Your story is pretty good. Amazingly, it has several points similar to a story I am working on. But Loki is not the good guy. Where did you get your background information on the mythology? It was very believable.

Hi Anonymous,

First and foremost, I can’t say enough good things about Trickster Makes This World by Lewis Hyde. I pored through it. Besides information on Loki, he has included delightful myths regarding Raven, Coyote, Hermes, Anansi, and Iktomi and other tricksters.

Other than that, it’s hard to pin point all of my sources. Wikipedia was a biggie, but I went a lot of times directly to the sources, not the interpretations … i.e., actually reading translations of the Lokasenna. I also went to pagan blogs, and found a few that were dedicated to Loki. (I did not keep track of the URLs. It’s fiction! I left non-fiction behind in grad school).

I also tried to understand Hindu mythology better by reading Wikipedia, and various Hindu sights. That has been more difficult. Hinduism is older than Norse Mythology, and has more contradictions. Shiva is an interesting guy. He seems to be at once the man who is full of “masculine energy” (I think that means he likes sex a lot), a loving husband and ideal father (who creates one Hell of a female protagonist in Durga — but then also cuts off his own sons head at one point!), and then he is also the ascetic who lives on a mountain apart from the world. I would like to study the history of India to learn more about how those phases of Shiva’s cycles corresponded with events on the Indian subcontinent.

I looked to Christianity as well. The idea that there is a time for all things is not an idea solely expressed in Hinduism. My guess is it is a concept that appears in many religions. 

On the subject of Loki … he became “the devil” and the God of Lies only in the 1300s. I don’t think Snorri was the one who gave him that monicker … but maybe I’m wrong. I can’t remember now! But when Snorri wrote Prose Edda Europe was still straightening itself out after the fall of the Roman Empire. (Yes, I know, he was in Iceland). At the time, I’m sure order, no matter how cruel, might have seen less cruel than the chaos of the day?

Anyway, that may not be very helpful to you.  But one of the themes of the story is that all myths contain kernels of truth, even ones encountered on the internets.