Loki here, wishing you a very fine last morning the world will ever see!
The heavy sleepers among you may have missed things, but, as prophesied, when dawn broke on this lovely 22nd of February 2014, and the golden cock Gullinkambi crowed as usual from the roof of Valhalla, this time it was answered by the normally-silent sooty-red cock that sits deep in the depths on the snake-and-bone rafters of Hel’s hall. This means it’s time to celebrate! Nidhogg, the hard-working and industrious dragon of Chaos and Destruction, has finally chewed through the roots of the World Tree Yggdrasil, killing the tree and bringing the nine worlds crashing down. The unjust tyranny of Odin and the Aesir is no more. All bonds in the world are broken, and the beings unjustly imprisoned by the cruel gods have been set free: the hound Garm that’s been chained up outside the Gnippa cave for ages, my sons Jormungangir and fuzzy adorable Fenris, my sweet daughter Hel, my fellow giants, and, of course, myself.
As you buckle on your armor and prepare for battle, I thought I’d review the situation for you—what’s going to happen, why it’s happened, what’s at stake—just in case you’ve been taken in by some of that Aesir propaganda that’s floating about.
Today will be the most exciting day ever. Specifically the most exciting battle ever. Now that the many… shall we say “differently-moraled” powers of the universe are free, we’re naturally returning to take revenge on the oppressors. The fence between the Jotun lands and Midgard is broken, so all the giants and trolls and witches who have been exiled to the frozen north are returning to human lands at last (did you miss us?). The gates of Hel are open too, freeing countless hordes of human ghosts, who are riding back to living world at this very moment.
This may sound bad, what with all the zombie apocalypse propaganda, but think about it. These aren’t monsters. They’re just the souls of humans who weren’t lucky enough to catch the eye of Odin’s not-remotely-objective Valkyries (blatant favoritism!). Just for that these poor souls had to spend centuries starving in a pit of snakes and freezing water, while those who toadied up to the gods got to feast in Valhalla at Odin’s eternal BBQ. Not fair. And if centuries of darkness and torment have left the ghosts a little antisocial, well… that’s what being on the differently-moraled side is about: inclusivity, tolerance, looking past small differences, like rot, and unearthly howls, and who eats who.
You too can join in! That’s the exciting part: you get to be in on the most glorious thing that has ever happened or will ever happen! You have to fight, of course. You may be tempted to hide, especially once the fifty-headed trolls start coming over the horizon, but there’s no point. Prophecies are very clear about this. During the battle, the sky will crack open, freeing the fire giants of Muspelheim who will cover the Earth in flames, and then there will be more fighting, and some eating, and fighting, and in the end the corpse-winged dragon Nidhogg will rise from the deep and gloat over the cosmos as the Earth sinks down forever. So locking your doors and huddling isn’t really going to help. You have to fight, but the important part is to choose the right side.
WHAT ARE THE TEAMS?
On Team Aesir (a.k.a. Team Oppression, or Team Status Quo):
Thor the Thunderer
Sure, he’s the one to call if you want some skulls smashed, or need to quickly dispose of several thousand gallons of mead, but the god of storms and thunder couldn’t think his way out of a giant’s mitten if he tried. He did try. It was hilarious!
Tyr, God of Swords and Victory
A liar and a cheat. He gave his word he’d free Fenris from the magic rope he tied him up with in the “test of strength” game they were playing, and then he deliberately left my poor boy hogtied and starving, with a stick jammed in his jaws so he couldn’t even talk or close his mouth. Left him for centuries!
Freyia, Goddess of Love and Beauty
Even a Jotun will sympathize if you want go onto the field with Freyia; she’s intelligent, competent, deadly in battle, and so masterful she can even get cats to go in a straight line and pull her chariot. Also she’s the most beautiful. But, frankly, you can admire her and her skills at even closer range when it’s your sword clashing against hers.
Heimdall, God of Being a No-Fun Stick-In-The-Mud Stubborn Jerk
Seriously, this man is the enemy of fun. All he does is stand out in the rain all day and keep watch, obsessively eavesdropping on everyone and everything. He’s like a cosmic stalker! And whenever someone does try to do something fun—like, say, steal Freyia’s magic necklace, just as a joke—he has to take it all so seriously!
And the Team Captain: Odin, the Allfather
Cold, ruthless, judgmental, hypocritical. Don’t make the mistake of imagining for one second that we’re talking about a kind, benevolent father figure. Odin has ransacked the nine worlds to rack up every power he can to maintain his regime: dwarven weapons, runecraft, black magic, human sacrifice, theft, murder, you name it. The spellbook he lists in the Poetic Edda has waaaay too many manipulation and necromancy spells to belong to any good guy.
And Odin shapeshifts and tricks people twice as much as I do, always for his own gain instead of for the art of it. He even tricked me into doing his dirty work back when I thought he was my friend. Before he hurled me into a pit, the way he does to anything he can’t control.
Don’t believe me? It you’re still thinking of Odin as nice guy, ask yourself this: would a kindly father make a system where only a tiny, select warrior elite gets a happy afterlife and everyone else gets ice and snakes forever? Would he?
On Team Chaos (a.k.a. Team Liberty, or Team Revolution):
“He Whom All Gods Hate” the Fenris Wolf
The biggest, cuddliest, fuzziest puppy there’s ever been. Ever since Odin had cruel Tyr trick him he’s been trapped on a remote island all alone, but now he gets to come play! Also that whole swallowing the Sun thing is totally propaganda. It’s one of Fenris’s descendants that’s going to eat the sun, my boy is just going to eat Odin. You can’t fault him for going after Odin, I mean, Odin tortures (very large) puppies!
Jormungangir the World Serpent
If you’re lucky enough to live by water, you may already have noticed my second son’s coils churning the oceans to foam. I can’t wait to get to Midgard and see him again. Odin took him away when he was tiny, and I didn’t get to visit when I was locked up, so last time I saw him he was only 25,000 miles long, and all alone there at the bottom of the sea without his papa. Poor little guy.
Hel, Queen of the Damned
I know she sounds scary, what with being an ancient, primeval witch. And she looks scary, a crone, all ice pale on one side and black like a frozen corpse on the other. But I’ll lend you some Troll Shards—magic shards trolls and giants have in our eyes that let us see beauty and ugliness reversed. Pop one in your eye and you’ll soon see my girl is ten times lovelier than Freyia.
Surt the Fire Giant King
We’ve never met, but I can vouch for his work, very thorough, very reliable, very scorched-earth. He’s supposed to wield a flaming sword more brilliant than the sun, and it’s his crew’s job to crack open the sky and break Bifrost the Rainbow Bridge. Here’s to teamwork.
Loki, myself
I trust my reputation to precede me. I am the mind that burns so bright that the Allfather spotted me among all the beings in the nine worlds and brought me to Asgard to stand at his side. If my imprisonment means you haven’t had a chance to get to know me, you have one last chance today.
WHAT IS THE VENDETTA ABOUT?
Finally, before you accuse me of trying to hide the real issue and getting you to pick based on personality alone, you may be wondering what this whole Ragnarok business is about. So I’ll do my best to give you an unbiased summary of both sides:
Our Grievances:
-
- This was our world first. In primordial days we Jotuns, descendants of the giant Ymir, lived all over the wild, icy universe. But Odin and his brothers murdered Ymir, let almost all of us drown in his blood, and exiled the survivors to a remote corner, while he defiled Ymir’s corpse and used it to create a soft sappy world for soft sappy humans.
- Odin filled the world with painful, ugly, blinding, horrible light that gives us Jotuns terrible migraines. The sun is the worst offender, gaudy horrid thing, but there’s also the moon and stars, just so we can never get away.
- Odin and the other Aesir have waged continual war against Jotunkind, building a fence to confine us, trapping his rainbow bridge to burn us, and sending countless expeditions of violent idiots *cough*Thor*cough* into our lands to hunt us whenever they thought we were recovering our former power.
- Odin kidnapped and imprisoned my children, Hel, Fenris and Jormungangir, who were completely innocent young monsters, just because he claimed they would be dangerous when they grew up. And he killed some of my other, more humanoid children, and keeps poor Sleipnir in a barn! Just because he’s a horse… A happy family, destroyed by the cruelty of the gods!
- Odin lets something like 90% or more of all humans fall into Hel’s hall forever and keeps Valhalla reserved only for his favorites. Really, do you support that system?
- Odin is an oathbreaker. He and I swore a sacred, binding blood-oath that we would never harm each other or let the other be harmed, and he broke his oath and imprisoned me in a pit, bound in the ice cold guts of my own dismembered son, with a serpent dripping acid on my face. For a very long time.
Their Grievances:
- Jotuns and trolls kill people. Sometimes. I guess. Not that humans don’t. Heck, not that Odin himself doesn’t squish humans whenever he’s feeling cross.
-
“Each Arrow Overshot His Head” by Elmer Boyd Smith (1902) And there was the incident with Baldur. Don’t know who Baldur was? Good. He was a weak, pathetic little excuse for a god, god of sappy things like tenderness, and familial love, and sunlight, and all the little fragile comforts that make life bearable, like the spring thaw and tender shoots and baby bunnies. Horrid. Oh, and he was Odin’s son. So I tricked his blind brother Hod into killing him with a shaft of mistletoe. It was a beautiful plan, elegance itself, worthy to go down among the great tricks of all history. And I let the truth slip, since I thought Odin wouldn’t punish me for it—he couldn’t punish me for it, because he swore a binding blood-oath never to harm me, never ever. Oathbreaker.
And that is the honest truth about how the score stands. So, time for you to choose a side, and quickly. My ship, with all the hordes of dead on board, is probably arriving even now. You must make up your own mind, of course. I won’t try to bias you. But do you really want to spend the last day of your life helping an oathbreaker? Or would you rather spend it tasting the ancient forces that the oppressor gods have tried so long to leash? And if you’re finding the decision pressuring, just remember: if you do decide to throw your lot in with the more… unconventional… side today, there won’t be anyone around to judge you when it’s over. There won’t be anyone at all when this is over. Just a dragon.
Loki Laufeyjarson is a Jotun and an honorary Aesir god, blood-brother of Odin. The Tor.com blogging account which Loki hacked in order to make this post belongs to Ada Palmer, an historian of European literature and philosophy, who writes the blog Ex Urbe, and composes Viking-themed music for the a cappella group Sassafrass. Her first novel is forthcoming from Tor Books in 2015.
I first heard about Ragnarok coming about one hundred days ago when I came across this podcast talking about the signs and portents and why they decided to blow the horn now.
http://voiceofrussia.com/uk/news/2013_11_15/100-days-till-the-end-of-the-world-according-to-Viking-legend-0747/
Thank you so much for this fair and unbiased summation of the situation! Now I understand what is going on and can make my decision based on the facts instead of cruel rumors started by Odinists!
I agree, good to see the issues laid out so clearly and charmingly.
But all the same, I am so totally hiding in a cave until it is all over!
Yes, it is certainly lucky that we have Loki to summarize what is going on since he has nothing whatsoever to gain from the situation and has no possible reason to spin things in a way favorable to himself and unfavorably to the All-Father.
I’ll just be up in the Ice Caves, far from anyone, thank you very much.
Loki: He reports, you decide.
Did Loki hack the account or slash it?
PRO TIP: Ice Caves aren’t necessarily the best plan once the sky cracks and the fire giants come. If that’s your plan, I’d bring goggles, a wetsuit, and probably some harpoons.
To all who’ve unironically thanked me for my unbiased coverage: you’re very welcome!
@”Vegtam”: I wrote this in the spirit of truth and openness, to let the humans choose their paths for themselves: have you really sunk so low as to poison our final day upon these worlds with scarcasm? (Also,really “Vegtam”? That alias didn’t even hold up in the Eddas, brother dear…)
Oh, very lovely, thank you.
(“The Tuatha de Danann do what they will without asking Aesir Jotuns.”)
Prince Justin: I agree with you. Whatever Loki says, Lifthrasir and I have this nice deep cave picked out.
@”adapalmer”: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
All we need is for someone to get Tom Hiddleston to read this aloud on video.
Ratatosk!
Hey, Ragnarok! And such a nice day for it, too.
Choose a third party solution. Vote for me!
Lovely day for Ragnarok. I’m on Loki’s team. Tricksters have always been my favorites. Plus, Odin’s a jerk.
The Doctor will save you…
@Ada Palmer I was figuring, up, there, I’d have to deal with Ice Giants more than Surtur’s crew, so the Caves would be stable and safe.
If that fails, I’ll borrow Jo’s idea in full and get myself in solid down into the Soudan Mines (where they have the neutrino detector)
Team Baldur for the win! (Post-Ragnarok of course.)
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang, but a…
Is there some sort of Green Party option?
I’ll fight behind Baldur, for many reasons, but right now mostly because To Hel with the friggin’ Ice Giants and their perpetual winter!
The Doctor saved us! Thank you, Doctor.
Or it could have been Jim Kirk traveling back in time. Those Norse gods have always reminded me of Klingons.
I think the Green Party equivalent would probably be the hide behind Baldur faction. The prophecy says that after the Earth falls and the Sun is swallowed, Earth will rise up again and a new sun will be born, and then “the sons of two brothers will inhabit widely the windy world,” which is usually read as meaning Baldur and Hod will come back. Then the neutral (wussy) gods who didn’t die in the fight (like Njord god of the sea) will sit in a field and play checkers with golden checker boards, and tell stories about the good old days when awesome people (like Loki) did awesome things (like shave Sif’s head in the night… that was sweet…). So I suppose *some* of you might think playing board games in a sunny field forever sounds cool. But Baldur is about as prepared for real adventureing-type fun as the baby bunnies he’s so fond of, and also the dragon comes back and destroys everything a second time, so, you know, may as well go out with the cool kids.
Loki, I like the way you think. The Eye commands you to read my similar attempt to correct the propaganda put out by the other side:
http://www.sauronsblog.com
I wish to book a place upon the dread ship Naglfar, composed of the unshorn nails of dead men; specifically a starboard stateroom, if you’d be so kind.
I shall tour Ragnarok in style!
Do you really believe this imposter?
The first clue that he’s an imposter is that he repeats that nonsense about the gods creating the world from the corpse of a giant that they had killed.
Some of you laugh at the nonsense of God creating the world in seven literal days but you accept that nonsense?
The truth of the matter is that Norse myth is a combination of proprogranda created by the Lords of Evil, some proprogranda created by the Norse gods and “wish fulfillment of Norse warriors”.
The idea that the gods will die during Ragnarok is obvious Lords of Evil proprogranda so that the followers of the Norse gods might weaken in fear. (As C. S. Lewis pointed out, it failed.)
No, the real Loki is one of the good guys although like the other Norse gods he has his flaws. He is addicted to somewhat childish practical jokes.
Odin has a trendency to make eliborate plans thinking that his foes will never figure them out.
Thor, while not stupid, has been known to fall victim to trickery (both Loki’s and the Evil Ones).
The fact is that Loki is one of the most dangerous foes that the Lords of Evil have.
They can beat him in open combat but never trick him.
Odin accepts that he needs Loki to point out flaws in his plans.
Thor knows that Loki, while a trickster, will fight at his side while warning him of tricks of the Evil Ones.
When Ragnarok comes, the Norse gods will win thanks to Loki.
Note, I’m still annoyed at Loki for the trick pipe tobacco but I can not let this impostor’s lies stand unchallenged.
Dr. Thanatos: Ah, yes, a familiar and much-needed attempt at the same kind of historical cobweb-clearing that I’m attempting here. Thank you for reminding us all of its wisdom.
Crane: As stearsman of the Naglfar I can certailny do my best to reserve you a seat. Meanwhile, to make that seat as comfy as possible, remember to encourage all your friends not to clip their toenails or those of dying relatives, so we’ll have as much material as possible to make an ample ship. We can only bring as may shades to the battle as will fit on board…
DrakBibiophile: Your response is quite perceptive, and informed by good knowledge of me, but seems I need to remind you that one of the signatures of a shapeshifting trickster is that I am difficult to recognize when I want to be. I adopt many forms and many political stances as the need arises, and you’re right that my own ends are far more complex than those of those who call themselves “evil” or “good”. Thus I respsect your suspicion, but your question here shouldn’t be “Who is this impostor?” but “Why is Loki seeming this way right now?” Asking the right questions is what open doors.
On the good ship, Naglfar……. I’m assuming Shirley Temple will be on board.
While I applaud your creativity, Trickster, I think I shall have to decline your offer to join Team Angst. Anybody who looks that much like Gandalf simply HAS to have a killer hole-card. Team All-Father gets my allegiance!
So…here’s a fun fact! [UNCANNY AVENGERS 17 SPOILER ALERT] In Marvel comics yesterday, the entire Earth was destroyed after Thor failed to stop a Celestial Executioner from giving old Midgard the axe. Good job Thor. And as usual, Odin was a %&*$ about it when Thor was all depressed afterwords. I legitemately thought that’s what this article was about…
Alack, would that I could claim credit for all the Aesir’s woes, but it’s true they do half of it to themselves…
@blue Joe, I think that I would rather hide in Yggdrasil. That way, I might actually survive!!!!
@Jessica march, An admirable plan! Not necessarily the best for survival, but you’d have a front row seat for when Yggdrasil shatters and falls from the gnawing of the dragon. Definitely worth seeing!
All this “Loki is the mother of a horse with eight legs” and “Thor: Ragnarok” discussion made me search for things about Loki and I found this excellent and informative essay.
Now I want Tom Hiddleston filming a commercial with the style of the beginning scene of “Thor: Ragnarok” and the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”