsill, then locks the footloose god in a casket for three months. Loki's curiosity is his undoing, just like Pandora and Eve. (Yes, once again Loki has a feminine failing.) To give Loki credit, he is imprisoned for so long because he refuses to identify himself to the giant. Geirrodr essentially starves him out, which has its echo in Thiazi snatching most of the meat the gods were trying to cook.
These events are part of a larger pattern of Loki being bound or trapped, all leading up to the fi
nal binding. Besides the two already mentioned, we can add the fates of his children, who are fettered, exiled to the world-surrounding Ocean, or cast into Hel. We can also add the incident, which makes Skadi laugh, of Loki tying himself to a goat, which may well have reminded her of his bumping along helplessly behind her father.
Lindow and Rooth would probably suggest that we add his invention of the net, which while ingenious leads to the gods reconstructing his thought and so catching him in order to bind him. As Lindow puts it: "These physical bindings suggest his actual bonds: to the jotnar (Thiazi), to strange sexuality and gender-bending (the she-goat: cf. Clunies Ross 1989, Lindow 1992) to impulsive creative intelligence (the net), and finally to chthonic powers (the rock to which he is finally bound."[410]
In Hst, the language continues this theme. When the gods begin to age, and they realize that Loki is somehow behind this, the verse goes:
— until they found ale-Gefn’s [Idunn’s] flowing corpse-sea [blood] hound [wolf, thief, i.e. Loki] and bound the thief, that tree of deceit, who had led ale-Gefn off. ‘You shall be trapped, Loki,’ the angry one spoke thus, ‘unless by some scheme you bring back the renowned maid, enlarger of the fetters’ [gods’] joy.’
Note the emphasis on binding and being bound; the gods are called the fetters, which signifies many things, including the bond between gods and humans, social bonds in general, and the bonds of contract and law. [411]
These gods bind Loki and threaten him with being "trapped" unless he comes up with a scheme to free Idunn from her bondage among the giants. Ironically, the kenning used for Loki when he becomes stuck to Thiazi is:
Then the burden of Sigyn’s arms [Loki], whom all the powers eye in his bonds, got stuck to the ski-deity’s [Skadi’s] forester [father, Thiassi]. The pole clung to the mighty haunter of Giantland and the hands of Hænir’s good friend [Loki] to the end of the rod.
Njord and Skadi Page 23
