Becoming a mother the social value of sh

SNORRI STURLUSON Medieval Icelandic lawyer, poet, and politician GYLFAGINNING Loki seeking to reaffirm his position in the group BRIAN DAY Canadian poet interested in the interplay bet

B ECOMING A M OTHER

The social value of shape-shifting in Snorri Sturluson’s

Gylfaginning and Brian Day’s “Loki and Sleipnir”

H ARRIET J EAN E VANS University of York

SNORRI STURLUSON

Medieval Icelandic lawyer,

poet, and politician

GYLFAGINNING

Loki seeking to reaffirm his

position in the group

BRIAN DAY

Canadian poet interested in the interplay between sex

and the sacred

“LOKI AND SLEIPNIR”

Loki victimised and exploited by the group

G YLFAGINNING

• The builder offers to build the wall in exchange for Freyja, the sun

and the moon

• The gods agree, and allow him to use his horse

• This horse is stronger than any man, and the gods are worried they

will have to pay up

• They tell Loki to solve the problem… he turns himself into a mare

• With the horse distracted, the builder can’t finish the wall

• Reveals himself as a giant and is destroyed by Thor

• Loki gives birth to Sleipnir

L OKI & THE Æ SIR

L OKI & O DIN

Do you remember, Óðinn, when we two in the old days blended our blood together?

Mantu þat, Oðinn,

er vit í árdaga blendom blóði saman?

ODIN – “leader”, THOR – head giant-basher LOKI – son of a giant and a goddess (I.e not quite in the group).

L OKI’S C HILDREN

a mythological family

-+Angrboða

+Sigyn

Jörmungandr

Sleipnir

Nari/Narfi +Svaðilfæri

Can move between the worlds of the living and the dead!

“L OKI AND S LEIPNIR ” (2000)

• Sticks closely to the original

• Sleipnir is Loki’s first child

• Loki is the only one who can save the gods

• Loki loses his masculine identity bit by bit

HARRIET JEAN EVANS

A NATURAL PART OF LIFE?

As the late long evening sun was setting

Loki frisked with her teasing scent to

the meadow

upwind from the stallion’s hauling of stone

The scent was the speed and wildness of

summer

The workhorse, Svadilfari, tore from his

traces,

bolted from duty and the weight of the wall

The sweet burning grasses that

smoked in his blood

obscured the urgent appeals of the

man

who still believed himself his master

-sent him speeding in arcs behind the mare,

trampling tracks in the green-gold meadow

and crashing through the bristled brush of

the wood

Loki deked and swerved and sweated,

releasing her maddening scent to the air,

tantalizing the stallion to the pitch of

exhaustion

-then submitting as her brain went black

They gambolled the crucial last nights to the solstice, and Svadilfari, stunned with his black nights of lust, proved useless by day at dragging stone,

was cajoled and whipped but could not reach speed The nameless worker, irate at his failure

to gain Freyja’s body and the lights of the sky,

cracked the shell of his mason’s disguise, erupted in sudden grotesque contortion, and stood fuming, a giant on Asgard’s plain.

When Odin and the others saw his true shape

they on an instant revoked their oaths -for a pledge with a giant could not be binding.

They summoned Thor with his hammer Mjollnir -who splintered the builder’s skill like glass

and drove him down to the land of Niflheim, forever removed from the sun and the moon.

1 BECOMING 2

“PREGNANT LOKI”

In exhaustion it came without surprise when her foal was dropped with a full eight legs

A mouth on eight legs now drank from her teats

and she was reduced to the jug of its feeding,

her body the repository of another’s needs.

The foal once weaned was given to Odin:

But Loki was not relieved of his life

The memory of that male and unmale

entry

churned her mind in interminable

nausea;

it festered within her in the long months

alone,

and seasoned the flesh that grew slow in

her belly

Svadilfari entered as a dream half herself,

forcing his foreign power upon her,

W HAT D OES L OKI C ONCEIVE ?

He’d been delivered of one of his

children,

but the hate engendered still grew

inside him

It would shape itself to sharp darts in his

arsenal,

would be bred in Fenriswolf, Jormungand,

Hel

-the wolf and serpent and putrefying

woman

who would lie in wait to assault the gods

The acid hate of a man made a mother

would blaze in Loki and the children he’d father

until it poured out as flame and venom, gutting and scarring and scorching the world,

melting all women and men and horses, destroying at last the gods who’d

destroyed him

Are war and destruction the children of the

masculine?

C ONCLUSIONS

GYLFAGINNING

• medieval narrative

• Icelandic farmer trying to

ingratiate himself with his local

chieftain?

• Loki starts disadvantaged but is

able to successfully negotiate an

increase in his fortunes by means

of gift exchange and social

usefulness

Endings as different as the centuries-wide moments of

their conception - between Snorri and Day - between a

world where such transformations could benefit

society, rather than destroy it

“LOKI AND SLEIPNIR”

• Loki is victim of society

• also victim of himself?

• cost of transformation is high: loses his masculine identity in stages