Matt Lewis (2:02)

Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval From History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to Popes to the Crusades.

Matt Lewis (2:22)

We cross centuries and continents to delve.

Matt Lewis (2:25)

Into rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories, big and small, that tell.

Matt Lewis (2:30)

Us how we got here. Find out who we really were with.

Matt Lewis (2:34)

Gone Medieval.

King Gylfie (Narrator) (2:44)

I, King Gylfie, have returned to you once more to continue our tales of the gods. You have heard of the creation of the world and of the gods who rule with Odin in Asgard. Amongst their numbers are two who are the most powerful. Odin's firstborn son is named Thor, and the poets say of him strength and prowess attend him, wherewith he overcometh all living things.

Matt Lewis (3:26)

Welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. In this special series of five episodes, we're taking a close look at some key areas of Norse mythology. We began well at the beginning with a creation story, before Elena helped us get to know Odin and the other gods who while away their time in Asgard. In the next episode, Elena will try to work out how to get into the halls of Valhalla, where there's meat and drink aplenty. Before I'm back to investigate the Norse version of the end of the world, Ragnarok. Now, though, we're going to meet two more of those mighty beings the Norse called gods. Among the gods of Norse mythology, two are perhaps best known. These. Thor, the God of thunder, and Loki, who we remember as the God of mischief. They found fame as part of Marvel's cinematic universe. But what did Vikings think of these two? Were they forces for good or for evil? They're often found together as companions and are frequently foes fighting against each other. King Gylfie will tell their story as the Edda gives it, before I'm joined by Caroline Larrington to tell us more.

King Gylfie (Narrator) (4:41)

As Odin's eldest son, Thor possesses power and magic beyond imagination. He rides in a grand chariot pulled by two great goats named Tooth Nashor and Tooth Gritthr. He also possesses three mighty treasures befitting of such a God. The first you may have heard of it is his hammer, Mjolnir. The giants whom Thor hates fear Mjolnir, for when it is raised against them, it has left many with a sore head. Thor's second treasure, and perhaps his most precious, is his girdle of might. When he wraps it about him and fastens the clasp, his godly power is increased again by half. His strength is something unfathomable to a mortal, yet it is magnified even further. The final item is a pair of iron gloves. Without these, Thor cannot wield Mjolnir. And so he is a great power, a mighty foe, and fills those who meet him with dread and terror. Another famous God among those in Asgard is Loki. Loki is called the Mischief Monger and the first father of falsehood. He is the son of a giant, and as beautiful as he is to look upon, he is equally evil in his Spirit Loki is always seeking ways to trick the rest of the gods, to drag them into turmoil so that he might help them out of the pit he dug and appear as their friend with his wife Sigun. Loki has a son named Nari, but this is not the only child of Loki. In Jotunheim. He had an affair with the giantess Angrboda, and they had three children together. When Odin learned of this, he and the other gods knew that these children of Loki would be troublesome, and so Odin ordered them brought to him. The first was Fenris, the wolf, whom the gods tried to restrain with strong chains, but none were strong enough. Eventually, Odin sent a messenger to the black elves and to the dwarves, causing them to make a great restraint named Gleipnir. It was made of six the noise of a cat's footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a rock, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish, and the spittle of a bird. The restraint was soft, like a silken band, yet strong. The wolf was bound but one amongst the gods, Tyr laid his hand into the wolf wolf's mouth, but Fenris bit it off, which made the restraint indestructible. The gods bound the wolf to a stone and buried him deep in the center of the earth, where he howls to be unleashed so he might have his vengeance. Some say he will one day slay the mighty Odin. The second of Loki's children with Angr Aboda was named Jormunganda, the Midgard serpent. This snake Odin cast into the sea, where he wrapped himself around the land. The serpent grew so large that it encompassed all the land and even now bites upon his own tail. The third child is a daughter named Hel. Odin cast her to Niflheim, the primordial land of cold and ice, and gave her power over all those in the nine realms who die of old age or sickness. That is all those who do not reach Valhalla. She holds great power there in a fortress with high walls and unbreakable gates. Her hall is called Sleet Cold. Her dish is hunger. Her knife is famine. Disease is her bed. And the threshold to her fortress is the pit of stumbling. If you were to see her, she has a half blue, black, half flesh colored complexion and a fierce face that drives fear into the hearts of all. In the nine realms, Loki often appears as the companion of Thor, but all is rarely as it seems when the God of mischief is involved. There is a story amongst the legends of the gods that illustrates this. The tale of Utgarda Loki on one of their travels in Thor's goat drawn chariot, Thor and Loki looked for a place to rest. A farmer and his family welcomed them and offered them shelter for the night. In gratitude, thoroughly, Thor offered his goats as a feast for them. Knowing that he could resurrect them in the morning and suffer no real loss for his generosity, he slaughtered the goats, spread their hides on the ground and instructed the family to place all the bones whole on the hides. When they had finished eating, the farmer ignored Thor's words and split one leg bone open to eat the marrow before putting it in the hide. In the morning, Thor rose and caused the goats to return to life, but one was lame. Thor immediately knew the cause of this. Now the farmer had two children, a son named Thjalfi and a daughter called Roskva. Terrified by Thor's rage and fearing they would all be killed, the farmer offered his children as servants and Thor accepted. Thor and Loki were traveling to Jotunheim, the home of the giants. After they crossed the ocean, they arrived at a thick forest. As night fell, they looked for a place to shelter and came across a vast hall. Finding no one inside, they settled down for the night. In the early morning, they were shaken awake by a terrible earthquake. Running outside, they found the cause of the trembling of the earth. A giant was asleep and his snoring made the ground rumble and shake. In his hatred of those he deemed monsters, Thor reached for his mighty hammer and moved to kill the sleeping giant. But his enemy awoke at the last moment. The giant introduced himself as Skyrmir, which means boaster, and told the group before him that he knew well enough who they were. Reaching down, he picked up the huge hall in which they had slept and put it on his hand, for it was his glove. Skirmir said that he wished to accompany Thor, Loki and the children and the gods agreed, continuing their journey through the forest. That night, the party slept beneath an old oak tree. Skyr had been carrying all of their provisions in a bag all day, and when the giant fell asleep, Thor tried to open the bag, but found he could not undo the giant's knot with all of his strength. Furious, Thor struck a mighty blow to the giant's forehead, trying to kill him. Skirmir stirred and asked whether a leaf had fallen on his head as he slept. Later that same night, Thor was unable to sleep by the thunderous snores of the giant and again gave him a blow to the head. This time, Skyrmir awoke slowly and asked if an acorn had hit him. Just before morning, Thor resolved to try to kill the giant for a third time, and mustering all his strength, landed another blow. Skermir opened his eyes and asked drowsily whether some bird in the tree above had ruffled itself feathers and shaken some specks of dirt down onto him. The giant took his leave of Thor, Loki and the children as they continued their journey to a castle named Utgard. When they arrived, the gate was locked and nobody was around to open it. But the four found that they could easily slip between the gaps in the bars. Making their way to the hall, they found it filled with people eating and drinking. The ruler of this castle, a giant, noticed them and introduced himself as the king, telling them his name was Utgarda Loki, just like Skyrmir. This giant said he knew very well who was visiting his hall, and he mocked Thor and his companions for their tiny size. Loki asserted that he could eat food faster than anyone in Utgarda Loki's hall. A strange boast, but the giant offered one of his men, named Loki, to meet the challenge. A long trough of meat was placed at the center of the hall. Loki began to eat at one end and Logi at the other. Whosoever should reach the middle first would be the winner. The two reached the middle at exactly the same time. But although Loki had eaten all the meat, Loki had devoured the bones and the trough too, so that he was declared the winner. Embarrassed, Thor challenged anyone in the castle to a drinking contest, confident that this was what he was best at in all the world. Utgarda Loki ordered one of his drinking horns to be placed before Thor. The giant told the God that finishing the horn in one drink was considered a sign of a good drinker. Two drinks was acceptable, and none of his men ever took more than three. Thor took a long, deep draught from the horn, but when he had drunk all he could, the level had barely dropped. Gathering his might, Thor took a second drink, straining to take down all the he could. And this time, the amount in the horn had gone down more. His third drink was the mightiest of all and took all of Thor's not inconsiderable experience. But when he was forced to pause for breath, there was still plenty of fluid left. In frustration and embarrassment, Thor gave up. Uthgarda. Loki offered his sympathy and suggested that instead Thor simply lifted the giant's pet cat off the floor. The God tried, but could not lift the cat with all of his strength. Enraged, Thor challenged anyone in the castle to a wrestling match. Utgard the Loki to insult Thor, set Against him, an old lady named Ellie. Thor lost the contest. The giant king declared that there should be no more contests. Thor and his companions were exhausted from their exploits, and they all settled down for the night. When the company left the castle in the morning, Utgarda Loki escorted them outside the gates. He told Thor that he had been the giant Skyrmir, and that knot on his bag was wrought in iron. Though Thor almost succeeded in undoing it, the giant said that he had deflected the three blows Thor had tried to lay on him that night, causing him to hit the mountains and gouging three broad valleys into them. If you had struck me, Utgarta, Loki said, you would have killed me. The giant continued that Loki had done remarkably well in the eating contest, but that his opponent was Loki, which means fire. Loki had almost out devoured fire itself. The cup from which Dor drank had been connected to the ocean, and the giant had been concerned Dor might actually empty Uthgarter. Loki told him that when he sailed back across the sea, he would notice how much the level had dropped. The cat was no cat, but the great Midgard serpent, whom Thor had succeeded in raising out of the ocean and into the sky. Finally, the old woman who had defeated Thor at wrestling was Eli, whose name means age. The God had wrestled against old age for a long time before he succumbed. Moved to anger at the giant's trickery, Thor raised his hammer to strike the king down. But as he turned to deliver the blow, he found no giant and no castle. The question that remains to be answered, who played these tricks on Thor and his companions? Perhaps the same person who initiated the challenges. Perhaps it was no coincidence that the giant king who tricked the mighty Thor was named Utgarta Loki. Perhaps the great deception had been a trick of the great deceiver all along, and Loki had again led Thor into trouble and embarrassed him. To learn more of these two most famous of the gods and their relationship with each other and mortals, I have once more called upon the finest expert in all of my realm.

Matt Lewis (18:36)

Welcome back, Caroline. It's fantastic to have you on Gone.

Matt Lewis (18:38)

Medieval with us again and it's great.

Caroline Larrington (18:40)

To be back, Matt.

Matt Lewis (18:41)

We've got a couple of really juicy topics to talk about today in Thor and Loki as part of our Norse Mythology series. Well, I guess maybe, you know, we don't need to tell listeners too much because Marvel have told us everything we need to know about Thor and Loki. Right.

Caroline Larrington (18:55)

Well, they've told us quite a lot that's quite useful about Thor and Loki. And in A way I've been pleasantly surprised by how much they've actually kept from the Norse myths. But they haven't told us everything by any means. And they have invented some things, like, for example, the idea that Loki is Thor's adopted brother. No, but you can see how that. That works to make an interesting relationship between the two of them. Neither of them can be without the other. In that case.

Matt Lewis (19:25)

Yeah. Yeah, fantastic. Well, I'm looking forward to getting to know them a little bit better then, I guess, to start off with, can you just tell us, very highest level, who are Thor and Loki? Why are they important?

Caroline Larrington (19:36)

Okay, well, let's start with Thor. So Thor is the son of Odin, the God in the Norse pantheon. His mother is not Odin's principal wife, though. It's Yur, who is Earth, who is a giantess. At least that's the term by which the term Jotnar is normally translated. And in some ways giantess is a bit misleading because giantesses don't have to be enormous. However, I think in the case of Earth, she has got to be pretty big under the circumstances. So Yurd is his mother. He is married to Sif, who has beautiful long golden hair, at least until an unfortunate intervention by Loki. And he has two sons called Modhi and Magni, which basically mean something like courage and force, and a daughter as well, called Rudr, which also means strength. So that's his basic family. He is the God of thunder, though there isn't a great deal of thunder in Iceland, so he's maybe, to broaden it out a bit more, the God of weather. He's also the God, for obvious reasons, to invoke when you're going seafaring, because he's in charge of storms and wind. He also does seem to have some kind of fertility role, but that's not particularly clear. And he's somebody who. It seems clear that in Iceland and West Norway. Iceland, perhaps because most of the settlers in Iceland came from Western Norway, he was the sort of default God. He was the God of choice. And in the sagas, which is what tells us most about pagan religion, even though they were written down by Christians 200 years later, so they aren't entirely reliable. But the sagas mention Thor much more than any other God. And lots of people have Thor in their personal names, the sagas, and indeed modern Iceland still is full of people called Thordis, Thorkegg, Orgrimr, Thor Gunna, and so on and so forth. So although the number of myths we have about th are quite limited, there must have been a lot more. Because he was clearly very central to people's lives.

Matt Lewis (22:08)

Yeah. So he was kind of the God that everyone would, as you say, default to in the absence of any other guiding factor in their life. Thor is probably the one that most.

Caroline Larrington (22:18)

People would worship in Iceland and West Norway. It's probably a bit different in Sweden and Denmark, for which we have less good information. And we certainly have quite a few accounts of the emigrants from Norway to Iceland. They would take with them their high seat pillars, which would be big wooden pillars that would support a kind of throne like seat that they would have at the top table in their old halls in Norway. And when they got within sight of the new land of Iceland, they would throw these pillars overboard and ask Thor to direct them to a good place to land and where they would settle. And. And Thor seems to have been pretty reliable on this basis. So the old God of the old land came with them to the new land and helped them to establish themselves there. So it's not surprising that his worship continued. And really the exceptions are poets who worship Odin because he's the God of poetry and he's the one they have a personal relationship with. And just a few rather exceptional people, for reasons which we really don't know, turn out to worship the God Freyr instead of Thor. That might be because they have connections further east in Sweden, where Freyr was more popular, or it may be for some other reason we just don't understand.

Matt Lewis (23:47)

Yeah. And before we get into a bit more detail about Thor, could you just give us a kind of idea of who Loki is?

Caroline Larrington (23:55)

Yeah. Now, Loki is a mysterious figure. He's numbered among the Aesir, among the Norse gods, but he's always at the end of the list. He was not worshipped at all, as far as we can tell. And he is anomalous in that it looks like his mother was a goddess, one of the Aesir, but his father was a giant. Now, we have plenty of possibilities of marriage out, as it were, so that gods can marry or have affairs with giantesses. And Odin and Ur producing Thor is one of them. But having a high status. I see a woman marrying possibly or at least sleeping with a lower status giant is really unusual. So that's something anomalous about him in itself. He is therefore a bit of an outsider in ICR society. We know that he swore an oath of blood brotherhood with Odin back in the ancient days. And he invokes this at one point and says, I would just want to remind you that you said you would Never have something to drink without having a drink offered to me at the same time when we swore that oath. And oath in the sense that, yes, they did have that agreement. He has a wife among the Aesir as well, a woman called Sigyn, and he has a couple of sons with her who come to rather unfortunate ends. But he also has a major affair with a giantess, a Jotun woman called Angrboda, and his liaison with her produces monstrous children. Now, whether the kind of genetics of that is because she's monstrous in herself, or whether it's that kind of streak of otherness in Loki that produces these strange children is a question for the scientists, possibly, I suppose. And. And Loki is, in a number of myths, someone who is curious, questioning. He wants to find out what happens if he does such and such a thing. And if the consequences are bad, then he will work to get the icy out of whatever mess it is that he's caused. And sometimes these are messes that he didn't cause in the first place, but he's got the nous to figure out how to get round it. But increasingly, as mythological history wears on, he becomes more and more alienated from the divine community. And in the end, we find that the gods have to bind him, to just basically put him somewhere where he can't get up to anymore. Mischief is one term, evil might be another. But at the end of the world at Ragnarok, he will be loosed from his chains and he'll lead the enemies against the gods. So then he kind of definitively shows his colors.

Matt Lewis (27:14)

And one thing that struck me. So, as you said, Marvel have kind of made them half brothers, which isn't entirely accurate, but I did a bit of reading around some of the sagas to research this series, and it's striking how often Thor and Loki are together. There is a sense that they do travel together and spend time in each other's company.

Caroline Larrington (27:30)

Yeah. And you can see in a way that this goes back to the old kind of. And when I say old, I mean sort of Indo, European, probably conception of what makes a good epic story, and that is having a combination of brains and brawn. You've got the smart one and you got the strong one, and those are the two who go out together. And if one of them can't solve a problem by hitting someone, then the other one can think of a way out of it. So there doesn't seem to be any particular animosity between the two of them, at least for most of the time in the old Norse myths. And if Thor wants to go out on a journey, particularly if he's going into the land of the giants, it's pretty useful to have someone who understands their ways along for the ride.

Matt Lewis (28:17)

Yeah, yeah. If we focus on Thor a little bit now, what are Thor's kind of main attributes? What are his powers? I think Norse mythology kind of portrays him as this quite often, as giant slaying superhero, but there are times when they sort of make fun of him as well. What did people think of Thor? What were his main powers and abilities?

Caroline Larrington (28:38)

As I've mentioned, his main association seems to be as a God of weather and therefore affecting both seafaring and crops. He has this huge hammer, Miltnir, which he uses to quell giants. Whether it's threatening them with being whacked by the hammer or actually using them to kind of eliminate giants depends on the circumstances. And so he's. He comes over in the myths, and this is where, of course, it's important to remember that the myths are being recorded by Christians who no longer believe in any of this stuff, as someone who kind of hits first and asks questions later. So he does sometimes come over as a bit of a kind of shouter, a blusterer, someone who can be deceived quite easily, and that can't, by any means be the whole story, because he would not have been so important to the people who worshipped him if that was all that he did. But we only have rather a limited range of myths about him, some of which certainly cast him in quite a comic light.

Matt Lewis (29:51)

And he seems to spend an awful lot of time drinking as well. He's very concerned with eating and drinking.

Caroline Larrington (29:56)

Yes. Something's got to fuel those superpowers, in a sense. And there is one myth which is one that certainly in modern retellings of stories about Thor, everybody absolutely loves. And this is one that I don't think has turned up in the Marvel universe yet, perhaps for obvious reasons, at least not in the movies. And that is when Thor wakes up one day and finds his hammer has disappeared. And he shouts to. And Loki turns up, and he says, my hammer has gone missing. And this is really crucial, because if we don't have the hammer, the giants are going to be moving into the home of the gods pretty soon. So Loki borrows the flying feathered suit that belongs to Freya, goes off to Giantland to make inquiries, and the first person he sees is a giant called Frimur, who is sitting there very casually plaiting leashes for his excellent selection of hunting dogs. And when Loki says, do you know anything about the hammer? He says, yep, I've got it and you can have it back if I can have Freyja as my bride. So Loki goes back with this news and he and Thor go around, see Freyja and say, freyja, get your bridal costume on, because you're going to have to go into the land of the giants to marry this guy. And Freyja is extremely insulted and says, you'll think I'm the most man crazed of women if I decide I'm going to go off and marry a giant. And there the joke is kind of on her because she is the most man crazed of women. She's the goddess of sexuality, so it's, it's part of the job description. But she absolutely refuses on this occasion. And she snorts so loudly that her great necklace, the brisingamen, bounces on her chest. So this clearly isn't a runner. And one of the other gods, Heimdattla, says, I've got an idea. Why don't we dress Thor up as a bride and send him into Giant Land? And this is what then happens. Thor is extremely reluctant. Loki cross dresses as well, and they drive into Giant Land. And as they're sitting at the wedding feast, Thrimur is surprised by the amount that his lovely bride can eat. She's eaten something like three oxen, eight salmon, as well as all the little dainty snacks that are put out for women. He asked Loki, why is Freya so hungry? And Loki says, well, she hasn't eaten for eight days or eight nights because she's been so keen to come here and marry you. And then he puts up the bridal veil to try and steal a kiss and jumps back right along the hall because he says, why are Freyia's eyes so red? And Loki says, well, she hasn't slept for eight days or eight nights because she's been so keen to come. And the wedding then proceeds apace and the hammer is brought in to sanctify the ceremony. And of course, as soon as Thor has got his hands on the hammer, he kills all the wedding guests and he and Loki go home again. And that's the end of his exciting experience of his trip as a woman. Going into Giant Land, I think that'd.

Matt Lewis (33:23)

Make a pretty good addition to the Marvel Universe. I can see them getting Chris Hemsworth into a dress and making that work.

Caroline Larrington (33:29)

Yes, in certain circumstances, yes.

Matt Lewis (33:33)

Maybe you'd have to lose the beard, I don't know. There's a couple of things about Thor that I particularly wanted to Ask. So he famously hates giants and loves, as you said before, killing giants whenever he possibly can. How do we reconcile that with the fact that his mother is a giantess?

Caroline Larrington (33:48)

It's possibly because she belongs to an earlier generation, in a sense, and possibly because her giantessness is just a way of suggesting that she belongs to a different kind of being, kind of beings than the gods themselves, because she represents this sort of imminent concept of the Earth. But Thor doesn't really like fraternizing with giants. The other gods quite often will go to see giants, usually to order them around to try and steal valuable stuff that the giants have got. But Thor is not at all interested in trying to establish positive relations. And there's one story in which the gods are forcing a sea deity called Eir to hold a big feast for them. And Eir says, I think this is an excuse. I would, obviously, but I haven't got a cauldron big enough to brew the beer. And so the God Tyr, on this occasion, not Loki, volunteers to go with Thor to see the giant Hymir, who has got the massive great cauldron there. It turns out that Tyr's mother is actually the wife of this giant, so she's a kind of insider who helps the two gods. Hymir is not thrilled when he comes home and finds Thor hanging out in his hall. And so. And of course, Thor eats quite a lot as well, but Tyr's mother is quite helpful in sort of pacifying him. And the next day, when Thor has eaten everybody out of house and home, Ymir and Thor go fishing. And Thor accidentally, or by design, fishes up the Midgard serpent, the great serpent that lies in the outer ocean and which kind of holds together the world, but which is also the monster that's going to kill Thor at Ragnarok. And accounts here vary, but it looks as if Ymir loses his nerve as the monster is fished up onto the edge of the boat and cuts the line. So Thor and the Midgard serpent could have had a face off much earlier than Ragnarok, but this doesn't happen. So they go back to shore, and Thor casually chucks a couple of whales over his shoulder and carries them up to the house. And then he gets permission to take the cauldron. But as he's going off with it, and the cauldron is so huge he has to carry it over his head, Hemer changes his mind, and a bunch of giants come chasing after them to get the cauldron. But he throws the cauldron down on the ground and kills them all with the hammer. So there's an example, I think, of a story where Thor is able to tolerate being among the giants, but only partly because there's one of the goddesses there as well, to smooth things over and also because Tyr is there. So managing that kind of situation is not something that Thor seems to be be terribly good at, that he would just hit first and ask questions later. As I said.

Matt Lewis (37:12)

Yeah. Do we get any sense of where his hatred of the giants originates from? Because he's well known as the defender of Asgard against the frost giants. And as we've said, he likes to go around bashing giants whenever he can. Are we ever given a reason why he hates the giants so much?

Caroline Larrington (37:26)

No, there's no kind of story for that. Odin, his father, is. Is much more kind of supple in his dealing with giants. He'll sleep with giant women, he'll go and talk to giants. On one occasion he even invites a giant in to have a drink in the hall of the gods. And when Thor comes back and finds that there's a giant sitting in Asgard having a drink, he wants to hit him with his hammer. But of course that's not very hospitable, and so he's prevented. So there's no real origin story for it. And in older scholarship, people used to suggest that if Thor was the God of the farmers, of agriculture, of weather, and the giants represented the ungovernable forces of nature, the mountains, snow, frost, ice, all the things that would destroy your crops, that this is just a kind of nature myth in which human agriculture is always battling against these ungovernable natural forces. I think that's probably a rather crude way of looking at it, but it still has some value.

Matt Lewis (38:50)

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Matt Lewis (41:25)

Yeah, yeah, interesting. And could we talk a little bit too about where Thor gets his hammer Mjolnir from? I mean, again, it's something that's famously associated with him. Is there an origin myth for the hammer?

Caroline Larrington (41:36)

There is an origin myth for the hammer, and this involves Loki. To go back to the beginning of this story, it turns out that Sif, Thor's wife, one day wakes up and finds that her beautiful golden hair has gone missing. And it turns out that Loki has cut it off. Under what circumstances this could have occurred remains mysterious. Loki does brag on one occasion that he slept with just about all of the goddesses. So maybe it was under some kind of circumstance like that. But Thor is very cross and threatens to hit Loki. So Loki realizes that he has to make good in some way. And to do this, he goes to see some dwarves who are the master craftsmen of the old Norse universe and asks them to make some treasures for him, including a new set of hair For Siv, made out of golden wire, but wire that's so thin and fine it looks like normal hair. And when she puts this wig on, essentially it will just grow back into her skull as if it was her old hair restored. But to make things more interesting, he says, and can you make a couple of other treasures while you're at it? And then he goes to the brother of the chief dwarf and says, your brother and his team are making some treasures for the gods. I wonder if you can make anything that will be as good as what they're going to make. Let's have a little competition. And the other dwarves say, yeah, sure, but if we win, we want to get a reward for that. And the reward that we would like, Loki says, the lead dwarf, Brokkr, is for me to cut your head off. And Loki says, yeah, sure. And as the competition is progressing, he begins to look rather closely at the treasures that the dwarves are producing and particularly the ones that Brokkr's team is engaged in. And he begins to get a bit worried that this team is going to win. So he change himself into a horse fly and he stings Brokkur on the hand and this distracts him for a moment. So the hammer has a handle which is a little bit shorter because of this momentary distraction. And then they take all the treasures and put them before the gods. And as well as the hair and the hammer, there's a boat that can be folded up and put into your pocket, but which will unfold to a full size vessel. There's Odin's spear, Gungnir, and a ring which generates eight more rings of an equal weight every ninth night. And the golden boar that Freyr rides around on. So the gods judge these treasures and they say they're all great. But Mjolnir, this giant slaying hammer, is definitely the winner, despite the slightly short handle. And Loki, therefore, because Brokkher has created this treasure, Loki has to forfeit his head. And so Brokkur is all ready to slice his head off with some useful dwarfish made axe. Know that. And Loki says, hang on, hang on, hang on a moment. You can take my head, but there is nothing in the agreement about my neck. Now this is an old folkloric get out clause that gets used very frequently in these sort of head competitions. And so Brocker realizes he can't take the head off without touching the neck, but he's annoyed enough that he sews up Loki's mouth with an awl and some leather to kind of twine. And there's only one image of Loki that survived from medieval times that we think we can definitely identify as Loki. And because obviously early medieval artists didn't tend to label things helpfully with what they depicted. And this is a figure with a little beard and a quite a triangular sort of face. And the mouth has kind of cross stitching across it. And it comes from Denmark. It's on the hearthstone. And that does seem to be quite plausibly identifiable with Loki because of this detail of the stitched up mouth. As soon as he can, obviously, Loki unpicks it again because he's not going to stay quiet for long.

Matt Lewis (46:16)

And does Thor have any other treasures? I think there's a pair of gloves that he can wear and all that kind of thing. Are there other treasures that are less famous? We associate him so much with the hammer that. Are we forgetting that he has other things too?

Caroline Larrington (46:28)

Yes, he's got a set of gloves which allows him to catch red hot items that might be hurled at him. And this happens in one story. And he's also got a belt which magnifies his strength in some way. And in one story he's going off to the land of the giants, enticed there by Loki, it has to say, who's kind of promised to lead Thor off to a place where the giants can attack him. And he realizes as he's going along that he has forgotten his gloves. So he and Loki pop into a friendly giantesses and say, have you got some gloves we can borrow? And she says, yes, sure. And she lends him the gloves. And as Thor gets to the home of this giant who's called Geirrr, he's almost drowned on the way because a river he's crossing rises up because a hu. Huge torrent comes rushing down. And it turns out that it's the giant's daughters urinating into the river in an attempt to drown him. But this doesn't work because he catches onto a rowan tree and holds onto that, which is why the rowan tree is known as the safety of Thor. And when he gets to the castle, the first thing the giant does is chuck a huge red hot ball of iron at him. But luckily, because he's got the gloves, he can catch it and throw it back and flattening the giant and killing him, I think, if I remember correctly. And then the daughters who've been doing the urinating sneak into the room when Thor is sitting on the chair and get underneath the chair and stretch, so they try and squash him against the ceiling, but this time he presses back down again and breaks their backs. And then he and Loki go home having dealt with the problem. So on that occasion, the hammer doesn't come into. Oh, perhaps the hammer does come into play, I think, in finishing off the giant. But the gloves and the belt are part of the story, even if Thor forgot the gloves in the first instance.

Matt Lewis (48:39)

And it's striking, I think, that Thor's hammer seems to become quite a popular emblem in the Norse world. Is that simply because so many people relate to Thor? Is it because of his connection to fighting and to being able to kill giants? Is it seen as a sign of power?

Caroline Larrington (48:56)

It does seem to have been something that was regarded as protective, at least. And we've got an awful lot of hammers that have little rings on them so that people could hang them around their necks. And these have survived as grave finds or just simply found in hordes. What they meant to the wearers, of course, we can't necessarily know without asking them, but it seems quite likely that you might wear a Thor's hammer if you're going to travel by sea to protect you against storms, if you were a farmer, in order to ensure the fertility of the crops. Or if you were a fighter. Exactly. To give you the same strength that Thor has to contend against your enemies. So all of those things are quite possible. And one archaeological find that we do have from Denmark, which marks the gradual way in which Christianity began to take over, particularly from belief in Thor in Scandinavia, is a mold which will produce a cross at one end and a Thor's hammer on the other end, so that you could show it to your customer and say, which version do you want here? Yeah.

Matt Lewis (50:12)

Fascinating. He seems to have carved out a really nice niche for himself as the God of everything that's important. Important, really?

Caroline Larrington (50:17)

Yeah, yeah. And there's a poem in which he's coming home from killing giants, as usual, and he comes to a river which he wants to cross, but the ferryman is on the other side. And he calls for the ferryman to come over and bring the ferry. And the ferryman embarks on a series of insults and a kind of verbal competition with him. And this ferryman is actually his father, Odin, in disguise. Why he's doing this is hard to say. Does he want to take his son down a kind of peg or two? But among the things that Odin boasts of is that he is the God of the nobility, while Thor is the God of, as he says, the katla, the ordinary guys, and. Which could mean both peasants, but also farmers and also fighters, in a sense, the kind of ordinary infantry sort of fighters. And Odin also boasts about how he likes to hang out with giant women, learn their wisdom, have sex with them, while Thor just hits them with his hammer. And so there's a sense in which by the end of it, Thor has been taken down a peg or two because he says, finally, look, are you going to bring the ferry over or what? And the ferryman says, no, you're going to have to walk around. And it's quite a long way. So Thor has to go around the field. So there's something there. It may just be a kind of comic way of dramatizing the differences between the followers of the two gods, but there seems to be some kind of father son antagonism going on in that poem.

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Matt Lewis (53:36)

Yeah, yeah, fascinating. We should probably move on to Loki a little bit. And he's. He comes across as one of the most kind of intriguing and complicated and difficult to understand figures in Norse mythology. You sort of spoke a little bit about this before, but should we consider him to be a God or not?

Caroline Larrington (53:54)

Well, yeah. How do you define a God? I think it's difficult given that we don't have any evidence of anybody ever worshiping him. So he may be rather some kind of principle of something or other. But what that something or other is is quite hard to define as well might be a principle of chaos or of disorder. It might be a principle of inquiringness and curiosity. But he's somebody who is really important in the myths as the one who kind of makes things happen. And that, I think, is why he's undergone such a change in reputation in the last 50 or 60 years. And that's got partly to do with the Mar? Vell universe, I think, but also to do with a lot of retellers of myths who found him a complex and interesting character. And when I was young, when I was 7 or 8 and I read versions of the Norse myths, he was a trickster figure. And he always sounded like. Like a practical joker whose joke sometimes went a bit too far, like taking Sif's hair and being annoying. And then suddenly his tricksterism starts to move into a kind of active malevolence. But what seems a little bit clearer, perhaps from the myths, if you look at them in their entirety, is that Loki doesn't always start out by wanting to cause trouble, but just wants to see what will happen if he does something. And so, for example, the whole history of the Rhine Gold, the great treasure that is guarded by the dragon, Faulkner, starts when Loki and Odin and one of the other more obscure gods, Hynir, have just gone out basically for a walk, and they're sitting down by the river, and there they see an otter who's eating a salmon, and Loki throws a stone at the otter and kills it. And that's not because we think Loki hates otters, or even because he wants to eat the salmon, though that might be a possibility. But he just very casually chucks this stone and then he skins the otter, because not a skin is a useful thing to have. And when the gods go to stay with a family that night, he shows the otter skin and says, look, look, I killed this otter. And here's the otter skin. Now it turns out that the son of the family is a being, maybe human, maybe a dwarf, maybe some other kind of creature who likes from time to time, to change into an otter. So this is actually terrible news for the father and the brother, who say, that's our brother. You have to pay us compensation for killing him. You have to get as much treasure as possible together to cover this otter skin. And then this is how the treasure comes into being. So this wasn't part of some malevolent scheme there. It's just kind of casual. There's not a I'll kill it. So we have a few of these stories where Loki just does things which get him into trouble, but increasingly, and I think in some ways we can associate this with the birth of his monstrous children. He begins to get alienated from the divine community and his children. We've already met one of them, of course, the Midgard serpent. But he's also the father of the great monstrous wolf, Fenrir, who is going to kill Odin at Ragnarok, and also Hel, the goddess of death, who is half normal, beautiful woman and half hideous, decaying corpse. And when the gods hear about these children, they act quite quickly. They throw Hel down into hell, into the world of the dead and say, right, you can rule the dead. They throw the Midgard serpent out into the outer ocean to guard the furthest parts of the sea, and also in some ways, to kind of hold everything together. But they take Fenrir home and treat him as a kind of house dog until he starts eating too much. And then they go through various subterfuges and end up chaining Fenrir and sticking. I always think this is a bit unnecessary, sticking a sword in his mouth, so the handle is in the lower jaw and the point in the upper jaw, so his mouth is propped open and spittle flow out of his mouth and form some important rivers in the mythical universe. And so you can kind of see, I think, though we don't have any scenes in which Loki sort of ponders this and goes, what kind of way is that to treat my kids? But in modern retellings, it's quite often a moment where Loki thinks, if they're going to chain my kids up, they're going to be chaining me up next. And it's principally because of his role in the death of the God Baldr that this comes about. Now, Baldr is the brightest and most beautiful of the gods, but he starts having bad dreams that he's going to die. And Odin goes down to the halls of Hel and says, baldr keeps dreaming that he's coming down here. And Hel says, sure enough, we're expecting him. We're brewing the ale, we're sweeping the benches for him. And so Odin goes back and reports this to his wife Frigg, who says, right, what we need to do is to get everything to take an oath that it won't harm him. And so she and her agents go around the created universe and stones, rocks, water, wind, weapons, everything you can imagine, vows not to harm Baldr. And then Frigg is chatting to an old woman who comes to visit her who says, did you really take an oath from everything? And Frigg says, yeah, well, I didn't bother with the mistletoe because it's so little and so, so subtle. That's not going to hurt anyone. Anyway, so now everybody's at the assembly and they've got a fantastic new game, throwing things at Baldr, which seems very on brand for kind of Viking entertainment. And so they're throwing spears, stones, missiles at him. They're all bouncing off Baldr. And now it turns out that Baldr has a brother who is blind who is called HR and her is standing on the edge of not being able to join in because he can't see. When somebody comes up to him. Loki comes up to him and says, don't you want to take part? Look, I've just put this little dart in your hand and I'll guide your hand so you too can throw something at Baldr. And the next thing that happens is Baldr falls dead because the dart was the mistletoe. So then the gods make every effort to see if they can get Baldr back out of Hel after his funeral. And hell exceptionally says, you can have him back if everything will weep for him on Earth. And the gods go around asking all the substances, metal, rocks, animals, plants, etc. If they'll weep, and everything will, except for one old giantess who's found sitting in a cave, who says, I shall weep dry tears for Baldr, let Hel hold what she has. And everybody thinks this is Loki. So after that, the gods have got it in for Loki. And after an incident when he comes into a hall where they're feasting and insults every single one of them in turn, they decide enough is enough. So they chase him down, even though he hides in the form of a salmon in a river. And Thor grasps hold of him and hauls him out, and he tries to slide out of Thor's hand, but his tail catches in his hand, which is why salmon have a tapering shape and a broad tail at the end. And they decide at this point that they're going to chain him up. So they chain him in a cavern, and he's bound with the guts of his two divine sons who have been changed into wolves by the gods. And the wolves fight and kill each other. And then the guts of the sons are used to bind Loki. One of his enemies, a woman called Skadi, whose father had been killed partly through Loki's machinations, hangs a serpent that drips poison into Loki's face above his head. And Loki's wife Sigyn sits over him with a big bowl to catch the poison. But every now and again she has to go and Empty it. And when she's emptying it, the drops of poison then fall on Loki's face and he writhes in agony. And that's the cause of earthquakes. So all of this seems in some ways to be a kind of elaborate way of Loki almost conniving in getting himself chained up, because Ragnarok cannot happen until he breaks his chains and is loose again, along with the monstrous children. But he can't break his chains if he hasn't been chained up in the first place. So some have argued that, more or less from the death of Baldr onwards, this is Loki's master plan to get himself chained up. I think that might be to make the old Norse mythical universe a bit too well structured and logical, but there's certainly a chronology at work here, that the death of Baldr is a sign of the end times. And so that's where Loki is now, if you like. He's in that cavern waiting for the end of the world to come and causing earthquakes when the serpent is dripping directly into his face.

Matt Lewis (64:14)

Yeah, it does feel like we often think of Loki as someone who is hard to pin down. Do we think he's good or do we think he's evil, as you said, do we think he's mischievous and sometimes goes too far? It does seem like in a lot of those stories, he has good reason to be upset with the gods. You know, they're not being nice to his kids, for one thing. You know, they're mistreating his children, which would be a reason for him to take offense. Are we supposed to feel any sympathy for Loki, or are we supposed to view him as somehow evil or corrupted?

Caroline Larrington (64:43)

Evil and corrupt are rather difficult concepts, I think, to import into Old Norse religious thinking about which we know so little. Corrupted, I think, certainly not, because we got no sense that something has come along and made him the way that he is. And in some ways, in her novels, the Gospel of Loki, in the Testament of Loki, Joanne Harris, the author, depicts him as the spirit of fire and the spirit of chaos. Now, the fire thing is a bit more doubtful because it's an association that was thought up by Jakob Grimm, the German philologist, one of the collectors of fairy tales back in the 19th century. And it's not really clear that he does have a connection with fire, but as a principle of chaos, I think she sees something very clearly about him there. And chaos is not evil. It's just a state of being, which is not like the order that humans need to flourish in. And I think also increasingly, and you can see a bit of this in the Marvel universe as well, and certainly in the way that Loki is depicted in the Disney spinoff, say, from the Marvel Universe, and also in things like God of War or some of the new Netflix versions of stories based on the Norse myths, like Twilight of the Gods, for example, the Zack Snyder animation. That Loki is a kind of animating principle. He's the one that makes things happen, and he tells people things which aren't necessarily true to get them to do things, and his cat's paws can't necessarily see what he's up to. But increasingly, there's a kind of sympathy with Loki because of the treatment of his children and because of his more or less saying, we've had enough of the gods and their breaking of oaths, their readiness to just take things from the giants, their unwillingness to negotiate some kind of compromise in which everyone can be friends and we can all share the mythological universe together. But the gods very much represent a kind of aristocratic, oppressive, if you like, warrior force. And everybody else is the underdog in this universe. And so the most recent reimaginings of the material suggest that the giants are quite right to rise up against the gods because they're oppressive and violent. And Thor in particular, because he's the one with the hammer, he's the kind of embodiment of divine violence. And that Loki has. Has some justification in aligning himself with this different group of people, this perhaps oppressed, perhaps a kind of subaltern group whose interests are not being served by the kind of rule that the gods are offering. So I think Loki there has. He's not the revolutionary hero who's standing up for the oppressed. Exactly. Because he has his own particular agendas, which are rather hard to fathom. At some point, sometimes he doesn't seem to have an agenda at all, but it's just this kind of endless ranging curiosity. So he's much more complex than simply having a binary that says Thor is good, Loki is evil. Both of them have qualities within them that are quite important in thinking in a larger scale about how human society functions. Yeah.

Matt Lewis (68:31)

And it sounds like Loki is almost set up as someone who is outside of that concept of good and bad, and he's almost outside the concept of whether he's God or not a God. And as you say, he's just this force of chaos that makes things happen, that drives events, without necessarily having his own agenda, which is either good or evil at any given time.

Caroline Larrington (68:50)

Yeah. I mean, in some ways, people have wanted to see him as the giant sky inside, who's working in the long term for Giant Victory as a kind of fifth agent who sneaks around in the world of the gods, always trying to screw things up because it will help the giants in some way. But it doesn't really work, I think, to see him in those terms, because there are a number of adventures, like getting Thor's hammer back in, in the story of the wedding, where if he hadn't cooperated, the hammer would be lost and the giants would be moving into. But he's the one who thinks things through and gets them out of the situation. So it's not constantly working away to undermine the gods, but being in the position where your point of view and the point of view of the social institution within which you live aren't necessarily aligned.

Matt Lewis (69:51)

And it kind of begs the question of why the gods keep Loki around when he causes so much trouble. But is the answer that he solves as much as he causes?

Caroline Larrington (70:00)

Initially, I think that's. That's the case that when he's a maker of things to happen, like, okay, he shouldn't have cut all of Sif's hair off. But if you look at the balance sheet of where you are before that adventure and where you are after the adventure before Sif has her hair, after, you've got the hammer, you've got the ring dragon near, you've got the spear, you've got the golden boar, you've got all these treasures for the gods. And so you can see how, in a kind of prophet and lost way at this stage, Loki is much more useful to have around than not. And so that sense of why, given the prophecies, the way the prophecy works in the Norse mythological world is an interesting one, I think, why, given the prophecies, do not just get rid of him? Well, you can't in some ways, because as we know from prophecies in all kinds of ancient stories that if you think this man is prophesied to kill me, I will send him into exile, he'll turn up again in some way and kill you quite by accident, simply because he doesn't know who you are. So fate can't be thwarted. And there's something of that, I think, that's underlying the sense among the gods that Loki is prophesied to lead their enemies against them. But in which case there's something to be said for that sort of adage of keep your enemies closer where you can keep an eye on them until the point where the God's patience really does run out. And they say right now we're going to train you up. Now we've had enough.

Matt Lewis (71:44)

Yeah, yeah. And you mentioned as well that, you know, kind of the last 40 years or so, Loki's reputation has undergone a lot of reevaluation. And I guess we can see some of that in Marvel in that he's very difficult to pin down as either being good or bad again at any given time. But what do you think more broadly is behind the kind of reassessment and re evaluations of Loki?

Caroline Larrington (72:05)

I think in some ways it's the idea that Loki is his own man. He's a kind of lone wolf. And he, in the Marvel comics at least he does what he wants to do. And he'll sell people out, he'll double cross them, but usually when the chips are down, he'll kind of help out. And I'm thinking of the end of Ragnarok, for example, where Thor has to get him to go and unleash the fire God Surtr to take out Hela, the goddess of death. And yes, the planet is destroyed, but Loki helps get everybody off Asgard, so he does what's right in the end in that universe. But there's still this kind of anarchic sense of him not being subject to the same rules as everybody else. And I think that makes him a very American kind of hero, that he's the guy who walks into town and everybody says, oh, what's that stranger doing here? What's he here for? And you know, there's going to be a big fight later on. But I think another aspect of Loki which we haven't touched on yet particularly, is he's the father of these monstrous children. But there's also a story in which he saves the gods bacon by distracting a stallion that belongs to a giant who is rebuilding the walls of the God citadel after a battle. And the price for this is that if the giant concludes building the walls within a year, he'll get the sun and moon and Freyja as his reward. And the gods think it wasn't possible, but actually it looks like it's going to happen. And so Loki volunteers to help out in this situation. He does this by changing himself into an attractive mare and running around so that the giant stallion goes off and chases the mare. The giant reveals himself to be a giant in a fit of rage. The walls aren't finished and Thor kills him because he broke the contract and he was always a giant, so contracts with giants somehow don't count. And then meanwhile, Loki comes back later with A horse, which is Odin's eight legged horse, Sleipnir, that he's given birth to. And so there's this aspect which pops up in a couple of other myths as well, of Loki as being queer, as being someone whose sexuality is more fluid than the kind of masculinity of the other gods, which is particularly enforced when Thor really, really objects to dressing up as a bride. Loki doesn't seem to mind too much dressing up as a bridesmaid. And so there are some hints of a kind of playful sexuality in Loki which is very much caught on, I think, with. Particularly with younger readers of Mar? Vell comics and of recent retellings. And although mainstream TV has been a bit careful about suggesting that he's trans or something like that, nevertheless this kind of queerness has really played out well for him in contemporary society.

Matt Lewis (75:32)

Yeah. And I mean, you see that a little bit in the Marvel Loki series where there is a female version of himself who he quite fancies. And that idea that they're playing with the sexuality of the character of Loki, that Loki would fancy a female Loki and wouldn't have too many qualms about that.

Caroline Larrington (75:48)

Yeah, yeah. I haven't actually seen. Cause I don't have the channel, so I haven't actually seen the Loki series. And I haven't seen the fourth Marvel movie of Thor and Loki either, having seen some rather disobliging reviews. But yeah, you can certainly see how there's some play with how queer is Loki and how queer can we show him to be in the most recent recastings of him?

Matt Lewis (76:15)

And it's incredible how these, you know, thousand and more year old characters can remain relevant today. They can still have a story to tell us in 2025.

Caroline Larrington (76:25)

Yeah. And shows that Thor and Loki show no sign at all of losing followers. Because even if I don't know if Chris Hemsworth is gonna make any more movies, I'm not sure. But even so, there does seem to be some appetite for stories about this, what those two characters stand for. And it is partly the brains and brawn thing, but partly also the other complicated ways in which they can interact both with each other and with other parts of the universe.

Matt Lewis (76:58)

Yeah. Fascinating. This has been absolutely incredible. I've really enjoyed getting to know these two a little bit better. I'm gonna end with a really unfair question. Who's your favourite, Thor or Loki?

Caroline Larrington (77:09)

Well, you know, everybody likes Loki these days because he's cool and because he's smart. As Byatt in her retelling of the myths Ragnarok from 2011 has Loki say the other gods hit things and they crash about. They do not study. I study. I know. And it's kind of. It's a bit like Tyrion in Game of Thrones, in a sense. He's the only one. He drinks and he knows things. And I think Loki may or may not drink. Thor certainly drinks, but he knows things. And so I think I'm still on Team Loki's side, even though I do want to rehabilitate Thor. It's not just some kind of hulking meathead with a hammer, but someone who must, at the time when he was worshipped, have meant a lot more complex things than we can now find out. But Loki is very much a kind of modern person's avatar, let's say.

Matt Lewis (78:13)

Yeah, yeah. Brilliant. That's been absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us and shedding a bit more light on Thor and Loki. Caroline, it's been brilliant.

Caroline Larrington (78:19)

Okay. It's been a great pleasure.

Matt Lewis (78:21)

Thank you very much. Well, thank you, Caroline, for a fascinating effort episode. So what do you think? Are you Team Thor or team Loki? If you missed either of the previous episodes in this series, you can hear about the Norse creation stories and all about Odin and the other gods in the last two episodes. And in the next two, Elena will try to figure out how to get to the halls of Valhalla before I return as the harbinger of the end times with Elena Barraclough. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free. Head to historyhit.com forward/subscribe right now. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history.

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