Heathens in the Military: An Interview with Josh and Cat Heath, Part Two

Click here for Part One of the interview.

Self-portrait of Josh and Cat Heath

KS – What is the Open Halls Project?

JH – The Open Halls Project was a concept that Cat and I came up with, in an attempt to help US military service members. I’d joined the Army with the expectation that I’d never really meet a lot of other heathens. Funny enough, that turned out to be the exact opposite of the truth. I met more heathens once I’d left home and joined the military than I had before that. Even back home, I was getting messages, and – on leave at one point – I got to meet a whole ton of folks that I didn’t have a chance to before that. It was crazy.

The Open Halls Project is a way for heathens to get in touch with other heathens when they move from one duty station to another. That’s its core purpose. The other purposes are running care-package drives for service members that are deployed, advocating for more religious understanding and rights with the Chaplains Corps and making sure that heathen service members are taken care of, in any way we can help them with. Beyond that, it’s Cat and I doing our best with our crazy schedules to make things happen for folks. Sometimes that's easier than others.

CH – I think my husband pretty much covered it.

The doors of the hall are open to all

KS – Why did you decide to start the project?

JH – Cat and I were introduced in South Korea by a person we both sort of knew from the internet. She introduced us, and we also got to meet her. We were three heathens in a country with… three heathens. Our friend was a member of the Troth [a large American heathen organization], a very long-standing member at the time. Over the years of knowing her, she suggested a few times we look into it as an option to join. Honestly, I’ve never been one for joining any groups. I just never saw it as a good idea.

We got talked into joining the Troth because they wanted to have military stewards – folks that do outreach to particular groups. Since we were both keen on the idea of outreach, we decided it was a good idea. We wanted pretty much one thing out of the Troth. At that time, no religious preference was on the books [in the military] for heathens to choose. So, we joined, with the hope that by joining we could build up a program to help military heathens, get Ásatrú and Heathen added as religious preferences and see where that went.

To say we were kinda disappointed is a bit of an understatement. The Troth moves a bit slower than Ents do during a ten-year-long Westerosi winter. It took almost ten months to get the paperwork we needed from the folks in charge of the Troth to make the request to add a religious preference. I have to say that we don’t really agree with the Troth when it comes to how they do what they do, but to each their own. I wish many of my friends in the Troth well, but I’m glad we aren’t members anymore – even though I don’t really have hard feelings towards any of them. We are working with the Troth regarding a few projects here and there, and there is a big project coming up that they might be working with us on. Cross your fingers.

Josh and Cat (on table) attempting to move the process along

CH – Without getting into it too much, another main reason why we set up the Open Halls Project is that from an early stage in our interactions with the Troth and AFA [Asatru Folk Assembly, another large American heathen organization], we realized that some of the inter-org politics and style of working really didn’t fit the ethos that we’d decided to operate by when we came up with the OHP. Our aim was to create something that was grassroots, inclusive and that would be ruled by the principle of “just getting shit done.” For all the good intentions in an org, there is still baggage, history and by-laws to contend with, and we simply didn’t want to be constrained by any of those things.

Being grassroots, we don’t sound as impressive as a 501(c)(3)-status org, but we are certainly freer in how we operate and who we work with. On occasion, we’ve considered looking into becoming a 501(c)(3) org, because – as a grassroots movement – we’re very careful not to take any donations directly, instead facilitating the process between the donor and the service member. However, were we to become a 501(c)(3), we’d end up losing our mobility as a project. Sooner or later, we’d probably also become entrenched in politics, and that would be a pity.

Josh Heath in his work clothes

KS – How many members of the military have registered with Open Halls, and from which service branches?

JH – We have approximately 300 people registered in our official database, 120 in our Facebook group, plus who-knows-how-many website visitors, because we don’t have a tracker. 110 people in the database are active military or veterans. A majority of those are in the Army. We have a decent amount of folks in the Navy and the Air Force – and a very small amount of Marines and no Coast Guard, to my knowledge. These are official registrations, though; the amount of heathens I think would be much higher. Folks might not think these are large amounts of us.

KS – Have you been able to gather any hard data on the total number of practicing heathens serving in the US military?

JH – My hypothesis is that there are at least 300 practicing heathens, Ásatrú, or Norse Wiccans on active duty in the total military. Though this number might be slightly inflated, it's based on my estimates of folks that are on a multitude of groups on Facebook and around the internet that I’m either directly affiliated with or that I’m aware of. Hard data is very hard to get when the US Army Chaplains Corp has stonewalled you in regards to getting more information about the request you put in almost two years ago.

The stone wall set up by the US Army Chaplains Corps
(Illustration by J.R.R. Tolkien)

CH – In other words, it’s not easy to get information on a group that officially doesn’t exist yet, especially when attempts to gain recognition for the existence of that group seem to be going ignored or messed up (seemingly willfully) by the chaplaincy.

KS – How does the number of heathens compare to members of other minority faiths in the military?

JH – I’m doing some research and will put this into perspective. There are 1,456,862 people in the active US Army. As of 2009, 367 have chosen Wicca as their religious preference. From personal experience, I bet thirty to forty of these folks are really heathens of some sort showing solidarity because they didn’t have their own option. 280 Hindus, 40 Salvation Army, 85 Orthodox churches, 41 Quakers (I thought they were pacifists, but anyway…), 2 Magick and Spiritualists – and 46,890 Unknown.

We did get the US Army to add a heathen religious preference: the Troth. It isn’t what we wanted, and our second request to have Ásatrú and Heathen added has been largely stonewalled. Until we added the Troth [as an option], I was one of those folks that was Unknown. The point is this: there are a ton of random religious preferences, and we would not be the smallest of them by a long shot – if we were really counted the way we should be.

CH – To be honest though, the addition of the Troth as a religious preference really didn’t shock me. When Josh was deployed, I decided to go to the chaplaincy to ask if any others with similar beliefs had made themselves known to the chaplains there. The first thing I was told was that the post we were on was one of the most fundamentalist [Christian] posts that that particular chaplain had ever been on and that he’d never come across anyone else professing Ásatrú. He discouraged me from posting flyers because of the reactions from the community and then proceeded to tell me about a man he knew with tattoos that originally didn’t want to come to church but now really enjoys it. He also asked me multiple questions about how I was coping with my husband being away and recommended some Byron Katie and church stuff, even though I’d told him that I was working two teaching jobs on the German economy and was doing fine.

Historically, Christian leaders have had a complicated
relationship with interfaith outreach. In 742, the man
who became Saint Boniface reached out to heathens
by chopping down Thor's holy oak with an axe.

In the end, I left my number behind and asked him to please direct anyone that came asking about heathenism to me, but I got the distinct feeling that Post-it was just going to end up in the trash by the end of the day. Through a lot of that meeting, it was almost as though he couldn’t believe that I could really cope without Jesus, and that – in spite of my work and smart casual attire – I was just deluded that I was. I think this interaction and the way that that chaplain tried to work on me was pretty representative of how many in the chaplaincy function when confronted with another belief system. If nothing else, it soured our view of the chaplains on-post.

I know it sounds like I’ve just allowed one bad experience with the chaplains to affect my view of the whole chaplaincy. However, I’ve heard far more bad about them from other heathens than good, including one tale of how a suicidal soldier went for help and was told by the chaplain that he couldn’t help him unless he converted to Christianity. Which is a pity, because it’s definitely not in the remit of the chaplaincy to propagate one religious belief over another. They’re supposed to support and facilitate the expression of religious beliefs for all in the military community, regardless of what those beliefs are.

KS – Multiple soldiers have told me that, when they were asked their religion for official military records at induction and answered Heathen, their answer was changed to Other or No Religious Preference. Have you had experience with this or been contacted by others who have?

I want YOU to properly fill out religious preference forms

JH – Yes. I’ve heard of the second one happening, but the first is more common. The US military, until recently, did not have an official religious preference for heathens. The Troth is still the only one that they actually have. Honestly, the option of Other provides a lot of leeway for the military. The system of having specific religious preferences is important and is mandated by regulation. In a lot of ways, it seems like a useless system designed to cause problems. However, what it does is require the Chaplains Corps to have some level of understanding of each faith and to legally provide for the religious requirements of those faiths that are within their system.

It’s tiresome and often difficult to get additions to said list. However, in a lot of ways, it protects real religions from folks that would put random things they don’t truly believe in place. Any person is allowed to have whatever they want in the religion space on their dog tags. I had Ásatrú put on mine before I deployed, and before the Troth was added. This meant that anyone finding my dog tags would have at least something to research. Having a religion added to one’s other paperwork is helpful for requesting holidays, specific requests for religious exemptions (having a period of time off to give offerings, for example) and allowances for books and religious items that might not be authorized normally in places like basic training. I had my copy of the Poetic Edda with me during basic, and having a religious preference would mean that any heathen would, de facto, be allowed to have such a thing and could bring a lawsuit if they were restricted from having it.

Josh's companion for his world travels

The option of Other was designed to show that a person had a religious preference, not that they didn’t have any. Other as an option means that those members of smaller faiths can show that they have a religious preference and that they deserve to have some allowances made for their religious needs. None or No Religious Preference is different, but still valuable for those atheists and others that choose it. I don’t really know how frequently it’s a problem that heathens have their religious preference changed to None. Normally, it’s to Other, and there are regulations that recruiters have to follow that say they must choose Other, if there is nothing that fits a recruit’s religious preference.

Part Three of The Norse Mythology Blog interview with Josh & Cat Heath will focus on the quest for a heathen military chaplain and for allowing Thor's hammer as a religious symbol on veteran grave markers.

Heathens in the Military: An Interview with Josh and Cat Heath, Part One

For several years, I've been wondering about heathens in the US military. When I say heathens, I mean those who follow the contemporary iteration of Norse religion that is sometimes known as Ásatrú. For instance, I’ve had questions about the accuracy of data regarding adherents of various minority faiths within the military. I’ve come across small bits of information about the Department of Veterans Affairs forbidding the appearance on grave markers of Thor’s hammer (probably the most popular religious symbol for historical and modern heathens), but I discovered nothing definitive. I wasn’t able to find detailed answers to my questions – until I met Josh and Cat Heath.

Josh and Cat's heathen wedding in Denmark (2009)

Born in Laconia, New Hampshire and raised in nearby Holderness, Josh was on active duty in the US Army from 2006 to 2011. He served as a Quartermaster and Chemical Equipment Repairer / General Mechanic and was deployed during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2008-2009. He’s currently serving his last few months with the US Army Reserve while studying Political Science and French as a full-time student at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where he is also working to develop the school’s Veterans Liaison Office.

Cat was born in Chorley, Lancashire, England; the US is her seventh country of residence. She earned a BA with Honors in Modern Languages (French, Spanish and Portuguese) at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and met Josh while he was stationed in South Korea, where she was teaching kindergarten. The couple moved to Germany and had a civil wedding before Josh was deployed to Iraq. After his return a year later, the couple had a heathen wedding ceremony in Denmark. Cat currently works “as a corporate slave” but is also planning an escape via her translation business.

Together, Josh and Cat have been deeply involved in American heathenry and have played important roles in the struggle for its recognition as a religion in the US military. In 2010, they founded the Open Halls Project, an organization “set up to connect military heathens with civilian and military heathens throughout the world.”

KS – What is reconstructionist heathenry?

JH – It’s a process of breaking down all the information we have about historic heathen worldview and then trying to make that worldview work in the modern day. In some ways, it’s easier to say what it isn’t. Reconstructing heathenry is not reenactment. Reconstructing heathenry is not doing the same things that our ancestors did. Reconstruction in heathenry is about understanding why the ancient heathen peoples did what they did and applying that thought process to the building of religious ceremonies and customs (also known as sidu), today. There isn’t really such a thing as reconstructionist heathenry; different heathens have done differing levels of reconstruction. The movement to do more reconstruction has gotten stronger in the last ten years or so, and this movement has erroneously been called reconstructionist heathenry, when really it’s just heathenry with a focus on understanding and implementing a traditional worldview.

For example, we don’t know exactly how a blót [Old Norse “sacrifice”] was done in heathen times. We have a lot of archaeological information and we have a load of textual information about what became outlawed during Christian times, and we can extrapolate a lot of great information from all the research that has been done. The key, at least how I understand it, is that blót (and really any sacrificial ceremony in heathenry) is about creating a cyclic gifting relationship between the gods and ourselves. These same relationships can be built with the landvættir [Old Norse “land spirits”] and our ancestors, and I think it’s been a key part of recent advances in heathenry to focus on the fact that those relationships are, in a lot of ways, more important than the one with the gods. Our ancestors care about us, because we are more closely connected to them – the same with the landvaettir. They live with us; that relationship is like having a good connection with your neighbors. I like having a good relationship with the mayor, too, but if I don’t get along with the dude next door, that would impact my life a lot more.

Swedish artist Carl Larsson's (highly imaginative) vision of ancient blót 

Others might have a different view of Ásatrú or heathenry and how reconstruction fits into that. I know for a fact that some of my close friends don’t always agree with me, but I think that’s important. We don’t agree, but we can discuss all of the concepts together and really get into quality debates and help each other work out some thoughts and concepts.

CH – Reconstructionist heathenry is very misunderstood, and – as someone that’s often associated with it – I tend to find myself having certain “accusations” leveled at me. Most of the time, these center around how we’re all apparently “soulless” and just slavishly following what them there dusty old books say, that we apparently don’t have any of that UPG [Unverified Personal Gnosis, or mystical experience] stuff, and that we’re all mean and intolerant.

I did used to get quite annoyed by these accusations, but now I see them more as being indicative of the misunderstandings that exist out there about reconstructionism. As my husband said, sometimes it’s better to try and explain reconstructionist heathenry by what it is not, and, for some reason, some of what it is perceived to be not is often offensive to others, too. My husband has talked a little about the process that reconstructionists engage in, and I believe that reconstructionism is something that all heathens engage in; it’s just that some engage in it to a greater degree than others. However, having said that, heathenry suffers just as much from the curse of labeling as any other group on earth does. The reasons why we humans label each other are mostly just for identification purposes, but sometimes we label as a way of devaluing a group so that we don’t have to listen to anything they have to say. This is what I believe has happened in both the “anti-recon” and “recon” camps that seem to have sprung up. Trying to figure out what came first here is probably one of those “chicken and the egg” type scenarios – i.e., did the labeling create and reinforce group identities, or did already extant group identities lead to the labeling?

Self-portrait of Cat Heath

Either way, groups that are more reconstructionist in nature do have some differences. We tend to be more locally and community based (as opposed to playing on the national stage) and tend to focus on building up traditions over the years that can be handed down to our children. In terms of internet interactions, we also tend to stick to discussing subjects that can be backed up by sources, which admittedly can lead to the impression that we’re somehow “anti-UPG,” but we’re really not. Some of my most treasured UPG conversations have been with “recons” at the end of a night of revelry and with a drink in hand. We just tend to keep it to ourselves or among trusted friends and, in the age of Facebook, Tumblr and whatever else that encourages us to share every single detail of our lives for public consumption, is there really anything wrong in keeping some things – moreover things we consider sacred – more private?

KS – How is reconstructionist heathenry different from other iterations of Norse religion in the last half-century?

JH – Reconstruction is a technique, it isn’t really a type of religious practice. From that perspective, it’s just another way of getting at information to help forge a modern Norse religion. Having said that, I think the biggest difference is we are trying to get away from the universal ideas that most modern heathens started with. Heathenry in Iceland is different from heathenry in the UK, is different from heathenry in the Northeast of the US, and is likely different from heathenry in Australia. There isn’t anything wrong with that! That’s a good thing. The regional differences of practice are important. Regional religious expression was different throughout the [historical] heathen world. However, we are all working from the same base information set, so even if what we do is different, why we do it should generally be the same. It’s the worldview that is important, not the structure of blót or worship event.

This is the biggest issue I’ve had with books written by heathens. They often write out “this is how you do a ritual blót,” instead of writing “this is the worldview surrounding why you do blót.” Then, instead of explaining why we think our ancestors are directly important to us, some folks simply say a particular ancestry is important. No, it doesn’t matter where your ancestors came from. If you lived in a heathen tribe in the old days, and you grew up there, you knew their way of life. You were a heathen. Period. Honoring our ancestors is thanking them for the actions that they took that have led us to where we are today. Old Spice has a tagline on their products: if your grandfather didn’t wear it, you wouldn’t be alive today. Cheeky and a bit odd, but totally true in this context.

Even thunder gods need help with the ladies, sometimes.

CH – The biggest difference I can think of here is that non-Norse-focused groups (like Germanic or Anglo-Saxon heathens) tend to be more of a reconstructionist nature. Well, other than those “Seax Wicca” people, but we don’t talk about those. They’re like Fight Club; we just don’t talk about them. Other than that, though, I agree with my husband – it’s just a method that happens to have led to the creation of some really cool groups and interesting customs.

KS – How did you two come to the form of heathenry you practice today?

JH – It was the year 1994 or 1995. I had just read a great book called The Hammer and the Cross by Harry Harrison (may he never be forgotten). I seriously liked it, and I wondered why there weren’t people still worshipping the Norse gods. I kinda left it at that, as well as a 5th grade “research” paper on the Vikings and their religion and travels. That summer, I worked as a volunteer at the local library and came across a term in a book that I couldn’t pronounce, but I was totally sure it was my new religion. That word was Ásatrúarfélagið [“Æsir Faith Fellowship”], and – really truly at the time – I had no idea what it meant or said, except the definition was belief in the Norse gods in Iceland. Simple as that, I was hooked and, with internet acces, I learned about another easier to pronounce word: Ásatrú. I read the websites at the time, learned about the Nine Noble Virtues [a list of moral guidelines created by English heathens in the 1970s] and called it a day. From then till 2004, I met only two other heathens, and I was not impressed by them. So, I wasn’t really much of a heathen. I said I was Ásatrú, but I didn’t really make offerings regularly, and I didn’t even really know all that much.

The Hammer and the Cross
by Harry Harrison and John Holm

Sleeping in your car changes your life. I sat down and made a ten-year plan while I was living in San Diego in my car. Part of that ten-year plan was to really make Ásatrú/heathenry a part of my life. Not just to believe in it, but to truly live it. I popped back on the internet and began doing some searching again, and I came across several very bad websites – all of them racist garbage. At that point, I almost gave up looking for heathens that were worthwhile, again.

Then I stumbled across [the online forum] Asatru Lore. This site was a major impact on my heathenry. This is where I first learned about recon. This is the site that drove me to really start reading the different versions of the Eddas. This is where I discovered Hilda Ellis Davidson and a multitude of wonderful resources regarding heathen worldviews. This is also where I discovered the Nine Noble Virtues were a pile of crap written down in a vain attempt to collate all of the different cultural norms from the Lore (the collected writing and archaeological evidence we have from the heathen age). Practically every assumption I had regarding heathen religious belief was called into question. The concept of Valhalla was thrown out and replaced with a non-dualist concept of afterlife in the grave mound. Rituals were done for a reason: to create a gifting relationship with the gods based on the concepts of luck and action. I learned a lot there.

I also learned that a lot of heathens were a**holes. Ha! Asatru Lore has a reputation for having a culture that smacks down people that don’t know anything, hands their hats back and says, “Shut up until you have an idea what you're talking about.” This was not always an easy environment, but I learned a lot in the years I’ve been a member of the site. I look back at my first post and cringe at some of what I suggested. From there I joined the Army, met my wife – who had been a heathen nearly as long as I had, at that point – met other good heathens and became a part of the Northeast heathen community, even while I was living in South Korea and then Germany. It’s been a long, crazy trip. That’s for sure.

CH – My first “draw” to the Norse gods was when I was eleven and encountered a book of myths during “silent reading” at school. “Silent reading” was basically a half-hour period in which we had to get a book and read silently, and I loved it – well, as long as I had a good book! For some reason, though, this book was different, because I’d read lots of books by that point and had never prayed to the “characters” when I got home from school before! Right here, I’d like to say that I’d continued on the path of heathenry, that I had grown good and true and different from my Christian whelp classmates, but that’s not what happened. Especially not when other kids were getting confirmed and getting to drink free wine underage. So, that’s what I did. I got confirmed and lasted as a Christian for less than a year. I remember asking the vicar a lot of uncomfortable questions about Jesus and dinosaurs and not actually liking the wine much, after going out of my way to get confirmed so I could have it. So, I just decided to go back to doing what I was doing before.

This picture totally proves that Jesus loves dinosaurs.

Unfortunately, I grew up in a place that might be classified as “the sphincter of the universe,” and the only books that were remotely on the subject in the local library in the mid-1990s were all Wicca-type books. I read a lot of books that talked about things like “magic yonis” and pretty much decided to ignore them and continue just doing what I was doing. When I was younger, I used to spend lots of time on the moors, hanging around the old burial mound or the remains of the chambered cairn and the Viking barns. Over the years, I built up a series of places and my own traditions of things that I did there. Growing up on that land, I was more than aware of the folktales, too, and it was almost instinct to make offerings to the “spirits” at certain places.

As 1997 dawned, so did a brave new world: the internet had finally reached the town in which I was attending junior college, and that’s when I abused the college printer, printing out sagas and Eddas for free. Not only that, but I found all manner of websites that caused me to have “Oh, shit! That’s like me!” kind of moments (as well as some really neat ones about shrunken heads). That’s when I decided I was a heathen. In all honesty, I thought it sounded stupid saying the word Ásatrú. It sounded too much like ass for someone from a town like the one I came from, so heathen has always been my preferred term. I travelled around a few countries, had a few adventures, got a degree, found a group of other heathens, partied with lots of pagans, moved to Korea, met my husband and ended up on the US heathen radar (for better or for worse). The rest of the story after that is just boring though – something about moving to Germany, getting married, moving to the States and winding up around the good people we are now.

As for how I became a reconstructionist, I’ll tell you the secret. There’s a magical being called Recon Krampus that actually scoops up unsuspecting heathens in a big net, puts you in a big room where you are held Clockwork Orange style, and forces you to listen to sources and academic arguments. It’s really quite traumatic, and I’d appreciate it if you just left this one alone now, Karl.

No, for real, I just always liked reading and getting to the bottom of mysteries.

Krampus says, "Don't cry, little children!
Researching historical religion is fun!"

In Part Two of The Norse Mythology Blog interview with Josh & Cat Heath, the couple will discuss their international work with heathen soldiers. Stay tuned!

Questioning Loki, Part Two

ASK A NORSE MYTHOLOGIST #2 (continued)
Click here for Questioning Loki, Part One.

Emily Taylor Kent (Bristol, United Kingdom) asks:

“Do you think Loki is ‘evil’ or just mischievous, cheeky and misunderstood? Do you think he deserved his punishment?”

I think that it depends on whether you decide to read the mythology as a whole or decide to throw out the uncomfortable bits. Personally, I think we have to take everything we know about Loki as a totality and make our judgement accordingly. Let’s look at the evidence.

Is Loki really a special squeezable unicorn?

Loki's children turn out evil. Since Darwin won out over Lamarck, we haven’t subscribed to the idea that acquired characteristics can be transmitted to our offspring. Given that there’s no mention of Loki raising his monstrous kids in his household and passing on his values to them, let’s not blame him for the nasty things they do. On the other hand, you should read what I wrote to Cameron (in Part One) about our modern sympathy for monsters – a sympathy that would have been completely alien to the worldview from which the Norse myths originate.

SCORE: Evil 0, Cheeky 0

Loki's children actually do seem a bit rough, though, don't they?

Loki has a bunch of adventures in which he gets the gods out of sticky widgets. Admittedly, he usually gets the gods into these awkward situations in the first place. He really does seem more naughty than evil in these stories, so let’s give him a point on the mischievous side.

SCORE: Evil 0, Cheeky 1

Now we run into problems. Loki brings about the murder of Balder, the fellow that Snorri Sturluson calls “the wisest of the Æsir [the Norse gods] and most beautifully spoken and most merciful.” You could even call him Christlike. What did Balder ever do to hurt anyone? Nothing. He’s the great innocent of Asgard. With no motivation given in the myths (other than, perhaps, base jealousy), Loki causes Balder’s death. He simply kills the nicest of all the gods. You really can’t read this action as anything other than evil.

SCORE: Evil 1, Cheeky 1

In the poem Lokasenna (“Loki’s Quarrel”), Loki murders a servant named Fimafeng simply because he’s mad that folks were praising the excellence of the waitstaff. He's jealous of waiters, now? Fimafeng is the second innocent killed by Loki. Yikes! Loki then goes on to say nasty, nasty things about each one of the gods and goddesses – until Thor shows up and shuts him up. Although some of the things he says may actually be true, airing people’s private business in public in the nastiest possible way isn’t much better than outright slander, is it?

SCORE: Evil 2, Cheeky 1

Loki isn't the greatest guy to have over to the house for a party.

Here’s the big ’un. At the end of mythic time, Loki attacks the gods in the ship Naglfar, which is made from the fingernails and toenails of dead people. Eww, right? Here’s how the scene is described in the poem Völuspá (“Prophecy of the Seeress”):

A ship journeys from the east, Muspell’s sons [the giants] are coming
over the waves, and Loki steers.
There are the monstrous brood with all the raveners,
The brother of Byleist [Loki] is in company with them.

Loki actually drives the gang of giants to come kill the gods in the final battle of Ragnarök. During the ensuing carnage, almost all of the gods are killed, every human being (except two) are killed, and the world is destroyed. Mass murder on a worldwide scale and destruction of the earth itself – could it get any worse? By the end of mythic time, Loki makes Hitler, Stalin and Mao look like amateurs.

FINAL SCORE: Evil 3, Cheeky 1

In the end, Loki really is an evil so-and-so. He may have some good times with Odin and Thor in the middle-period stories, but that can’t really balance out the truly evil things he does. I know that a lot of people today want to see Loki as a gothy emo cutie, but that’s really going directly against the source mythology.

What happened to you, Loki? You used to be cool.

Regarding Loki’s punishment, the Poetic Edda tells us that Loki is captured after his second murder. He is “bound with the guts of his son Nari,” but the poem doesn’t tell us how those guts were got. While the Poetic Edda simply says that Loki’s other son “changed into a wolf,” Snorri Sturluson writes in his Prose Edda that this wolf-boy ripped his brother apart (but does not say that the gods forced him to do so). Given the fact than, in Norse mythology and saga, “changing into a wolf” can mean (1) going into a berserker rage or (2) being branded an outlaw and kicked out of the community, I'm not so sure that we can take the original quote to mean a literal change into an animal. Snorri is notorious for taking poetic images literally, then spinning them out into long-winded explanations.

As for the implication (i.e., not a direct statement) in the Poetic Edda that the gods kill one of Loki's sons, this is actually not an alien concept to the moral worldview of ancient times. There are many instances in many sources concerning the murder of an enemy's children. This awful act appears in not just in Norse myth and saga, but in the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Koran, Jewish scripture, Greek myth & etc. Although this idea is rightly abhorrent to us today, we should be careful about projecting modern morality onto ancient texts. Seeing Loki as a victim of outrageous cruelty by the gods is a simple misunderstanding of historical cultural realities.

This complicated business aside, Loki’s subsequent punishment is described by Snorri like this:

Skadi [the giant maiden in my Norse Mythology Blog logo] took a poisonous snake and fastened it over Loki’s face; poison dripped down from it. Sigyn, Loki’s wife, sat there and held a basin under the poison. But when the basin was full, she carried the poison out; and meanwhile the poison fell on Loki. Then he writhed so violently that all the earth shook from it; these are now called earthquakes.

Sigyn's favorite song: "Stand by Your Man"

You have to decide whether this is a just punishment for a purely malicious pair of murders, both against completely innocent victims with no real motivation. Binding for (nearly) eternity and snake poison (sometimes) in the face are both pretty nasty things, but the punishment for murder in real life has been pretty nasty, too. I think you need to weigh all the above evidence and information for yourself and make your own judgement – while always keeping in mind the danger of reading today's morality and psychology into yesterday's mythology.

Michael Bullard (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) writes:

Recently my nephew and I were watching an animated version of Marvel's Thor on television that featured the frost giants as the villains. Somewhere in the story, it's mentioned that Loki is actually a jotun [an Old Norse term usually translated as “giant”] like the frost giants and not one of the gods. My nephew picked up on this and asked how Loki could look the same as Thor and the gods, but actually be born a jotun – which were giant icy monsters in the film. It may seem like a silly question, but it was one I remember asking myself as a child when reading Norse stories. Not just about Loki, but about the giants themselves. I guess what I'm asking is: 

Just how giant were the giants? Could they change size? Could the gods change size? Does it even matter? How did so many gods and giants intermarry and have children if the giants were, well, giant?

Anyone who follows this blog knows that I’ve read a lot of Marvel Comics (and was a bit heartbroken by Kenneth Branagh’s Thor movie). I really do love the comic books, and I’m always happy when they lead young people (like your nephew) to the original Norse myths. I’ll address your questions in order.

What happened to you, Thor? You used to be cool.

Giants could definitely change their physical form or, at least, how we see them. The story of Thor’s visit to the hall of Útgarða-Loki shows this; the giant of the tale has the ability to change his outward appearance, and he is a master of illusion.

The gods can certainly change size. In the story of Thor’s fishing trip, the god of thunder swells to gigantic proportions. The angrier he gets, the larger he gets (like the Hulk), until his feet go through the floor of the boat and rest on the bottom of the ocean as he throws his hammer from on high. That’s pretty big!

As for whether this matters, I’m not sure that it does. I stress to my college students that we shouldn’t try to apply too much of the logic of modern realist literature to ancient tales of gods and giants. Here’s what the Roman writer Tacitus had to say about the Germanic tribes in 98 CE:

They conceive it unworthy the grandeur of celestial beings to confine their deities within walls, or to represent them under a human similitude: woods and groves are their temples; and they affix names of divinity to that secret power, which they behold with the eye of adoration alone.

This was written over 1,000 years before the Eddas, but it’s interesting to note that the ancient tribes (at least in this reported instance) did not think of their gods in discrete physical terms as walking and talking characters. Gods and giants are mystical beings with fluid characteristics. To get too hung up on physical details is like asking what color God’s beard was before it turned white, or who cuts his hair.

Note the absence of physically-manifested gods (of any size) hanging about
in Emil Doepler's 1905 illustration of a sacred grove described by Tacitus

Your question about intermarriage between gods and giants gets right to the heart of the matter. Both Odin and Thor had giantesses for mothers. Njord (god) marries Skadi (giantess) and Frey (god) marries Gerd (giantess). In no instance is there any suggestion that the giantesses are physically larger than the gods. Loki, who is definitely a giant, seems to be smaller than Thor; he even hangs on to Thor’s belt for safety while crossing a raging river.

In the end, we should avoid thinking of the giants in terms set by later folklore and popular culture, but try to read the Norse sources with Rudolf Simek’s words in mind:

The concept of giants probably originated in the observation of various natural phenomena, in particular wintery phenomena (hence: frost giants) which overwhelmed human understanding and lay outside the close area of experience of men. Thus giants are natural spirits and among the original inhabitants of the world.

Books are awesome (even ones without pictures)

Think about winter storms. You can have a tiny little snowfall that barely coats the ground or a huge raging blizzard that shuts down schools and causes multiple car accidents. In other words, you can have a tiny giant or a huge giant. Make sense?

Jovana Garcia (Florida, USA) asks:

“I want to know if there has been any mention of Loki having mortal or demigod children and, if there was, did they inherit any powers from him or other gods?”

This is a much easier question to answer! Loki’s three monstrous children (the giant snake, the giant wolf, the half-corpse Hel) were all born of a giantess. Loki seems to have also had two sons with his wife Sigyn, who is a goddess. So, no – Loki doesn’t have half-human children like, for instance, Zeus does.

Loki and the kids share a quiet moment

Irem Ayar (Turkey) writes:

I'm a high schooler who is very interested in Norse mythology but, unfortunately, there aren't so many books about it in my country. So I've read some tales on the net (seems like they're from the book The Jotunbok: Working with the Giants of the Northern Tradition) and loved them very much, but I'm not sure if they're real myths or some talented writers who are inspired by the real myths just wrote them, because I've never heard of these tales before. 

For an example, is there really a myth about the birth of Loki?

I’m very glad to hear from you, and I’m saddened by the lack of access you have to good information. I would steer clear of books like the one you mention, which really have more to do with modern neopaganism than with any actual Norse mythology or historical Norse religion. No, there is no myth about the birth of Loki. That’s the danger of some of these new books – the authors tend to make up information to fill in the gaps in the mythology, but they don’t make it clear what is original and what is modern. J.R.R. Tolkien was also very interested in exploring what could have existed in these blank spots in the Norse myths, but he would never have dared to suggest that his works of fantasy were anything other than modern creations.

If you want to explore the major tales of Norse mythology, I strongly recommend Padraic Colum’s Children of Odin. It’s the first book I ever read on the subject, and it’s very easy to read (with great black & white illustrations by Willy Pogany). It presents the main stories in an order that makes sense, and it provides a great introduction to the most famous myths. You can read it for free online by clicking here. After you’ve read it, just send me a message through the contact tab, and I can recommend another book. Please keep in touch!

Strongly recommended: The Children of Odin

That's it for this edition of “Ask a Norse Mythologist.” Keep on reading and asking questions – both activities are good for the soul.

Questioning Loki, Part One

ASK A NORSE MYTHOLOGIST #2

Last year, I began a new feature at The Norse Mythology Blog called "Ask a Norse Mythologist." Everyone is welcome to submit questions about Norse mythology and Norse religion through the online form. I've received messages asking about Loki from all over the USA, Canada, Turkey and the United Kingdom. I’m very glad that people of such different ages and backgrounds are curious to learn more about the Norse myths. I hope that my Loki answers will be helpful to others, or at least lead them to do further reading and research on their own.

Richard Windsor (Beloit, Wisconsin, USA) asks:

“Is Loki the god of mischief or the god of fire?”

Neither, really. Loki is not referred to by either of these titles in the source texts of Norse mythology. Rudolf Simek calls him “a god without a function,” and all the major scholars of Norse mythology and religion agree that Loki was never actually worshiped in ancient times.

Wotan (Odin) and a flaming Loge (Loki) in a production of
Wagner's Rheingold by Metropolitan Opera in New York

The idea that he was a “god of mischief” seems to be connected with modern scholarship that attempts to connect him to Tricksters in other cultures (African, Native American, etc). The portrayal of Loki in Marvel Comics has strengthened this connection in the popular imagination. The “god of fire” idea is a famous mistake that is due to the similarity between the names Loki and Logi, the latter being a personification of fire in the well-known story of Thor’s visit to the giant Útgarða-Loki. The connection to fire was popularized by the composer Richard Wagner in his Ring operas, in which he portrayed Loki as a sort of fire-sprite named Loge.

Cameron Schick (Erie, Pennsylvania, USA) asks:

“Why does Loki want to end the gods?”

When you get right down to it, nobody knows. There is no motivation provided in the Eddas, the 13th-century Icelandic books that are the source of much of what we know about Norse mythology. The idea that literary characters have an inner psychological life is a modern concept that can’t actually be found in medieval literature. The Eddas provide no interior monologues in which the characters reflect on why they act they way they do.

An 18th-century illustration of Loki and his fishing net

That being said, it’s very difficult for modern people like you and me to keep from wondering about this issue. From a contemporary perspective, you can view Loki through the lens of the nature versus nurture debate. His behavior can be explained from either end of the spectrum; just remember that we’re projecting a modern way of thinking onto ancient stories. The results say more about how we think than about how the people who created these stories may have thought.

If you believe that people are born with an intrinsic predisposition to good or evil, you can read the tales of Loki from that perspective. At the beginning of mythic time, Loki is a giant. The giants are the destructive opponents of the gods, so you could say that Loki is a natural born killer. Loki fathers the most monstrous enemies of the gods: the Midgard serpent, the wolf Fenrir and the death-goddess Hel. He brings the killers of Odin and Thor into being. In the mythological present, Loki lives with the gods and is the traveling companion of Odin and Thor who continually gets them both into and out of trouble. In the future of the mythic timeline, Loki will bring about the death of the god Balder and lead the forces of darkness to destroy the world at the final battle of Ragnarök. So, you can interpret this as Loki starting out evil, striving to do good (as best he can) and finally reverting to his evil ways. According to this reading, he can’t escape his nature.

On the other hand, if you believe that it is an individual’s environment and experience that determine character, you can also read the stories about Loki in that light. Some of my students have great sympathy for Loki’s monstrous children. While they are still young, the gods throw the serpent into the depths of the ocean, cruelly bind the wolf and banish Hel to the world of the dead – before any of them have actually done anything to harm the gods. To modern sensibilities, it seems like this mistreatment could have driven Loki to seek revenge. In the world of the myths, however, the gods are acting to protect themselves from a prophecy that declares these three will bring about the Doom of the Gods.

Loki's monstrous children in an illustration by Willy Pogany
from Padraic Colum's Children of Odin (1920)

You can also ask if the actions of the gods actually turn Loki’s children to evil and therefore make the prophecy come true. Do the gods bring their doom upon themselves? Again, it all depends how you read the myths, but you should always be aware that we are overlaying modern concepts onto ancient tales. In order to put your mind into an ancient worldview (as much as that is actually possible), you have to realize that physical deformity was taken as a sign of evil. This led to horrible mistreatment (in real life) of people who were born with physical challenges. Even in modern times, we are often guilty of judging the character of individuals by their physical appearance. It makes no sense to suggest that long-ago gods would love and cherish children born to a giant in the form of a serpent, a wolf and a half-corpse woman. Although the monsters may seem sympathetic to modern sensibilities, that sympathy would have been completely alien to the culture that invented these stories. Myths reflect the values of the cultures that create them.

Miguel La Porte (Texas, USA) writes:

“I wanted to know if there was any documented story that tells us why Loki was so against the gods, who in reality were his very family.”

That’s a very interesting question. Please check out what I wrote above to Cameron, regarding motivation. I would like to make clear that the gods are not really Loki’s family – at least not his birth family.

In Snorri Sturluson’s Edda, it says that Loki is “numbered among the Æsir [the gods].” The language is important; Loki may hang out with the gods in several myths, but he is not one of them. He is the son of a giant, and – in the world of the myths – kinship is reckoned through your line of fathers. As a giant, Loki actually belongs to the family of the gods’ greatest enemies. In the end, he sides with his birth family against his adopted family.

I’d also like to point out that Loki is not the adopted son of Odin; that’s an idea from Marvel Comics, not Norse mythology. We’re not talking about an adopted son attacking the man who raised and nurtured him. The myths tell us that Loki is the blood-brother of Odin. They swore allegiance, which implies that they are at least somewhat on equal terms and that they may have started as enemies on either side of the god/giant divide. Loki’s attack on the gods violates the oath of brotherhood that he took with Odin – as does his causing the murder of Balder, who actually is one of Odin’s sons. Oath-breaking and murder were (and are) very serious crimes. In Norse culture, Loki would have been seen as an outlaw; he was someone who committed crimes that meant he could no longer be part of society.

Thor and Loki being adoptive brothers is an idea from comics, not myth

Tom Hovland (Canada) writes:

“What I want to know is if Loki is just a character who was added to the stories later on, or he was just a minor player, or he was just poorly documented.”

Loki plays a major part in the Norse myths that have survived. These myths mainly come from two collections – the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda, both written down in 13th-century Iceland. The oldest written source for Loki is the 9th-century Norwegian poem Haustlöng (“Autumn-long”), which includes Loki’s adventure with the giant Thjazi. There is no mention of Loki in earlier sources from continental Europe or the British Isles.

Scholars have been arguing about Loki’s age and origin for very long time. Since his stories come from a time when heathens and Christians interacted, some have argued that he is a late invention (based on Christian demonology) that was inserted into the mythology – or that Christian ideas about devils were incorporated into his character. Others have suggested that the original conception of Loki was a heathen one of a bound giant or of a master thief. As Hilda Ellis Davidson writes, “Other theories which try to establish Loki as an early god in the Germanic world have not been very successful.”

Some people have seen an image of Loki on an ancient furnace stone found on a Danish beach. Interpreting the carving this way is based on a basic misunderstanding of Loki’s nature that considers him a god of fire. Read my answer to Richard (above) for an explanation of this linguistic mistake. We’re left with a circular argument that (wrongly) posits Loki as a god of fire, then defines a random face on a furnace stone as Loki because he’s a god of fire. See how the logic fails? The other argument for this being Loki is that the image supposedly shows stitches on the face’s lips, as in the myth in which an angry dwarf sews Loki’s mouth shut. I think it’s pretty clear from the close-up photo that the vertical lines are simply meant to represent the face's lower teeth. Archeologists have a distressing tendency to associate with a god any representational figure that they can’t immediately explain.

When I was a kid, this is exactly how I drew the Hulk's teeth when
he was angry. Since he's always angry, I had a lot of practice.

There is a carving from England that has also been interpreted as representing Loki in the form of a bound giant, waiting for Ragnarök. However, the image is actually found on a fragment of a Christian cross from the late 10th century; England’s conversion to Christianity began way back in the 6th century. Given the late date of the carving, its location and its Christian setting, it can arguably portray a devil or demon from Christian lore. The problem with interpreting this as Loki is that we’re reading backwards from Icelandic mythology and projecting it on an English artifact. Without the Icelandic myth of Loki’s binding, there would be no reason to identify this Christian image as Loki. It’s a flawed argument, like the one for the furnace stone.

A bound Loki or a bound Satan?

A different 10th-century cross from England has a figure that may be more convincingly argued as representing Loki. The Gosforth Cross includes an image of a bound figure lying on his back, with a woman holding a bowl above him and what may be a snake hovering above his head. This lines up well with the myth describing Loki being bound by the gods, with his wife Sigyn holding a bowl above his face to catch the venom dripping from the snake hanging above. Although we’re again dealing with a Christian crucifix, elsewhere on the object are images that seem to portray the Norse gods Balder, Heimdall and Vidar. Altogether, the cross has been interpreted as using imagery from Norse mythology to help converted heathens grasp the teachings of their new Christian faith. Again, the late date and the Christian setting of the crucifix mean that it doesn’t tell us anything about Loki that we don’t know from the Icelandic sources. As with the other English cross, we only interpret this figure as Loki because of what we know from the Icelandic manuscripts.

Loki, Sigyn, and snake on Gosforth Cross

One interesting source that may shed some light on all this is History of the Danes, composed in the 13th century by the Danish writer Saxo Grammaticus. In this massive work, the Norse gods appear in very different forms from those we're used to (which come from Icelandic literature), and the stories themselves are very different. Saxo tells us of a human hero named Thorkil who finds a bound giant when he travels to “a land that knew neither stars nor the light of day but was shrouded in everlasting night.” The story has been connected by scholars to the Edda tale of Thor’s visit to the giant Útgarða-Loki. In Snorri’s version, Loki travels with Thor, and we interpret the name of the giant as “Loki of the Outer Regions.” In other words, this deceitful fellow is to the giants as Loki is to the gods; he's their Loki.

The giant in Saxo is also called Útgarða-Loki, but he's a very different figure. Here’s the part of the story describing how Thorkil finds the giant:

After this, with others in front acting as torch-bearers, [Thorkil] squeezed his body in the narrow jaws of the cave and gazed on every side at rows of iron seats festooned with slithering serpents. Next a quiet stretch of water flowing gently over a sandy bed met his eyes. When he had crossed it, he reached a place where the floor sloped downwards rather more steeply. From here the visitors could see a murky, repulsive chamber, inside which they descried Útgarða-Loki, his hands and feet laden with a huge weight of fetters. His rank-smelling hairs were as long and tough as spears of cornel-wood. Thorkil kept one of these as a more visible proof of his labours by heaving at it with his friends till it was plucked from the chin of the unresisting figure; immediately such a powerful stench rolled over the bystanders that they had to smother their nostrils in their cloaks and could scarcely breathe. They had hardly gained the open air when the snakes flew at them from every direction and spat on them.

You’ll have to read the book to find out what happens next!

In this version of the myth, Útgarða-Loki seems to be Loki himself. The scholar E.O.G. Turville-Petre writes that this giant “appears to be Loki, expelled from Asgard [land of the gods] into Utgard [land of the giants], in the form which he took after he had caused the murder of Baldr. He was bound with fetters, and thus he will remain until the Ragnarök.” Note that this giant is bound underground and guarded by poison-spitting snakes, which agrees with the punishment of Loki that we’re familiar with. It also lines up with the image of the bound giant on the cross discussed above, if we decide to interpret that image as a bound giant. As I wrote earlier, some scholars have argued that this idea of Loki as a bound giant is the older version of the character. I hope you now see how difficult it is to move between physical artifacts and literary sources and argue the meaning of one based on the other.

Louis Huard's illustration of Loki bound

In the end, the answer to your question is really that the only definitive things we know about Loki come from late literary sources, either from the time of northern Christian conversion or long after that conversion was completed. There is a lot of scholarship on this issue, and I've merely addressed some of the basic issues here.

To be continued in Part Two.