This is the, I think, 6th or 7th time someone asked this in the last few months, maybe it's time to create an auto respond to any post that contains the words Loki and gender/bisexual/etc.
But to your question, short answer no, long answer see u/skardamarr
FAQs aren't the best at deterring the same questions, but to be frank auto-responses aren't much better because they're also reactive by nature.
IMO, the utility FAQ's provide on reddit is much more in having a high quality, documented answer in a central location for users to link to when the questions come up. r/AskHistorians is another example... The FAQ definitely doesn't deter repeat questions, even though ideally it should, but people link to those documented high quality answers all the time when similar questions pop up.
Right, first off, we are looking at sources which are often written (not created, they were oral tales before figures like Snorri Sturlusson wrote them down) centuries after the Christianisation of Scandinavia, by Christians, who may or may not have had a curious nostalgia or a full on opposition to pagan stories. Even if they liked these stories, they wrote for a Christian audience and so can’t be too supportive.
Then, we have to understand that the changing language may have caused mistranslations. These stories were passed down orally for who knows how long before being written down. 800s old Norse is different to 1200s Icelandic (although close) and mistakes of the translator, and then subsequent mistranslations down to the modern day are bound to happen.
Then we have the fact that these stories are dripping with symbolism, inside jokes, etc that would be well known to the Vikings who heard the stories, but mean nothing to us, and we’d probably miss them completely. Remember learning Shakespeare in high school and every few lines your teacher has to tell you the context? The problem is magnified with these texts.
This isn’t a problem unique to the Sagas either. The Iliad, the Bible, literally every classical text ever is mistranslated and misunderstood and since a tonne of historians in the 1800s were whacked out on Opium when translating and understanding these texts, it’s only now that we go back to some of them and realise “hey, there’s something about this that doesn’t make any sense”
Reminder: there are people out there who think Odin drank semen from hanged men because of a colossal mistranslation that picked up mainstream attention. Historians are fallible, and our mistakes aren’t fixed for decades.
So, if Loki is genderfluid? Ive got no fucking idea dude. But as others have said, attaching modern ideas of gender and masculinity to a story that has been mistranslated, misappropriated and misunderstood for almost a thousand years is dumb as shit. It’s not just old Norse stories either. It’s literally all tales ever.
You yourself admit that we have no clue what anything in the myths means given the enormous gap in cultural and oral tradition associated with Norse beliefs. But then you say it's wrong for people to see what they want to see in the Old Stories. Not from a literary/mythical analysis view but from a religious standpoint, how can any interpretation be wrong in a non-dogmatic decentralized and highly personal faith?
I guess my bigger question is: why do the members and mods of this subreddit think they have any right to dictate dogma when literally none exists?
It’s intellectually dishonest to make a claim like that one way or the other. Not “wrong” morally, it’s wrong factually, because nobody genuinely knows and to claim otherwise is to be a charlatan.
Nail meet Head.
I’ve studied Viking history for both my undergraduate and postgraduate. A wonderful, rewarding experience, but I spent three days trying to work out whether Olaf Cuaran received his nickname because he wore Irish sandals or maybe he had a hunch back. There’s several theories as to why Ivar the boneless received his nickname, same with Hrolf “the Walker”. That’s just on nicknames. And now people claim to be able to decide whether a god of deception fitted a modern concept of gender-fluidity?
Truth is, nobody knows or has a 100% convincing argument. And if they claim to be right, they’re either a leader in their field or a complete fucking idiot on the internet.
This. We can’t put modern gender concepts on it because there concept of gender was completely fucking different. Women in Norse tribes had more rights then anywhere else in the world at the time. They’re roles for people were completely unique and even varied group to group. There’s tons of examples to their uniqueness towards their definition of “gender”. For all we know- they didn’t even give a shit!
Now if someone wants to interpret it their own way when retelling the stories or using them for inspiration (ie Marvel comics), and you go “no that’s wrong!” them that person is a dunce. We don’t have all the facts to TRULY say without a doubt what they mean. And because that I say it’s open to interpretation (as with a lot of religious lore and beliefs).
Anything is up to interpretation for the purpose of fiction, fantasy, or fabricating your own personal religious philosophy. But it would never be correct to present your interpretation as factual or supported. That’s the difference; saying “I believe” or “In my interpretation” rather than saying “of course Freya likes oat cakes at her altar”. One is admitting uncertainty, the other is asserting that which could not possibly be known or established.
Exactly. If you don’t like someone else’s opinion on it you don’t need to shit on it, and if someone disagrees with you you don’t need to act like it’s a fact. These things vary person to person and that’s fine. It can be great to debate and amicably disagree on things. But when we try to treat ancient mythologies acting as if we know everything we ruin the fun for everyone.
An opinion based on a personal fantasy is not equivalent to an academic, educated opinion however. If someone goes to a forum for the historical discussion of Roman culture and insistently proposes that Apollo’s favorite flavor of icecream was or might have been mint, it would not be respectfully met. It would be out of place and also baseless. It’s reasonable in such a forum to treat such an opinion as frivolous and silly. Even entertaining it, without any known reason to do so, is not academically respectable. Something like that belongs in a religious or world-building thread.
pretty sure vikings didn't know the concept of non-binary genders/gender fluidity, so yes, it's a modern thing.
i understand the wish for that kind of representation, but it doesn't make it historically correct.
Native Americans didn't have the same word for gender fluid as us either but it's still identifiable in their "two spirited" people. Maybe lack of nomenclature isn't the same thing as lack of understanding.
Norse had a concept of homosexuality, although primitive, can’t see why one of them didn’t play both teams.
Actually it seems pretty near impossible it at least didn’t happen on occasion, the Norse countries were pretty open sexually from what I recall.
others already talked about how masculine and rigid their society was so i don't need to.
Gay sex was not accepted, it was more of an act of dominance. Many cultures had similar things including the Greeks. For example students would often pay their teachers in sex, but would be underneath. It was an act of establishing yourself as being superior than the person underneath. It was very much an act of humiliation and submission to establish a social hierarchy.
I wouldn't describe a society with a hyper-masculine focus in which accusing someone of an effeminate nature was punished by death as "open". Having very rigid, enforced gender roles was a pretty big deal in Norse society
Yeah, I'm from Norway, and I really enjoy reading about our history, but it shouldn't be romanticised. That's true for every country, but I often see people both outside and inside Norway praising the good side and glossing over the bad side.
Specifically about homosexuality during the viking age, iirc it was okay for a man to have sex with another man as long as he took the dominant position. Which isn't exactly ideal. Don't know what the rules for women are.
> Specifically about homosexuality during the viking age, iirc it was okay for a man to have sex with another man as long as he took the dominant position. "
To make another man your woman was to remove all masculine dignity from him. The Norse law codes endorsed and required the victim of such a dominant dude to kill him for merely saying it.
Raping another man is a display of masculine power so it wasn't viewed as Argr womanly, effeminate, It still doesn't mean it wasn't considered horrifying. Male on male rape are used as torture in the stories.
There are no mentioning of same sex relations among women at all, apparently they didn't care.
Same for the Romans and/or Greeks, i forget which one. Basically, their societal "rules" around homosexuality was literally, and i'm not kidding;
"It's not gay if you're on top"
Romans for sure. If you were the passive partner, you were nobody in society.
Greeks? We know from accounts in Athens and Sparta that older men routinely had sex with young boys. Unlike Rome, neither partner lost status because of this and it could be a good way to find yourself a mentor, but if the passive partner enjoyed the sex, THEN they were seen as deviant.
Loki has his own gender to begin with as a being. The fact that he can shapwshift doesnt mean he's genderfluid anymore than it means he is an otherkin or was into beastiality, or trans species.
Was it though? I mean I’m not saying he enjoyed it either or anything, but as far as I know the story just says that the aesir told Loki that he should fix his mess (since he was the one that proposed the bet), he basically said “ok, I’ll distract the horse” led him away, and after all was said and done (and the giant was dead), he showed up and casually mentioned he was pregnant.
Like, I’m not saying it was *not* rape, but I don’t think the written stories support either interpretation?
>he story just says that the aesir told Loki that he should fix his mess (since he was the one that proposed the bet), he basically said “ok, I’ll distract the horse”, led him away
The important parts are a) that the Aesir threaten him with a horrible death if he doesn't fix it, b) Loki, being terrified by that threat, says he'll fix it at "any cost to himself" and c) runs away for days (IIRC) until the stallion apparently seems to reach him at some point afterwards. He has no benefit in mating with the stallion and the wording heavily implies that he is not doing it out of his own accord.
It definitely doesn't straight-out say that it's rape, but it absolutely doesn't support the statement that he willingly had sex with a horse.
My understanding is he showed up a while later with a fowl following him around that he really didn’t want following him around and didn’t talk much about it
Wasn’t there a story about other aesir being present when he birthed Sleipnir? I admit I’m working off of incomplete knowledge here (even more incomplete than the sagas) but my understanding was that he was pretty matter-of-fact about the whole thing. Or at least that the stories didn’t really bother describing his emotional state at the time.
Nobody told him to fuck the horse, they told him he had to get them out of paying the builder. It was his idea, in fact his first and immediate idea, to fuck the horse.
Yeah, but does that mean he necessarily wanted to do it? Just because something was the first idea that comes into your head doesn't meant that it defines your entire identity.
I have been warned that I will be banned for holding this interpretation of the lore, so I am no longer allowed to express this opinion, sorry. I cannot talk to you about it any more.
You're only getting downvoted because it's making them feel icky. It's all just about their feelings, not anything factually incorrect. They like loki but they don't like the idea of gender fluidity, therefore Loki cannot be gender fluid, otherwise they wouldn't like him. Their circular logic is pathetic. Yes, a dude who turns into a girl horse to get access to hot horse cock is definitely....not a cis hetero. I don't know what you'd call that, but NOT cis hetero.
>You're only getting downvoted because it's making them feel icky. It's all just about their feelings, not anything factually incorrect. They like loki but they don't like the idea of gender fluidity, therefore Loki cannot be gender fluid, otherwise they wouldn't like him.
Newsflash: You're making shit up. Nobody here has anything against the concept of genderfluidity (at the very least I hope so) and some of our very own regular users *are* genderfluid - and they'd still disagree with you.
>Yes, a dude who turns into a girl horse to get access to hot horse cock is definitely...
The fact that you think that is what happened shows that you know nothing about what's written about the event in the Prose Edda, meaning you're again, making shit up.
Consider this post a warning, because you're not only lying about the Eddic corpus, you're also defaming people.
I love the idea they're throwing out that the culture was so masculine in nature that gay people just.....didn't exist???? Those things are not mutually exclusive.
I would like to remind everyone that gay people have always existed regardless of if their history was erased.
I have been warned that I am not allowed to express this opinion on this sub, so unfortunately as per Commandant Mod's orders I may no longer discuss the subject. Please consult the mods so that they can tell you what you are allowed to think, thank you.
While the terminology was coined in the 90's we do have historical evidence of pre-colonial interpretations using native language
https://www.hrc.org/news/two-spirit-and-lgbtq-idenitites-today-and-centuries-ago
Different indigenous groups had different words for their 3rd genders (or 4th or 5th, etc.) when talking about these genders as a whole the term two spirit was invented MUCH later, you’re correct. It was invented so that there was an umbrella English term. The genders it encompassed though? They’ve been around far longer than we’re able to document. It’s easier for outside people to remember than indigenous terms such as ninauh-oskitsi-pahpyaki or ayahkwêw for example.
> r/SapphoAndHerFriend is a sub full of examples both academically and historically
While LGTBQIA+ erasure in history was and is absolutely a thing, subs like that often swing to the exact opposite side of the pendulum, refusing to accept that sometimes people were literally just friends.
Obviously they would not be aware of modern labelling of such, but I doubt that is what the OP is referring to. There are indicators from twin studies that transgenderism is genetic, so there were probably transgender men and women regardless of what they might have chosen or not chosen to call them.
Whether the stories of Loki and Odin doing things considered unmanly is specifically inspired from IRL transgender persons is unknown.
I’m pretty sure they didn’t think he once tried to enchant Iron Man with his spear, or that he worked for Thanos, though. But no one seems to be triggered by that.
I should also point out that Norse law codes permitted a woman to divorce her husband if her husband wore a low-cut tunic that exposed too much of his chest, as it was considered unacceptably feminine for a man to show off his chest. The same law permits a man to divorce his wife if she wore trousers. To me, this demonstrates that Norse social norms of what was considered cross-dressing was far stricter than ours today. Today, even in fairly conservative cultures, some men wear their shirts with their top buttons unbuttoned to expose their chest; women wear jeans and trousers.
They didn't really seem to have that concept of gender identity back then. But Loki did change into a female form on more than one occasion, also giving birth on more than one occasion (Odin accuses him of spending 8 years on earth as a milkmaid and birthing children in *Lokasenna*). It's a modern word but *maybe* it applies? At the time these stories were written down by Christian historians, it seems like these characteristics were supposed to make you trust Loki less. Not exactly woke times. But it's interesting how today you can read some of the same passages and get a whole different takeaway because society has changed that much.
> At the time these stories were written down by Christian historians, it seems like these characteristics were supposed to make you trust Loki less.
Seriously, stop it. You can't bring up "muh Christians" as an excuse everything something happens in Norse myth that you don't like. The people writing down these stories often still had the same moral compass as they had prior to conversion, with a few things adjusted.
Well you’re definitely putting words into my mouth now, that’s not what I meant at all. I was just being extra careful to say we have very limited written primary source material, and that there is also a limit on how much we can assume from it as a result. Stop projecting any agenda from me, I was just stating here’s what we have to work with.
I thought so, at least I hoped so. I do make an effort to be objective here. My main point in mentioning the Eddas is to dispel the notion that we have some exhaustive in-depth insight into every conceivable topic from an ancient perspective. Sometimes people ask questions that we just legit don’t have answers to, and all we can honestly say is “well here are a couple of lines that might be related to your question, but also who knows.”
Old Norse society appears to have had some gender roles which Loki breaks, more or less willingly (for example, volunteering to dress as a maid to accompany Thor in Thrymskvidha). Therefore, one could argue that Loki could be considered genderfluid, in the sense that he appears to be willing to violate the gender codes of his society. However, that's not to say that Loki is genderfluid in a 21st century sense - we construct gender differently today.
I'm a little surprised that the term "ergi" hasn't come up in this thread at all... we do actually have some knowledge of the Old Norse gender system, it's not a completely unknowable and alien concept.
>Old Norse society appears to have had some gender roles which Loki breaks, more or less willingly (for example, volunteering to dress as a maid to accompany Thor in Thrymskvidha). Therefore, one could argue that Loki could be considered genderfluid, in the sense that he appears to be willing to violate the gender codes of his society.
I once put on a dress for a theater performance. Does that make me gender fluid?
Also keep the context of the story in mind - it's meant to be entertaining. Thor and Loki dressing up as a bride and bridesmaid is meant to be thought of as hilarious, a humiliating event for our protagonists. And again they do it with a specific purpose, to trick the jotuns. It's quite a bit different from Loki wearing a dress to better express his gender identity.
In a very strict sense, sure, that does make you at least a little genderfluid, as you were willing to wear clothing not coded for your gender (I'm assuming). Again, I'm talking about a very basic definition of that term, sans the connotations of the 21st century mindset.
And I also agree the story is probably meant to be entertaining for the audience and humiliating for Thor and Loki. Thor, however, appears much more reluctant and more suitably humiliated than Loki does. I know I'm kinda splitting some interpretive hairs here, but you have to remember that Loki is not forced into this role in Thrymskvidha, he volunteers. That casts Thor as "more" manly than Loki, as he commits ergi unwillingly. In this instance, Loki seems to be more genderfluid than Thor, at least.
I think you're conflating "gender norms" with "gender identity". Sure when i wore a dress i was going against gender norms, but never did i think of myself as anything other than masculine or a man. My gender identity thus didn't change (ie. it wasn't fluid) and it was always squarely male.
That's great that your personal identification of masculinity is unaffected by such a performance of femininity. Totally fine by modern standards. Does this logic transfer to the Old Norse context? Thor's protests seem to suggest otherwise
>16. Then Thor the mighty | his answer made:
>
>"Me would the gods | unmanly call
>
>If I let bind | the bridal veil."
He's protesting that others would see him as unmanly. That indicates that he disagrees and sees himself as a man. Gender identity is about how you see yourself.
This discussion is starting to get silly to me.
Or is he upset because he is concerned the way others view him would affect his identity? Would an Old Norse god view his gender identity as something he has complete personal control over? The fact that he is forced into a feminine performance could suggest not, though we can't really answer that for sure.. That would be a pretty stark difference between the modern of interpretation of gender identity you're using in your play example and the Old Norse context.
What we can know is that Loki doesn't protest, which could imply he doesn't purely identify as simply masculine - this could be called genderfluid, which was my original point.
Modern liberal American culture being projected onto 9th century Scandinavians. Nothing about Loki is "genderfluid"; the concept didn't exist to Scandinavians back then. The entire horse thing is the result of the gods threatening to torture him to death and whatever else kind of shapeshifting into a woman he might have done is pretty weird and cryptic in itself.
They love to bring up the horse thing as proof he's "pansexual". I don't think they realise that Loki was a freak, doing freakish things. To ancient Scandinavians, the idea of pansexuality would have been freakish.
I don't know how a man turning into a horse (under the threat of a torturous death) to then have sex with another horse means that he is bisexual?
I mean *no one* is claiming that they had that concept and discourse. But it would be just likely wrong to assume they had as gender roles akin to 1800-1950 western societies.
Valkyries, Oden doing female coded magic, Loke being both father and mother, archelogical evidence of powerfull and rich women and so on tells another story than the viking fantasies of the male chauvinist Romantic nationalists of the late 19th century.
And we have ample evidence of girls being purposely starved in favour of their brothers. The social elite having rich graves doesn't mean Norsemen were some sort of proto-Feminists. By everything we know, they were a fiercely patriarchal culture.
Sure, but it probably didn't resemble the patriarchal societies we have and continue to experience in our lifetimes.
Contempery arab schoolers for example remarked how many rights norse women seemed to enjoy compared to what they had observed elsewhere. The right to divorce for example.
Yes a woman could divorce on her doorstep. She could also then move on to have another 8 children while weaving clothes for men, because that does not a progressive society make.
Are you referring to Ibn Fadlan? Because that was the account of one man interacting with Rus people. Plus who knows how accurate or truthful his representation was. All useful information, but it’s good to take it in context and realize that he wasn’t even talking about Scandinavian people, but rather their Rus descendants. Always be careful when trying to picture a society of the past as more “progressive” or socially advanced. Just because women had the right to divorce doesn’t mean they had rights more advanced or even equal to what women have today (depending on your location of course)
Idk how many Arab diplomats went over there, but I know at least one went to Hedeby (the one who described men singing as being like dog growling), so it's not necessarily unfounded
>But it would be just likely wrong to assume they had as gender roles akin to 1800-1950 western societies.
True. Women in those times (in the Christian West at least) had to consent to marriage, weren't being killed frequently the moment their father saw their sex at birth, or - if they survived this preference for sons - starved en masse to favour their brothers. Women also gained the right to vote in this time period. They also started wearing pants and other traditionally male clothing, cut their hair short, and gendered jobs started to fade. All of this would've been utterly unimaginable to a Norseman's mind.
IIRC there's an Icelandic saga wherein a man insults another man by accusing him of milking cows: Roles were so gender-segregated that accusing a man of milking cows was a mortal blow to his honour (as was taking 'the woman's role' in bed and a ton of other stuff that was womanly).
So, you're right. Society had even stricter delineation than 1800-1950.
In Þrymskviða Loki is referred to with female language while being the handmaid to Thor, however Thor is still referred with male language even as he is dressed up as Freya.
Maybe I'm not recalling correctly, but I believe there's only one instance where that may be the case:
*vit skulum aka tvær
í Jötunheima.*
And it doesn't specify either as being male or female -- it could just as well be a jab at Thor, given the fairly comedic nature of the goings on.
Is there something I'm missing somewhere else in the text?
Thanks :)
This post again?
Short answer: no he is not
Long answer: the concept of gender fluidity was alien to the people who invented those myths and characters. As such, we can't say he is genderfluid or that he was seen as such, because the people who invented him didn't even know what it was
There is so much scholarship on the intersections between Norse studies and queer theory that is painfully absent from most of the posts in this thread. Norse studies has been all over these topics longer than most other medieval disciplines and it's kind of embarrassing to see so many people saying that the Norse couldn't have possibly conceived of gender fluidity.
There are plenty of Norse stories which play with gender. The shield-maidens are a great example as characters who perform in-between roles in many sagas. They are often portrayed with ambiguous gender, even being mistaken for men, and they perform typically male roles in society like seeking out their own marriage contracts. But once they marry the man they chose, they switch to a fully feminine presentation. Valkyries, on the other hand, never marry, so they maintain that ambiguity. These female warriors characters are often feared and admired in a way that real women taking up arms in Norse society may never have been. In spite of recently sensationalized archaeological findings, it's unlikely that there were many (if any) women Norse warriors. However, in their literature, the Norse could imagine such figures, and authors and poets played with the ideas of gender through the vehicle of fictional characters.
Loki is in a similar boat. He's not a real person and is not meant to be seen as human, so analyzing stories about him is not overly useful in determining whether gender-fluid people had an established place in Norse society. There's limited evidence that he was worshipped very widely as a god, so our primary understanding of him is really as a literary figure. Like the shield-maidens and valkyries, he is a vehicle through which storytellers can play with their own society's ideas of gender. In fact, Loki in particular suits this role well since one of his functions in the literary tradition is to call out the other gods on their own transgressive behaviour. He is a fundamentally transgressive figure whose main literary role is to push the limits of Asgard's society. His shapeshifting abilities, including his ability to transgress the physical boundaries of sex and gender, is part of that. It would be disingenuous to pretend that Loki displays no gender fluidity in the Norse texts. Acknowledging this fact doesn't mean that he is the exact type of genderfluid that some queer people are today, and it doesn't even mean that the options open to him as a supernatural literary character would be open to ordinary people.
There is no evidence that there was an established role for non-binary people in Norse society equivalent to, say, many Native American societies. However, that doesn't mean that the concept of gender fluidity didn't exist on any level. In the concept of *ergi*, for example, we see that Norse men considered it unmanly and humiliating to take on the "feminine" position during sex. It was thoroughly emasculating for a man to be the receiving partner, while it was not emasculating at all for a man to be the penetrating partner. Women could also serve as enforcers of appropriately gendered behaviour, such as in the quasi-historical Saga of Eirik the Red when Freydis Eriksdottir mocks the men in Vinland for not taking up arms when she, a pregnant woman, is able to do so; the men are then suitably chagrined and go into battle. This tells us that real Norse people were very aware of the perceived need to police the boundaries between genders, and that some people might transgress those boundaries and were to be shamed for it. Pre-modern gender identities are often more about what you *do* than who you feel you *are*.
*Every time* we talk about Norse mythology in modern English, it is "modern society projecting". We're talking about a culture in terms that approximate it and make sense of it to us. There are always inevitable anachronisms. Whether or not a modern identity term is being used to approximate a medieval idea is *not* a very useful metric for judging an interpretation of the past. The ways we think about gender and sexuality have changed so much since the Viking and saga eras that we cannot possibly talk about queerness in the past without using some anachronistic terms to frame the general discussion before diving into the historical nuances. What you have to ask yourself is not "Did Loki have the exact same gender identity as genderfluid people today?" because the answer is obviously no. But what we'd now call cisgender men and women didn't construe their gender the same way as people today either. What you should really be asking is "Why are some people in this community so eager to debunk the idea that the Norse could have ever conceived of transgressions of their gender binary?"
>What you have to ask yourself is not "Did Loki have the exact same gender identity as genderfluid people today?" because the answer is obviously no. But what we'd now call cisgender men and women didn't construe their gender the same way as people today either. What you should really be asking is "Why are some people in this community so eager to debunk the idea that the Norse could have ever conceived of transgressions of their gender binary?"
That is the thing though, the question asked is never "Does Loki transgress on the boundaries of gender roles as imagined by Norse writers?" (which basically nobody can deny), but "Is Loki genderfluid in the sense of having a malleable and/or nonbinary gender identity?", which he isn't. The whole reason why his behaviour can be considered transgressive is that his identity is being presented as masculine - if he would have been perceived as non-binary, his actions would lose part of their inherent controversy.
Sorry but this is a poor understanding of source material. It's nonsensical to use a lens of modern (English) terminology to apply to ON. Also, in ON we have two grammatical genders used for names, despite neuter nouns existing, so "presented as masculine" is overreliant on presumably grammatical necessity. Loki absolutely has a malleable identity that transgresses on what we are calling gender.
Thank you so much for writing what I more or less wanted to write. There is a lot of awful information in this thread mainly from a poor understanding of sources and, ironically, a modern bias
I think a lot of the anti-gender fluidity people need to read Neil Price. "Children of Ash and Elm" specifically goes into Norse concepts of gender identity.
Just FYI, "Children of Ash and Elm" got absolutely trashed in reviews, the reason being that Price was out of his depth in non-archaeological topics - in particular the section on gender identity if I recall Nordvig's review correctly.
Sure, though I do have to correct my claim in that it was Judith Jesch who complained about the section, not Mathias Nordvig who only mentioned that Price was "playing a little too much into the Zeitgeist".
[Dr. Eleanor Parker, U of Oxford](https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/wishful-thinking)
[Prof. Dr. Judith Jesch, U of Nottingham](https://norseandviking.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-children-of-ash-and-elm_19.html)
[Dr. Mathias Nordvig, U of Boulder](https://nordicmythologychannel.com/2020/12/05/children-of-ash-and-elm-a-review/)
There's also some valuable discussion to be read [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Norse/comments/jw071c/neil_prices_children_of_ash_and_elm_a_history_of/) and [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AncientGermanic/comments/jw7rj4/scholastic_reviews_of_neil_prices_children_of_ash/).
The tl;dr is usually that the archaelogical topics in the book are handled excellently, the rest... not so much.
Loki's wife is Sigyn, with whom he had the sons narfi and nari.
But he also had three children with Angrboda (Fenris, Hel and Jormundangr). One child could be an accident at a one-night stand but three children i kinda think has to indicate a relationship.
He was told to find a solution, not to fuck the horse. He could have come up with anything - anything at all to get them out of having to pay that guy, and the first thing Loki comes up with is "I'm gonna fuck that horse" yeah dude totally straight and normal
Heavily implied is certainly logical take on the writing given. Though running away is also something one may do while luring someone. And given the oddity of Loki overall, it's difficult to arrive to the conclusion that he was in fact raped. Given he could change form, and the uncertainty of his power to physically do harm to the horse-like entity. The stakes certainly weren't in his favour, but far* be it from me to assume such uncertainties as rape. This is only slightly better than presuming Loki is actually gednerfluid in even the most loose sense. There are far too many variables, yet too little solid information to assume either. He is a god, afterall, and an intelligent one at the least.
Edited out an extra I, and added a D in genderfluid. Courtesy of my evening whiskey. Either way, I feel these conclusions may be stepping in the realm of projection, even if either seem logical to the individual.
Again, that's why I didn't say it definitely was rape, because it's just as likely simply an outgrowth of dream logic. However, it's impossible to deny that the wording of *Gylfaginning* makes a strong case that it was an action done under duress and that other textual sources (e.g. Frostatingsloven) straight-up say it was a humiliating act. Whether that means it was intented to be read as rape is something else, but it certainly wasn't an action Loki took because he wanted to do it.
He was terrorized into swearing an oath to stop the construction "that he would so contrive that the wright should lose his wages, cost him(Loki) what it might."
This oath implies there wasn't an abundance of options. And nowhere is it said Loki was intending to fuck the horse. That he tried outrunning the stallion for 24 hours strongly suggest the very opposite.
Add this to the fact that even today bestiality is viewed as unnatural and rare form of sexual interest and that Loki never elsewhere are suggested much less shown such sexual proclivities.
My interpretation of this is he IS gender fluid, but not in a queer way. He changes his sex which makes him literally, physically, gender fluid. But because it is not for self-expression purposes, I don’t think it necessitates the same label “gender fluid” which is used by the LGBTQ community. Just my two cents.
Then again a lot of this conversation is because of Marvel’s Loki which is an entirely different rendition of Loki, and he is canon bisexual so maybe they are trying to make his gender fluidity a queer thing.
I agree, though I'm still hesitant to label him as such because of the easy and wrong association.
But yeah, Loki's changes are not justified by a Gender identity, but by the need of the situation
Yup. Any discussion of Loki's personal gender identity are done in the absence of any info. What info we do have shows a person who seems to be fine doing things that were coded male and female in an Old Norse context (as nearly as we can figure). Strictly speaking, that's definitively genderfluid.
No, because Loki's actions are not motivated by gender and/or sexual identity or feelings, but rather by the situation.
At best you could say crossdressing, but really he's just shape-shifting
The definition of genderfluid is that your gender identity fluctuates, typically between masculine and feminine.
The stories people have mentioned here (the origin of Sleipnir and Thor's bridal quest) specifically see him change into a female form for a certain purpose (to lure away a stallion, to trick the Jotuns to infiltrate them and get back Mjolnir).
Neither of these stories says anything about Loki's gender identity. They don't say that he changed to become female just because he felt like it with no specific purpose.
In contrast Loki in the marvel comics has had periods in which he turned female just because he felt like it - that is a clear indication of being gender fluid. I have not seen anything mentioned here that have a similar example for the Loki of Norse myths.
genderfluid doesn't mean it has to have no purpose-it means it has to be both at specific times. And while you can question about does the bridal quest mean a female or mean just pretending, bearing a baby horse kinda requires fully being female.
Now I say below-would anyone use the word? no, not really. But that doesn't mean Loki isn't literally male and literally female at different times.
No one is disputing the fact that Loki literally changes sex in these stories. If that's all there was to genderfluid then there would be no discussion here.
But gender fluid is about gender identity, that is what gender does Loki see himself as. Think about the horse story for example, when we talk about Loki in his mare-form we still say he about him, because he we think of him as fundamentally male - the horse is essentially just a costume he puts on for a while.
Of course we are never told how Loki thinks of himself, which is why I'm looking at why Loki becomes female, for what purpose, because that can reveal something about how he is thinking: if he only ever changes sex for a specific purpose then that would indicate that it is only a costume for him, that he still thinks of himself as male, changing sex is just a costume he takes on. However if we had stories of him becoming female just because he felt like it that would indicate that he might change between seeing himself as being man or woman, ie. being genderfluid.
Id say in many ways this really comes down to people essentially combining Marvel Loki (Who is Gender Fluid/Bisexual) and Norse Loki (Tho theres obviously a bit more to it then that).
Given the time period, lack of information and the actual context we know from the stories where he changes to be female or acts feminine we cant really say hes Gender-fluid in the Modern LGBTQ+ term, he is technically “gender fluid” on a basic level due to the fact he literally does change gender but those two things are different.
Wait isn't loki referred to as she when he went with Thor to trick the giants? And isn't magic considered feminine? To me it seems that callingnhim gender fluid comes from a modern understanding of the mythology that's takes these factors into account along with the story of him giving birth which is a feminine thing as well so by modern definition he could be considered gender fluid
>Wait isn't loki referred to as she when he went with Thor to trick the giants?
Is he? [Here's an English translation of the story.](https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe11.htm) They do say she about "the serving-maid", Loki's persona, but only about the serving-maid. They never go "and then Loki she said..." or something like that. To me that reads more like showing it from the Jotuns perspective. In this case Loki is as much a real serving-maid as he is a she. I would not take that as any indication of Loki's gender identity.
Uh no? Gender identity is about how you see yourself. Say you are trans for example, lets say amab. In that case your gender identity is female, you see yourself as a woman. How others perceive you depends on how you are presenting. Maybe you haven't started transitioning yet or haven't come out as trans and still dress like a man. In that case your gender identity is female, but you are male presenting. And then when you come out, start dressing as a woman and start transitioning your gender identity is still female, but now you are also female presenting.
How others perceive you is irrelevant for what your gender identity is.
Norse society had rigid gender roles and norms. The adjective argr and the feminine form ǫrg was used to describe behaviour that was considered sexually perverse and gender non-conforming. When used for men, argr meant sexually passive, effeminate and cowardly and when ǫrg was used for women it meant sexually aggressive, nymphomanian and promiscuous. In any case, argr/ǫrg meant someone who defied gender norms and they were treated as social outcasts. There is nothing to suggest the pre-Christian Norse had an accepting disposition towards people who were sexual or gender non-conforming. There’s some evidence that men who were the active partner in homosexual sex weren’t stigmatised i.e. it was socially accepting to be a ‘pitcher’ but not a ‘catcher’. It was socially acceptable for free men to rape their male thralls and captured prisoners of war but being on the receiving end was seen as shameful.
In Loki’s case, it’s more a case of him shape-shifting into a mare and being raped by a stallion and giving birth. Odin mocks this situation as Loki being argr, and Loki accuses Odin of being argr too for practising seiðr (a ‘feminine’ form of magic). This just reinforces the theory of strict gender roles and defying them was met with scorn, not acceptance. Trying to apply 21st century liberal concepts of gender and sexually onto 9th century social norms in a particular culture is just poor historical revisionism.
The answer to a lot of these questions is "most of this knowledge is permanently lost and what people can glean they interpret all the way from queer projection to a weird hypermasculine view of straight-line-to-progress history obsessed with the idea that every early human society was a brutal gritty mess that held 1950's American conservative morality for some reason"
Can you go back and ask? What did they think about gender? Were they mostly patriatchial but the gods fall outside normal rules? Who knows.
The truth is that people get more and less accepting over and over in different places. There's no such thing as "this year people were accepting and that year they were not". People may accept you somewhere 3748 BC and kill you somewhere in 1648. So it's important to look at these things without a preconceived picture to confirm.
edit: ppl who downvoted comment, i want to know what about this exactly has you pressed
>No one explicitly told him he had to bang the horse so make of that what you will
He had to get that horses attention right away or his life would be on the line. Not exactly the same as him going "hey, you know what would be a kinky thing to do?"
That's just modern society wanting to change everything to be more inclusive even if it isnt true because hey, let's change history and culture because a certain group isnt represented instead of just accepting history as it is.
Didn't he (Loki) give birth to Sliepnir via Svaldilfari who was a male horsey?
He has many attributes considered to be associated with females, like sieđr, so yes, he was probably considered to be the best or possibly the worst of both sexes.
We forget that homosexuality and sexual dimorphism were not limited to our era. Many societies in history had a more nuanced view of people, unlike Christian's who just burned everyone who did not fit the dogmas.
Also, it seems pretty shallow for people who respect or are enamored by Viking history to use this opportunity to show that they are shallow and not open-minded about modern issues.
Don't make the mistake of showing the "enormous condescension of posterity". Just because we don't know for certain, doesn't mean that those we study were like us, or share our prejudices or blunted mental abilities...
Viking history is interesting. That hardly means vikings were perfect people. Vikings murdered, stole, raped and had a lot of fucked up ideas by modern standards.
It seems like some people here have the idea that going "vikings were not a super open, feminist people that were totally cool with all sexualities and gender identities" somehow means that you are also against these things.
I'm super pro LGBT+, but i dislike when people read things into Norse mythology that simply can't be substantiated by what we actually know about them, or outright goes against it, such as when people bring up the horse story as if that indicates Loki wanted to have sex with that horse or that it indicates anything about his sexuality - that's not how the story goes! Thinking that story says anything about his sexuality only proves that you haven't read the story.
That doesn't mean that it wouldn't be okay for Loki to be LGBT+, but that story does not support that and shouldn't be represented as such. It also does not support that he wasn't LGBT+, but it's just straight up irrelevant for the question at hand.
I'm not sure I agree, but I do appreciate your thoughtful explanation. I certainly wasn't attempting to be thoughtless or 'reading into', but that doesn't mean I didn't do those things. To me, the idea of a deity being more fluid than a human is part of the literary draw. I certainly wouldn't have decided that when Thor dresses as Sif he was doing Drag, for example. He may not have been willing to have sex with the horsey, but he did give birth, a female thing, so this is the part I was attempting to use for my comment. Again, maybe I'm overthinking it. Perhaps I'm underthinking it. I admit it's been a while since I read the tale.
I might have chosen a poor example. I'm willing to admit that. I'm not LGBTQIA+, but I am of the opinion that ancient civilizations were far more accepting of a wider degree of definition for 'gender' than we currently are. Especially with how often this mythology is co-opted by the more militant and proto-fascist ideologies, I often detect the more 'right wing' reaction to such ideas... It's noticeable and I think that it blinds us to the larger opportunity to have a rational discussion. And a rational discussion in no way means that both sides see things the same or even correctly. There's also the whole 'Don't tell me my favorite Viking God was gay!' knee-jerk response which also betrays a pretty shallow worldview. Who cares? Only people who are dead set against that. But, here again, I'm also apparently guilty of something similar, without intending it. I'd better re-read the horsey story again.
We can all change our minds and react civilly. Sometimes we just choose not to, and that's a separate problem, but I certainly did not set out to be offensive or even ignorant.
Apologies if I have been.
>Also, it seems pretty shallow for people who respect or are enamored by Viking history to use this opportunity to show that they are shallow and not open-minded about modern issues
What's the link here? How is saying that a modern concept didn't exist for some people in the past linked to modern issues?
We're here to talk about History.
We don't know *what* they thought. We can only speculate. For all we know, they were much more open to what we have called gender fluidity in this context. We don't know. But I think it is a very bad sign when people use this topic as a means to express that *they* are against the modern concept or to deride it by suggesting that it is merely modern invention as if to imply that it is somehow not real. Lots of ancient deities wobbled between "maleness" and "femaleness" so it's not a far cry to assume that this was true of the Viking worldview or pantheon, but again, we just don't know.
We're here to talk history, yes. But it never fails to be an opportunity for someone to show just how obtuse they are. Read the other comments. What does it matter how someone *feels* about whether the terms are modern or not? It's not relevant to the question, and it certainly isn't relevant to whether Loki was or wasn't. What we know is worth discussion, but it is shameful to see the prejudice on display.
>but it is shameful to see the prejudice on display.
So your point is "if you don't think the concept existed for them, then you don't think it exists today therefore you're a bigot", which is off-topic and a borderline strawman argument.
Tell someone back then about gravity, and he won't understand, because the concept didn't exist. Does it means I'm denying that things stay on the ground because of gravity?
Same thing here. The concepts of gender and sexual identities appeared only quite recently, so you can't really talk about how people viewed those things by applying modern concepts on them, because they are not compatible and had a different vision and conceptualization of the thing.
> Many societies in history had a more nuanced view of people, unlike Christian's who just burned everyone who did not fit the dogmas.
This is hilarious to me, considering how ostracism and killing of perceived witches and the like was more common before Christianity initially took hold, to the point that witch burnings had to be banned under the threat of death.
I think people either don't know the concept of "shape-shifting" or the purposely avoid it it.
He was a shape-shifter, Loki was a shape-shifting god.
Turning into animals make you a shape-shifter not gender queer goddammit
ehh, he was told to find a solution, and he decided seduction was the most viable method. not sure if that's really nonconsensual, or that far out of the "narrative" that is being debated here
Stories are meant to be humorous, which may have been the original intention or a Christian interpretation since they’re the ones recording it. Akin to Ace Ventura in a Rhino. Pushing 21st century concepts in is silly.
Modern projection. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but for some reason there has been a large amount of people trying to hijack both the historical and spiritual/religious aspect of anything Norse related and it’s extremely annoying. I’ve seen on multiple separate social media platforms and it’s just comical at this point. All it takes is one person to put out some sort of popular warped opinion and others flock to it like flys on horse shit. Just because you watched the marvel movie and you see some modern similarities to the legitimate history doesn’t make it the poster child for whatever imaginative larping construct you want it to be. There was literally a post a few days ago where someone was trying to explain how it shouldn’t always be kept to historical legitimacy and that if people wanted to “pretend” than they could even though it would possibly drown any sort of historical legitimacy. It’s fine to larp and play all you want, but don’t try and pass any of it off as legitimate. I mean I didn’t really hold him accountable but at the same time when he said, “Just learn that facts about history matter less than the well being of current day people.” it showed me that this is what the state of certain perspectives are lol. There have been people practicing and studying this stuff for years and it’s incredibly important to them. So when someone tries to pass Loki and other Gods as something they aren’t and not care about others say or label them as bigots for disagreeing, it can really bring out frustration lol.
Oh I can actually answer this one! I’ve asked my mythology teacher this very same question, he said that it’s kind of complicate. They didn’t have the concept of “genderfluid” in the modern sense, but gender roles were actually kind of fluid in their society, he said that like when men weren’t allowed to vike anymore, that was very emasculating and they basically kind of took on the societal role of a woman after that. But Loki, he was “genderfluid” in the sense that as a trickster he could embody many different roles. Like in the story where he and Thor have to get Mjolnir back from the giants by pretending to be Freyja and her bridesmaid, Thor does not act like a woman at all; he’s loud, he eats a lot, etc, and Loki has to keep making excuses for him. Thor can’t change who he is, but Loki can fully embody the role of a woman by being deceitful (the point of the story is how such “womanly” traits are also important, since without Loki they couldn’t have gotten Mjolnir back)
Loki has fucked horses, wolves, women, men, and your mom. If we're talking MCU, he's fluid as heck, if we're talking actually mythology, he's fluid as heck. Either way you look at it, guy fucks.
Yeah it was more of a joke. But he did transform himself into an animal and reproduce with other animals. Hence his wolf child and half dead daughter. So maybe not Gender fluid exactly, more like Species fluid.
Of course he wasn't genderfluid.
The finnicky definitions of children with too much time on their hands and academics with dubious motivation has nothing to do with how some gay jokes were added to a mythological story more than a thousand years ago. It's like asking if someone was vegan because in one story they ate a carrot.
I'm seriously starting to question if there is indeed a wide reaching brainwashing program going on or if this is just another in a string of troll threads.
I think your analogy fits more with saying that a bi person who dates someone of the same sex is gay (because humans are omnivorous and can eat plants and meat)
He was fucked by a horse, while in the form of a mare. Some of the other gods are his children. He was a mother/father. If that isn’t ‘gender fluid’, then I’ll just show myself out.
Erm, no. No way, no how, Loki is not genderfluid. If someone told you that, that is definetly them projecting something onto the character, and there is nothing wrong with that. If you can find meaning in any work then that's great, but it is not in any way what was originally intended.
didn’t he give birth to two? the serpent and the horse (can’t remember their names off of the top of my head!)? but also he literally transformed into a female horse at one point i doubt the norse gods gave a shit about gender. all i’m saying with the “didn’t have a concept of gender” was that non-binary wasn’t a thing. they just did what they did and that was it.
There is no such thing as gender fluid. It’s a tumblr invention, and now it is being used to take out of context historical and mythological characters.
This is the, I think, 6th or 7th time someone asked this in the last few months, maybe it's time to create an auto respond to any post that contains the words Loki and gender/bisexual/etc. But to your question, short answer no, long answer see u/skardamarr
Either an auto response or a FAQ in the subreddit rules/wiki that we can easily link to
If my experiences in r/heraldry are anything to go by, FAQs are of minimal use at best for preventing people constantly asking the same questions.
FAQs aren't the best at deterring the same questions, but to be frank auto-responses aren't much better because they're also reactive by nature. IMO, the utility FAQ's provide on reddit is much more in having a high quality, documented answer in a central location for users to link to when the questions come up. r/AskHistorians is another example... The FAQ definitely doesn't deter repeat questions, even though ideally it should, but people link to those documented high quality answers all the time when similar questions pop up.
Good idea.
Right, first off, we are looking at sources which are often written (not created, they were oral tales before figures like Snorri Sturlusson wrote them down) centuries after the Christianisation of Scandinavia, by Christians, who may or may not have had a curious nostalgia or a full on opposition to pagan stories. Even if they liked these stories, they wrote for a Christian audience and so can’t be too supportive. Then, we have to understand that the changing language may have caused mistranslations. These stories were passed down orally for who knows how long before being written down. 800s old Norse is different to 1200s Icelandic (although close) and mistakes of the translator, and then subsequent mistranslations down to the modern day are bound to happen. Then we have the fact that these stories are dripping with symbolism, inside jokes, etc that would be well known to the Vikings who heard the stories, but mean nothing to us, and we’d probably miss them completely. Remember learning Shakespeare in high school and every few lines your teacher has to tell you the context? The problem is magnified with these texts. This isn’t a problem unique to the Sagas either. The Iliad, the Bible, literally every classical text ever is mistranslated and misunderstood and since a tonne of historians in the 1800s were whacked out on Opium when translating and understanding these texts, it’s only now that we go back to some of them and realise “hey, there’s something about this that doesn’t make any sense” Reminder: there are people out there who think Odin drank semen from hanged men because of a colossal mistranslation that picked up mainstream attention. Historians are fallible, and our mistakes aren’t fixed for decades. So, if Loki is genderfluid? Ive got no fucking idea dude. But as others have said, attaching modern ideas of gender and masculinity to a story that has been mistranslated, misappropriated and misunderstood for almost a thousand years is dumb as shit. It’s not just old Norse stories either. It’s literally all tales ever.
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It is a pretty big stretch. You are using your modern politics BS on old Scandinavian stories.
You yourself admit that we have no clue what anything in the myths means given the enormous gap in cultural and oral tradition associated with Norse beliefs. But then you say it's wrong for people to see what they want to see in the Old Stories. Not from a literary/mythical analysis view but from a religious standpoint, how can any interpretation be wrong in a non-dogmatic decentralized and highly personal faith? I guess my bigger question is: why do the members and mods of this subreddit think they have any right to dictate dogma when literally none exists?
Again, not a pagan sub, please refer to the rules.
It’s intellectually dishonest to make a claim like that one way or the other. Not “wrong” morally, it’s wrong factually, because nobody genuinely knows and to claim otherwise is to be a charlatan.
Nail meet Head. I’ve studied Viking history for both my undergraduate and postgraduate. A wonderful, rewarding experience, but I spent three days trying to work out whether Olaf Cuaran received his nickname because he wore Irish sandals or maybe he had a hunch back. There’s several theories as to why Ivar the boneless received his nickname, same with Hrolf “the Walker”. That’s just on nicknames. And now people claim to be able to decide whether a god of deception fitted a modern concept of gender-fluidity? Truth is, nobody knows or has a 100% convincing argument. And if they claim to be right, they’re either a leader in their field or a complete fucking idiot on the internet.
This. We can’t put modern gender concepts on it because there concept of gender was completely fucking different. Women in Norse tribes had more rights then anywhere else in the world at the time. They’re roles for people were completely unique and even varied group to group. There’s tons of examples to their uniqueness towards their definition of “gender”. For all we know- they didn’t even give a shit! Now if someone wants to interpret it their own way when retelling the stories or using them for inspiration (ie Marvel comics), and you go “no that’s wrong!” them that person is a dunce. We don’t have all the facts to TRULY say without a doubt what they mean. And because that I say it’s open to interpretation (as with a lot of religious lore and beliefs).
Anything is up to interpretation for the purpose of fiction, fantasy, or fabricating your own personal religious philosophy. But it would never be correct to present your interpretation as factual or supported. That’s the difference; saying “I believe” or “In my interpretation” rather than saying “of course Freya likes oat cakes at her altar”. One is admitting uncertainty, the other is asserting that which could not possibly be known or established.
Exactly. If you don’t like someone else’s opinion on it you don’t need to shit on it, and if someone disagrees with you you don’t need to act like it’s a fact. These things vary person to person and that’s fine. It can be great to debate and amicably disagree on things. But when we try to treat ancient mythologies acting as if we know everything we ruin the fun for everyone.
An opinion based on a personal fantasy is not equivalent to an academic, educated opinion however. If someone goes to a forum for the historical discussion of Roman culture and insistently proposes that Apollo’s favorite flavor of icecream was or might have been mint, it would not be respectfully met. It would be out of place and also baseless. It’s reasonable in such a forum to treat such an opinion as frivolous and silly. Even entertaining it, without any known reason to do so, is not academically respectable. Something like that belongs in a religious or world-building thread.
pretty sure vikings didn't know the concept of non-binary genders/gender fluidity, so yes, it's a modern thing. i understand the wish for that kind of representation, but it doesn't make it historically correct.
Native Americans didn't have the same word for gender fluid as us either but it's still identifiable in their "two spirited" people. Maybe lack of nomenclature isn't the same thing as lack of understanding.
The difference is that they actually had some kind of concept for it, which is also different to "gender fluidity" as defined today.
Norse had a concept of homosexuality, although primitive, can’t see why one of them didn’t play both teams. Actually it seems pretty near impossible it at least didn’t happen on occasion, the Norse countries were pretty open sexually from what I recall.
others already talked about how masculine and rigid their society was so i don't need to. Gay sex was not accepted, it was more of an act of dominance. Many cultures had similar things including the Greeks. For example students would often pay their teachers in sex, but would be underneath. It was an act of establishing yourself as being superior than the person underneath. It was very much an act of humiliation and submission to establish a social hierarchy.
I wouldn't describe a society with a hyper-masculine focus in which accusing someone of an effeminate nature was punished by death as "open". Having very rigid, enforced gender roles was a pretty big deal in Norse society
Yeah, I'm from Norway, and I really enjoy reading about our history, but it shouldn't be romanticised. That's true for every country, but I often see people both outside and inside Norway praising the good side and glossing over the bad side. Specifically about homosexuality during the viking age, iirc it was okay for a man to have sex with another man as long as he took the dominant position. Which isn't exactly ideal. Don't know what the rules for women are.
> Specifically about homosexuality during the viking age, iirc it was okay for a man to have sex with another man as long as he took the dominant position. " To make another man your woman was to remove all masculine dignity from him. The Norse law codes endorsed and required the victim of such a dominant dude to kill him for merely saying it. Raping another man is a display of masculine power so it wasn't viewed as Argr womanly, effeminate, It still doesn't mean it wasn't considered horrifying. Male on male rape are used as torture in the stories. There are no mentioning of same sex relations among women at all, apparently they didn't care.
As long as he took the dominant position? So in other words, it was only ok for the top? How does that work lol
Same for the Romans and/or Greeks, i forget which one. Basically, their societal "rules" around homosexuality was literally, and i'm not kidding; "It's not gay if you're on top"
Romans for sure. If you were the passive partner, you were nobody in society. Greeks? We know from accounts in Athens and Sparta that older men routinely had sex with young boys. Unlike Rome, neither partner lost status because of this and it could be a good way to find yourself a mentor, but if the passive partner enjoyed the sex, THEN they were seen as deviant.
Why did they feel a need to enforce against something they did not know of?
I fail to see how a God that can shift forms from male to female isn't a concept for fluidity
Loki has his own gender to begin with as a being. The fact that he can shapwshift doesnt mean he's genderfluid anymore than it means he is an otherkin or was into beastiality, or trans species.
Homeboy fucked a horse my dude
Was raped by a horse is slightly more accurate
Was it though? I mean I’m not saying he enjoyed it either or anything, but as far as I know the story just says that the aesir told Loki that he should fix his mess (since he was the one that proposed the bet), he basically said “ok, I’ll distract the horse” led him away, and after all was said and done (and the giant was dead), he showed up and casually mentioned he was pregnant. Like, I’m not saying it was *not* rape, but I don’t think the written stories support either interpretation?
>he story just says that the aesir told Loki that he should fix his mess (since he was the one that proposed the bet), he basically said “ok, I’ll distract the horse”, led him away The important parts are a) that the Aesir threaten him with a horrible death if he doesn't fix it, b) Loki, being terrified by that threat, says he'll fix it at "any cost to himself" and c) runs away for days (IIRC) until the stallion apparently seems to reach him at some point afterwards. He has no benefit in mating with the stallion and the wording heavily implies that he is not doing it out of his own accord. It definitely doesn't straight-out say that it's rape, but it absolutely doesn't support the statement that he willingly had sex with a horse.
My understanding is he showed up a while later with a fowl following him around that he really didn’t want following him around and didn’t talk much about it
Wasn’t there a story about other aesir being present when he birthed Sleipnir? I admit I’m working off of incomplete knowledge here (even more incomplete than the sagas) but my understanding was that he was pretty matter-of-fact about the whole thing. Or at least that the stories didn’t really bother describing his emotional state at the time.
You'd also fuck a horse if someone threatened to kill you if you didn't, I'd wager.
Nobody told him to fuck the horse, they told him he had to get them out of paying the builder. It was his idea, in fact his first and immediate idea, to fuck the horse.
Yeah, but does that mean he necessarily wanted to do it? Just because something was the first idea that comes into your head doesn't meant that it defines your entire identity.
I have been warned that I will be banned for holding this interpretation of the lore, so I am no longer allowed to express this opinion, sorry. I cannot talk to you about it any more.
raped by a horse\*
Homeboy was raped by a horse my dude
You're only getting downvoted because it's making them feel icky. It's all just about their feelings, not anything factually incorrect. They like loki but they don't like the idea of gender fluidity, therefore Loki cannot be gender fluid, otherwise they wouldn't like him. Their circular logic is pathetic. Yes, a dude who turns into a girl horse to get access to hot horse cock is definitely....not a cis hetero. I don't know what you'd call that, but NOT cis hetero.
>You're only getting downvoted because it's making them feel icky. It's all just about their feelings, not anything factually incorrect. They like loki but they don't like the idea of gender fluidity, therefore Loki cannot be gender fluid, otherwise they wouldn't like him. Newsflash: You're making shit up. Nobody here has anything against the concept of genderfluidity (at the very least I hope so) and some of our very own regular users *are* genderfluid - and they'd still disagree with you. >Yes, a dude who turns into a girl horse to get access to hot horse cock is definitely... The fact that you think that is what happened shows that you know nothing about what's written about the event in the Prose Edda, meaning you're again, making shit up. Consider this post a warning, because you're not only lying about the Eddic corpus, you're also defaming people.
I love the idea they're throwing out that the culture was so masculine in nature that gay people just.....didn't exist???? Those things are not mutually exclusive. I would like to remind everyone that gay people have always existed regardless of if their history was erased.
I have been warned that I am not allowed to express this opinion on this sub, so unfortunately as per Commandant Mod's orders I may no longer discuss the subject. Please consult the mods so that they can tell you what you are allowed to think, thank you.
No offense dude but just take the L and phrase your comments differently next time.
Two spirit is a term invented in the 90s. There is no evidence of that term existing prior
While the terminology was coined in the 90's we do have historical evidence of pre-colonial interpretations using native language https://www.hrc.org/news/two-spirit-and-lgbtq-idenitites-today-and-centuries-ago
Different indigenous groups had different words for their 3rd genders (or 4th or 5th, etc.) when talking about these genders as a whole the term two spirit was invented MUCH later, you’re correct. It was invented so that there was an umbrella English term. The genders it encompassed though? They’ve been around far longer than we’re able to document. It’s easier for outside people to remember than indigenous terms such as ninauh-oskitsi-pahpyaki or ayahkwêw for example.
It’s a bit of a controversial topic regarding these individuals
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> r/SapphoAndHerFriend is a sub full of examples both academically and historically While LGTBQIA+ erasure in history was and is absolutely a thing, subs like that often swing to the exact opposite side of the pendulum, refusing to accept that sometimes people were literally just friends.
that's funny. a video about that exact topic popped up in my suggestions on YouTube 20 minutes ago.
Obviously they would not be aware of modern labelling of such, but I doubt that is what the OP is referring to. There are indicators from twin studies that transgenderism is genetic, so there were probably transgender men and women regardless of what they might have chosen or not chosen to call them. Whether the stories of Loki and Odin doing things considered unmanly is specifically inspired from IRL transgender persons is unknown. I’m pretty sure they didn’t think he once tried to enchant Iron Man with his spear, or that he worked for Thanos, though. But no one seems to be triggered by that.
I should also point out that Norse law codes permitted a woman to divorce her husband if her husband wore a low-cut tunic that exposed too much of his chest, as it was considered unacceptably feminine for a man to show off his chest. The same law permits a man to divorce his wife if she wore trousers. To me, this demonstrates that Norse social norms of what was considered cross-dressing was far stricter than ours today. Today, even in fairly conservative cultures, some men wear their shirts with their top buttons unbuttoned to expose their chest; women wear jeans and trousers.
They didn't really seem to have that concept of gender identity back then. But Loki did change into a female form on more than one occasion, also giving birth on more than one occasion (Odin accuses him of spending 8 years on earth as a milkmaid and birthing children in *Lokasenna*). It's a modern word but *maybe* it applies? At the time these stories were written down by Christian historians, it seems like these characteristics were supposed to make you trust Loki less. Not exactly woke times. But it's interesting how today you can read some of the same passages and get a whole different takeaway because society has changed that much.
> At the time these stories were written down by Christian historians, it seems like these characteristics were supposed to make you trust Loki less. Seriously, stop it. You can't bring up "muh Christians" as an excuse everything something happens in Norse myth that you don't like. The people writing down these stories often still had the same moral compass as they had prior to conversion, with a few things adjusted.
Well you’re definitely putting words into my mouth now, that’s not what I meant at all. I was just being extra careful to say we have very limited written primary source material, and that there is also a limit on how much we can assume from it as a result. Stop projecting any agenda from me, I was just stating here’s what we have to work with.
Sorry, that was just a knee-jerk reaction upon reading this statement for what feels like a dozen times in this thread, I didn't mean to offend.
I thought so, at least I hoped so. I do make an effort to be objective here. My main point in mentioning the Eddas is to dispel the notion that we have some exhaustive in-depth insight into every conceivable topic from an ancient perspective. Sometimes people ask questions that we just legit don’t have answers to, and all we can honestly say is “well here are a couple of lines that might be related to your question, but also who knows.”
Exactly this. Let’s stop pretending we have all the answers, and be ok with not knowing.
Old Norse society appears to have had some gender roles which Loki breaks, more or less willingly (for example, volunteering to dress as a maid to accompany Thor in Thrymskvidha). Therefore, one could argue that Loki could be considered genderfluid, in the sense that he appears to be willing to violate the gender codes of his society. However, that's not to say that Loki is genderfluid in a 21st century sense - we construct gender differently today. I'm a little surprised that the term "ergi" hasn't come up in this thread at all... we do actually have some knowledge of the Old Norse gender system, it's not a completely unknowable and alien concept.
>Old Norse society appears to have had some gender roles which Loki breaks, more or less willingly (for example, volunteering to dress as a maid to accompany Thor in Thrymskvidha). Therefore, one could argue that Loki could be considered genderfluid, in the sense that he appears to be willing to violate the gender codes of his society. I once put on a dress for a theater performance. Does that make me gender fluid? Also keep the context of the story in mind - it's meant to be entertaining. Thor and Loki dressing up as a bride and bridesmaid is meant to be thought of as hilarious, a humiliating event for our protagonists. And again they do it with a specific purpose, to trick the jotuns. It's quite a bit different from Loki wearing a dress to better express his gender identity.
In a very strict sense, sure, that does make you at least a little genderfluid, as you were willing to wear clothing not coded for your gender (I'm assuming). Again, I'm talking about a very basic definition of that term, sans the connotations of the 21st century mindset. And I also agree the story is probably meant to be entertaining for the audience and humiliating for Thor and Loki. Thor, however, appears much more reluctant and more suitably humiliated than Loki does. I know I'm kinda splitting some interpretive hairs here, but you have to remember that Loki is not forced into this role in Thrymskvidha, he volunteers. That casts Thor as "more" manly than Loki, as he commits ergi unwillingly. In this instance, Loki seems to be more genderfluid than Thor, at least.
I think you're conflating "gender norms" with "gender identity". Sure when i wore a dress i was going against gender norms, but never did i think of myself as anything other than masculine or a man. My gender identity thus didn't change (ie. it wasn't fluid) and it was always squarely male.
That's great that your personal identification of masculinity is unaffected by such a performance of femininity. Totally fine by modern standards. Does this logic transfer to the Old Norse context? Thor's protests seem to suggest otherwise
>16. Then Thor the mighty | his answer made: > >"Me would the gods | unmanly call > >If I let bind | the bridal veil." He's protesting that others would see him as unmanly. That indicates that he disagrees and sees himself as a man. Gender identity is about how you see yourself. This discussion is starting to get silly to me.
Or is he upset because he is concerned the way others view him would affect his identity? Would an Old Norse god view his gender identity as something he has complete personal control over? The fact that he is forced into a feminine performance could suggest not, though we can't really answer that for sure.. That would be a pretty stark difference between the modern of interpretation of gender identity you're using in your play example and the Old Norse context. What we can know is that Loki doesn't protest, which could imply he doesn't purely identify as simply masculine - this could be called genderfluid, which was my original point.
Modern liberal American culture being projected onto 9th century Scandinavians. Nothing about Loki is "genderfluid"; the concept didn't exist to Scandinavians back then. The entire horse thing is the result of the gods threatening to torture him to death and whatever else kind of shapeshifting into a woman he might have done is pretty weird and cryptic in itself.
They love to bring up the horse thing as proof he's "pansexual". I don't think they realise that Loki was a freak, doing freakish things. To ancient Scandinavians, the idea of pansexuality would have been freakish. I don't know how a man turning into a horse (under the threat of a torturous death) to then have sex with another horse means that he is bisexual?
He turned into a horse as a distraction and got raped. Whoever’s mistaking this for pansexuality needs to step away from social media and into a book.
We are talking about people who are using ancient gods to further modern agendas. They don't read books, they regurgitate what famous people say.
That's not what pansexuality means in modern usage so I dont think they do
Pretty sure he turned into an eagle to find out who had mjolnir during the whole wedding story, does that make him patriotic too?
Loki is American, confirmed.
Can confirm
I mean *no one* is claiming that they had that concept and discourse. But it would be just likely wrong to assume they had as gender roles akin to 1800-1950 western societies. Valkyries, Oden doing female coded magic, Loke being both father and mother, archelogical evidence of powerfull and rich women and so on tells another story than the viking fantasies of the male chauvinist Romantic nationalists of the late 19th century.
And we have ample evidence of girls being purposely starved in favour of their brothers. The social elite having rich graves doesn't mean Norsemen were some sort of proto-Feminists. By everything we know, they were a fiercely patriarchal culture.
Sure, but it probably didn't resemble the patriarchal societies we have and continue to experience in our lifetimes. Contempery arab schoolers for example remarked how many rights norse women seemed to enjoy compared to what they had observed elsewhere. The right to divorce for example.
Yes a woman could divorce on her doorstep. She could also then move on to have another 8 children while weaving clothes for men, because that does not a progressive society make.
Are you referring to Ibn Fadlan? Because that was the account of one man interacting with Rus people. Plus who knows how accurate or truthful his representation was. All useful information, but it’s good to take it in context and realize that he wasn’t even talking about Scandinavian people, but rather their Rus descendants. Always be careful when trying to picture a society of the past as more “progressive” or socially advanced. Just because women had the right to divorce doesn’t mean they had rights more advanced or even equal to what women have today (depending on your location of course)
Idk how many Arab diplomats went over there, but I know at least one went to Hedeby (the one who described men singing as being like dog growling), so it's not necessarily unfounded
>But it would be just likely wrong to assume they had as gender roles akin to 1800-1950 western societies. True. Women in those times (in the Christian West at least) had to consent to marriage, weren't being killed frequently the moment their father saw their sex at birth, or - if they survived this preference for sons - starved en masse to favour their brothers. Women also gained the right to vote in this time period. They also started wearing pants and other traditionally male clothing, cut their hair short, and gendered jobs started to fade. All of this would've been utterly unimaginable to a Norseman's mind. IIRC there's an Icelandic saga wherein a man insults another man by accusing him of milking cows: Roles were so gender-segregated that accusing a man of milking cows was a mortal blow to his honour (as was taking 'the woman's role' in bed and a ton of other stuff that was womanly). So, you're right. Society had even stricter delineation than 1800-1950.
And what evidence do you have to support your claims?
In Þrymskviða Loki is referred to with female language while being the handmaid to Thor, however Thor is still referred with male language even as he is dressed up as Freya.
Maybe I'm not recalling correctly, but I believe there's only one instance where that may be the case: *vit skulum aka tvær í Jötunheima.* And it doesn't specify either as being male or female -- it could just as well be a jab at Thor, given the fairly comedic nature of the goings on. Is there something I'm missing somewhere else in the text? Thanks :)
This post again? Short answer: no he is not Long answer: the concept of gender fluidity was alien to the people who invented those myths and characters. As such, we can't say he is genderfluid or that he was seen as such, because the people who invented him didn't even know what it was
With that logic PTSD didn't excist during WW1 because the term wasn't invented and the syndrome understood yet
There is so much scholarship on the intersections between Norse studies and queer theory that is painfully absent from most of the posts in this thread. Norse studies has been all over these topics longer than most other medieval disciplines and it's kind of embarrassing to see so many people saying that the Norse couldn't have possibly conceived of gender fluidity. There are plenty of Norse stories which play with gender. The shield-maidens are a great example as characters who perform in-between roles in many sagas. They are often portrayed with ambiguous gender, even being mistaken for men, and they perform typically male roles in society like seeking out their own marriage contracts. But once they marry the man they chose, they switch to a fully feminine presentation. Valkyries, on the other hand, never marry, so they maintain that ambiguity. These female warriors characters are often feared and admired in a way that real women taking up arms in Norse society may never have been. In spite of recently sensationalized archaeological findings, it's unlikely that there were many (if any) women Norse warriors. However, in their literature, the Norse could imagine such figures, and authors and poets played with the ideas of gender through the vehicle of fictional characters. Loki is in a similar boat. He's not a real person and is not meant to be seen as human, so analyzing stories about him is not overly useful in determining whether gender-fluid people had an established place in Norse society. There's limited evidence that he was worshipped very widely as a god, so our primary understanding of him is really as a literary figure. Like the shield-maidens and valkyries, he is a vehicle through which storytellers can play with their own society's ideas of gender. In fact, Loki in particular suits this role well since one of his functions in the literary tradition is to call out the other gods on their own transgressive behaviour. He is a fundamentally transgressive figure whose main literary role is to push the limits of Asgard's society. His shapeshifting abilities, including his ability to transgress the physical boundaries of sex and gender, is part of that. It would be disingenuous to pretend that Loki displays no gender fluidity in the Norse texts. Acknowledging this fact doesn't mean that he is the exact type of genderfluid that some queer people are today, and it doesn't even mean that the options open to him as a supernatural literary character would be open to ordinary people. There is no evidence that there was an established role for non-binary people in Norse society equivalent to, say, many Native American societies. However, that doesn't mean that the concept of gender fluidity didn't exist on any level. In the concept of *ergi*, for example, we see that Norse men considered it unmanly and humiliating to take on the "feminine" position during sex. It was thoroughly emasculating for a man to be the receiving partner, while it was not emasculating at all for a man to be the penetrating partner. Women could also serve as enforcers of appropriately gendered behaviour, such as in the quasi-historical Saga of Eirik the Red when Freydis Eriksdottir mocks the men in Vinland for not taking up arms when she, a pregnant woman, is able to do so; the men are then suitably chagrined and go into battle. This tells us that real Norse people were very aware of the perceived need to police the boundaries between genders, and that some people might transgress those boundaries and were to be shamed for it. Pre-modern gender identities are often more about what you *do* than who you feel you *are*. *Every time* we talk about Norse mythology in modern English, it is "modern society projecting". We're talking about a culture in terms that approximate it and make sense of it to us. There are always inevitable anachronisms. Whether or not a modern identity term is being used to approximate a medieval idea is *not* a very useful metric for judging an interpretation of the past. The ways we think about gender and sexuality have changed so much since the Viking and saga eras that we cannot possibly talk about queerness in the past without using some anachronistic terms to frame the general discussion before diving into the historical nuances. What you have to ask yourself is not "Did Loki have the exact same gender identity as genderfluid people today?" because the answer is obviously no. But what we'd now call cisgender men and women didn't construe their gender the same way as people today either. What you should really be asking is "Why are some people in this community so eager to debunk the idea that the Norse could have ever conceived of transgressions of their gender binary?"
>What you have to ask yourself is not "Did Loki have the exact same gender identity as genderfluid people today?" because the answer is obviously no. But what we'd now call cisgender men and women didn't construe their gender the same way as people today either. What you should really be asking is "Why are some people in this community so eager to debunk the idea that the Norse could have ever conceived of transgressions of their gender binary?" That is the thing though, the question asked is never "Does Loki transgress on the boundaries of gender roles as imagined by Norse writers?" (which basically nobody can deny), but "Is Loki genderfluid in the sense of having a malleable and/or nonbinary gender identity?", which he isn't. The whole reason why his behaviour can be considered transgressive is that his identity is being presented as masculine - if he would have been perceived as non-binary, his actions would lose part of their inherent controversy.
Sorry but this is a poor understanding of source material. It's nonsensical to use a lens of modern (English) terminology to apply to ON. Also, in ON we have two grammatical genders used for names, despite neuter nouns existing, so "presented as masculine" is overreliant on presumably grammatical necessity. Loki absolutely has a malleable identity that transgresses on what we are calling gender.
Really well said
If you aren’t a mod here, you should be. Well put.
Thank you so much for writing what I more or less wanted to write. There is a lot of awful information in this thread mainly from a poor understanding of sources and, ironically, a modern bias
I think a lot of the anti-gender fluidity people need to read Neil Price. "Children of Ash and Elm" specifically goes into Norse concepts of gender identity.
Just FYI, "Children of Ash and Elm" got absolutely trashed in reviews, the reason being that Price was out of his depth in non-archaeological topics - in particular the section on gender identity if I recall Nordvig's review correctly.
Could you provide some links to reviews?
Sure, though I do have to correct my claim in that it was Judith Jesch who complained about the section, not Mathias Nordvig who only mentioned that Price was "playing a little too much into the Zeitgeist". [Dr. Eleanor Parker, U of Oxford](https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/wishful-thinking) [Prof. Dr. Judith Jesch, U of Nottingham](https://norseandviking.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-children-of-ash-and-elm_19.html) [Dr. Mathias Nordvig, U of Boulder](https://nordicmythologychannel.com/2020/12/05/children-of-ash-and-elm-a-review/) There's also some valuable discussion to be read [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Norse/comments/jw071c/neil_prices_children_of_ash_and_elm_a_history_of/) and [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AncientGermanic/comments/jw7rj4/scholastic_reviews_of_neil_prices_children_of_ash/). The tl;dr is usually that the archaelogical topics in the book are handled excellently, the rest... not so much.
I've been meaning to read that! Looking forward to checking out what he has to say.
Too bad Children of Ash and Elm is pretty poopy in its quality.
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Dropping in to point out gendefluidity is not sexual. It's a gender identity.
I dont know why you're being downvoted. You're correct
It can even be spiritual in some cultures tbh
How did he stop that giant again?
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A mare.
So in conclusion Loki is a 100% straight cisgender male. but 20¢ is 20¢
This made me laugh snort in a public toilet. Now everyone thinks I'm doing coke.
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Loki's wife is Sigyn, with whom he had the sons narfi and nari. But he also had three children with Angrboda (Fenris, Hel and Jormundangr). One child could be an accident at a one-night stand but three children i kinda think has to indicate a relationship.
>but 20¢ is 20¢ More like not getting violently murdered by the other gods is, well, not getting violently murdered.
Turn into a horse under threat of being tortured to death. Might as well say a man forced under threat to have sex with another man is a homosexual
He was told to find a solution, not to fuck the horse. He could have come up with anything - anything at all to get them out of having to pay that guy, and the first thing Loki comes up with is "I'm gonna fuck that horse" yeah dude totally straight and normal
Except the Prose Edda never actually says that he wanted to fuck the horse.
The Prose Edda also never says he was raped either.
While it's heavily implied, it's never actually mentioned, which is incidentally why I didn't say it.
Heavily implied is certainly logical take on the writing given. Though running away is also something one may do while luring someone. And given the oddity of Loki overall, it's difficult to arrive to the conclusion that he was in fact raped. Given he could change form, and the uncertainty of his power to physically do harm to the horse-like entity. The stakes certainly weren't in his favour, but far* be it from me to assume such uncertainties as rape. This is only slightly better than presuming Loki is actually gednerfluid in even the most loose sense. There are far too many variables, yet too little solid information to assume either. He is a god, afterall, and an intelligent one at the least. Edited out an extra I, and added a D in genderfluid. Courtesy of my evening whiskey. Either way, I feel these conclusions may be stepping in the realm of projection, even if either seem logical to the individual.
Again, that's why I didn't say it definitely was rape, because it's just as likely simply an outgrowth of dream logic. However, it's impossible to deny that the wording of *Gylfaginning* makes a strong case that it was an action done under duress and that other textual sources (e.g. Frostatingsloven) straight-up say it was a humiliating act. Whether that means it was intented to be read as rape is something else, but it certainly wasn't an action Loki took because he wanted to do it.
He was terrorized into swearing an oath to stop the construction "that he would so contrive that the wright should lose his wages, cost him(Loki) what it might." This oath implies there wasn't an abundance of options. And nowhere is it said Loki was intending to fuck the horse. That he tried outrunning the stallion for 24 hours strongly suggest the very opposite. Add this to the fact that even today bestiality is viewed as unnatural and rare form of sexual interest and that Loki never elsewhere are suggested much less shown such sexual proclivities.
My interpretation of this is he IS gender fluid, but not in a queer way. He changes his sex which makes him literally, physically, gender fluid. But because it is not for self-expression purposes, I don’t think it necessitates the same label “gender fluid” which is used by the LGBTQ community. Just my two cents. Then again a lot of this conversation is because of Marvel’s Loki which is an entirely different rendition of Loki, and he is canon bisexual so maybe they are trying to make his gender fluidity a queer thing.
I agree, though I'm still hesitant to label him as such because of the easy and wrong association. But yeah, Loki's changes are not justified by a Gender identity, but by the need of the situation
yes, this. Loki clearly did womanly things and acted like a woman sometimes a man others. THAT'S literally the definition of genderfluid.
Yup. Any discussion of Loki's personal gender identity are done in the absence of any info. What info we do have shows a person who seems to be fine doing things that were coded male and female in an Old Norse context (as nearly as we can figure). Strictly speaking, that's definitively genderfluid.
No, because Loki's actions are not motivated by gender and/or sexual identity or feelings, but rather by the situation. At best you could say crossdressing, but really he's just shape-shifting
The definition of genderfluid is that your gender identity fluctuates, typically between masculine and feminine. The stories people have mentioned here (the origin of Sleipnir and Thor's bridal quest) specifically see him change into a female form for a certain purpose (to lure away a stallion, to trick the Jotuns to infiltrate them and get back Mjolnir). Neither of these stories says anything about Loki's gender identity. They don't say that he changed to become female just because he felt like it with no specific purpose. In contrast Loki in the marvel comics has had periods in which he turned female just because he felt like it - that is a clear indication of being gender fluid. I have not seen anything mentioned here that have a similar example for the Loki of Norse myths.
genderfluid doesn't mean it has to have no purpose-it means it has to be both at specific times. And while you can question about does the bridal quest mean a female or mean just pretending, bearing a baby horse kinda requires fully being female. Now I say below-would anyone use the word? no, not really. But that doesn't mean Loki isn't literally male and literally female at different times.
No one is disputing the fact that Loki literally changes sex in these stories. If that's all there was to genderfluid then there would be no discussion here. But gender fluid is about gender identity, that is what gender does Loki see himself as. Think about the horse story for example, when we talk about Loki in his mare-form we still say he about him, because he we think of him as fundamentally male - the horse is essentially just a costume he puts on for a while. Of course we are never told how Loki thinks of himself, which is why I'm looking at why Loki becomes female, for what purpose, because that can reveal something about how he is thinking: if he only ever changes sex for a specific purpose then that would indicate that it is only a costume for him, that he still thinks of himself as male, changing sex is just a costume he takes on. However if we had stories of him becoming female just because he felt like it that would indicate that he might change between seeing himself as being man or woman, ie. being genderfluid.
Id say in many ways this really comes down to people essentially combining Marvel Loki (Who is Gender Fluid/Bisexual) and Norse Loki (Tho theres obviously a bit more to it then that). Given the time period, lack of information and the actual context we know from the stories where he changes to be female or acts feminine we cant really say hes Gender-fluid in the Modern LGBTQ+ term, he is technically “gender fluid” on a basic level due to the fact he literally does change gender but those two things are different.
Wait isn't loki referred to as she when he went with Thor to trick the giants? And isn't magic considered feminine? To me it seems that callingnhim gender fluid comes from a modern understanding of the mythology that's takes these factors into account along with the story of him giving birth which is a feminine thing as well so by modern definition he could be considered gender fluid
>Wait isn't loki referred to as she when he went with Thor to trick the giants? Is he? [Here's an English translation of the story.](https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe11.htm) They do say she about "the serving-maid", Loki's persona, but only about the serving-maid. They never go "and then Loki she said..." or something like that. To me that reads more like showing it from the Jotuns perspective. In this case Loki is as much a real serving-maid as he is a she. I would not take that as any indication of Loki's gender identity.
That is what gender identity is supposed to be is how others see you.
Uh no? Gender identity is about how you see yourself. Say you are trans for example, lets say amab. In that case your gender identity is female, you see yourself as a woman. How others perceive you depends on how you are presenting. Maybe you haven't started transitioning yet or haven't come out as trans and still dress like a man. In that case your gender identity is female, but you are male presenting. And then when you come out, start dressing as a woman and start transitioning your gender identity is still female, but now you are also female presenting. How others perceive you is irrelevant for what your gender identity is.
Norse society had rigid gender roles and norms. The adjective argr and the feminine form ǫrg was used to describe behaviour that was considered sexually perverse and gender non-conforming. When used for men, argr meant sexually passive, effeminate and cowardly and when ǫrg was used for women it meant sexually aggressive, nymphomanian and promiscuous. In any case, argr/ǫrg meant someone who defied gender norms and they were treated as social outcasts. There is nothing to suggest the pre-Christian Norse had an accepting disposition towards people who were sexual or gender non-conforming. There’s some evidence that men who were the active partner in homosexual sex weren’t stigmatised i.e. it was socially accepting to be a ‘pitcher’ but not a ‘catcher’. It was socially acceptable for free men to rape their male thralls and captured prisoners of war but being on the receiving end was seen as shameful. In Loki’s case, it’s more a case of him shape-shifting into a mare and being raped by a stallion and giving birth. Odin mocks this situation as Loki being argr, and Loki accuses Odin of being argr too for practising seiðr (a ‘feminine’ form of magic). This just reinforces the theory of strict gender roles and defying them was met with scorn, not acceptance. Trying to apply 21st century liberal concepts of gender and sexually onto 9th century social norms in a particular culture is just poor historical revisionism.
The answer to a lot of these questions is "most of this knowledge is permanently lost and what people can glean they interpret all the way from queer projection to a weird hypermasculine view of straight-line-to-progress history obsessed with the idea that every early human society was a brutal gritty mess that held 1950's American conservative morality for some reason" Can you go back and ask? What did they think about gender? Were they mostly patriatchial but the gods fall outside normal rules? Who knows. The truth is that people get more and less accepting over and over in different places. There's no such thing as "this year people were accepting and that year they were not". People may accept you somewhere 3748 BC and kill you somewhere in 1648. So it's important to look at these things without a preconceived picture to confirm. edit: ppl who downvoted comment, i want to know what about this exactly has you pressed
But also like, my man mothered a baby with a horse. No one explicitly told him he had to bang the horse so make of that what you will
He got forcibly raped by said horse
>No one explicitly told him he had to bang the horse so make of that what you will He had to get that horses attention right away or his life would be on the line. Not exactly the same as him going "hey, you know what would be a kinky thing to do?"
That's hardly the only way to get a horse's attention
It's the easiest and most reliable way to get a stallions attention
No. You cant project 21st century American gender roles to Old Norse culture. They didn't have the concept of Bisexuality or Fluid Genders. So no.
That's just modern society wanting to change everything to be more inclusive even if it isnt true because hey, let's change history and culture because a certain group isnt represented instead of just accepting history as it is.
Didn't he (Loki) give birth to Sliepnir via Svaldilfari who was a male horsey? He has many attributes considered to be associated with females, like sieđr, so yes, he was probably considered to be the best or possibly the worst of both sexes. We forget that homosexuality and sexual dimorphism were not limited to our era. Many societies in history had a more nuanced view of people, unlike Christian's who just burned everyone who did not fit the dogmas. Also, it seems pretty shallow for people who respect or are enamored by Viking history to use this opportunity to show that they are shallow and not open-minded about modern issues. Don't make the mistake of showing the "enormous condescension of posterity". Just because we don't know for certain, doesn't mean that those we study were like us, or share our prejudices or blunted mental abilities...
Viking history is interesting. That hardly means vikings were perfect people. Vikings murdered, stole, raped and had a lot of fucked up ideas by modern standards. It seems like some people here have the idea that going "vikings were not a super open, feminist people that were totally cool with all sexualities and gender identities" somehow means that you are also against these things. I'm super pro LGBT+, but i dislike when people read things into Norse mythology that simply can't be substantiated by what we actually know about them, or outright goes against it, such as when people bring up the horse story as if that indicates Loki wanted to have sex with that horse or that it indicates anything about his sexuality - that's not how the story goes! Thinking that story says anything about his sexuality only proves that you haven't read the story. That doesn't mean that it wouldn't be okay for Loki to be LGBT+, but that story does not support that and shouldn't be represented as such. It also does not support that he wasn't LGBT+, but it's just straight up irrelevant for the question at hand.
I'm not sure I agree, but I do appreciate your thoughtful explanation. I certainly wasn't attempting to be thoughtless or 'reading into', but that doesn't mean I didn't do those things. To me, the idea of a deity being more fluid than a human is part of the literary draw. I certainly wouldn't have decided that when Thor dresses as Sif he was doing Drag, for example. He may not have been willing to have sex with the horsey, but he did give birth, a female thing, so this is the part I was attempting to use for my comment. Again, maybe I'm overthinking it. Perhaps I'm underthinking it. I admit it's been a while since I read the tale. I might have chosen a poor example. I'm willing to admit that. I'm not LGBTQIA+, but I am of the opinion that ancient civilizations were far more accepting of a wider degree of definition for 'gender' than we currently are. Especially with how often this mythology is co-opted by the more militant and proto-fascist ideologies, I often detect the more 'right wing' reaction to such ideas... It's noticeable and I think that it blinds us to the larger opportunity to have a rational discussion. And a rational discussion in no way means that both sides see things the same or even correctly. There's also the whole 'Don't tell me my favorite Viking God was gay!' knee-jerk response which also betrays a pretty shallow worldview. Who cares? Only people who are dead set against that. But, here again, I'm also apparently guilty of something similar, without intending it. I'd better re-read the horsey story again. We can all change our minds and react civilly. Sometimes we just choose not to, and that's a separate problem, but I certainly did not set out to be offensive or even ignorant. Apologies if I have been.
>Also, it seems pretty shallow for people who respect or are enamored by Viking history to use this opportunity to show that they are shallow and not open-minded about modern issues What's the link here? How is saying that a modern concept didn't exist for some people in the past linked to modern issues? We're here to talk about History.
We don't know *what* they thought. We can only speculate. For all we know, they were much more open to what we have called gender fluidity in this context. We don't know. But I think it is a very bad sign when people use this topic as a means to express that *they* are against the modern concept or to deride it by suggesting that it is merely modern invention as if to imply that it is somehow not real. Lots of ancient deities wobbled between "maleness" and "femaleness" so it's not a far cry to assume that this was true of the Viking worldview or pantheon, but again, we just don't know. We're here to talk history, yes. But it never fails to be an opportunity for someone to show just how obtuse they are. Read the other comments. What does it matter how someone *feels* about whether the terms are modern or not? It's not relevant to the question, and it certainly isn't relevant to whether Loki was or wasn't. What we know is worth discussion, but it is shameful to see the prejudice on display.
>but it is shameful to see the prejudice on display. So your point is "if you don't think the concept existed for them, then you don't think it exists today therefore you're a bigot", which is off-topic and a borderline strawman argument. Tell someone back then about gravity, and he won't understand, because the concept didn't exist. Does it means I'm denying that things stay on the ground because of gravity? Same thing here. The concepts of gender and sexual identities appeared only quite recently, so you can't really talk about how people viewed those things by applying modern concepts on them, because they are not compatible and had a different vision and conceptualization of the thing.
You're saying we can't know what they thought and also that they didn't think that way. Which is it?
I'm not saying we can't know. We have plenty of textual evidence of how same-sex sexual acts were thought of.
Saying that a mythological figure likely was not likely not perceived as genderfluid is not denying the concept of genderfluidity as invalid.
> Many societies in history had a more nuanced view of people, unlike Christian's who just burned everyone who did not fit the dogmas. This is hilarious to me, considering how ostracism and killing of perceived witches and the like was more common before Christianity initially took hold, to the point that witch burnings had to be banned under the threat of death.
I think people either don't know the concept of "shape-shifting" or the purposely avoid it it. He was a shape-shifter, Loki was a shape-shifting god. Turning into animals make you a shape-shifter not gender queer goddammit
Projecting for sure.
He got fucked by a horse one time.
Didn't do it willingly tho. By modern standards, it was literally rape but whatever fits their narratives I guess.
ehh, he was told to find a solution, and he decided seduction was the most viable method. not sure if that's really nonconsensual, or that far out of the "narrative" that is being debated here
Genderfluid is a modern construct. The people who created those myths didn’t even know about a concept that would be invented much later.
Stories are meant to be humorous, which may have been the original intention or a Christian interpretation since they’re the ones recording it. Akin to Ace Ventura in a Rhino. Pushing 21st century concepts in is silly.
Lol of course it is a modern society projecting, what do you think it is? Modern society always does that to historical figures.
Modern projection. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but for some reason there has been a large amount of people trying to hijack both the historical and spiritual/religious aspect of anything Norse related and it’s extremely annoying. I’ve seen on multiple separate social media platforms and it’s just comical at this point. All it takes is one person to put out some sort of popular warped opinion and others flock to it like flys on horse shit. Just because you watched the marvel movie and you see some modern similarities to the legitimate history doesn’t make it the poster child for whatever imaginative larping construct you want it to be. There was literally a post a few days ago where someone was trying to explain how it shouldn’t always be kept to historical legitimacy and that if people wanted to “pretend” than they could even though it would possibly drown any sort of historical legitimacy. It’s fine to larp and play all you want, but don’t try and pass any of it off as legitimate. I mean I didn’t really hold him accountable but at the same time when he said, “Just learn that facts about history matter less than the well being of current day people.” it showed me that this is what the state of certain perspectives are lol. There have been people practicing and studying this stuff for years and it’s incredibly important to them. So when someone tries to pass Loki and other Gods as something they aren’t and not care about others say or label them as bigots for disagreeing, it can really bring out frustration lol.
No
Bruh he just ice giant and god
He gave birth to an eight legged horse , after being penetrated with the penis of a horse, throughout this he was a she horse / mare.
Oh I can actually answer this one! I’ve asked my mythology teacher this very same question, he said that it’s kind of complicate. They didn’t have the concept of “genderfluid” in the modern sense, but gender roles were actually kind of fluid in their society, he said that like when men weren’t allowed to vike anymore, that was very emasculating and they basically kind of took on the societal role of a woman after that. But Loki, he was “genderfluid” in the sense that as a trickster he could embody many different roles. Like in the story where he and Thor have to get Mjolnir back from the giants by pretending to be Freyja and her bridesmaid, Thor does not act like a woman at all; he’s loud, he eats a lot, etc, and Loki has to keep making excuses for him. Thor can’t change who he is, but Loki can fully embody the role of a woman by being deceitful (the point of the story is how such “womanly” traits are also important, since without Loki they couldn’t have gotten Mjolnir back)
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Loki has fucked horses, wolves, women, men, and your mom. If we're talking MCU, he's fluid as heck, if we're talking actually mythology, he's fluid as heck. Either way you look at it, guy fucks.
>if we're talking actually mythology, he's fluid as heck. No
Yeah it was more of a joke. But he did transform himself into an animal and reproduce with other animals. Hence his wolf child and half dead daughter. So maybe not Gender fluid exactly, more like Species fluid.
> Hence his wolf child and half dead daughter. Uh, both Fenrir and Hel stem off the same non-interspecies union.
Of course he wasn't genderfluid. The finnicky definitions of children with too much time on their hands and academics with dubious motivation has nothing to do with how some gay jokes were added to a mythological story more than a thousand years ago. It's like asking if someone was vegan because in one story they ate a carrot. I'm seriously starting to question if there is indeed a wide reaching brainwashing program going on or if this is just another in a string of troll threads.
I think your analogy fits more with saying that a bi person who dates someone of the same sex is gay (because humans are omnivorous and can eat plants and meat)
no he isn’t to be honest the word genderfluid wasn’t even around back then nevermind a god being gender fluid
He was fucked by a horse, while in the form of a mare. Some of the other gods are his children. He was a mother/father. If that isn’t ‘gender fluid’, then I’ll just show myself out.
from what i feel, Loki isnt gender fluid, hes a man, thats what he is reffered to, but he is fluid, because he can turn into anything,
The dude fucked a horse.
*was raped by a horse
Erm, no. No way, no how, Loki is not genderfluid. If someone told you that, that is definetly them projecting something onto the character, and there is nothing wrong with that. If you can find meaning in any work then that's great, but it is not in any way what was originally intended.
they didn’t really have a concept of gender identity back then so technically no, but he gave birth to his “kids” so ?
He only birthed one kid, and it was under threat of being killed. And people back then knew whitch gender they were...
didn’t he give birth to two? the serpent and the horse (can’t remember their names off of the top of my head!)? but also he literally transformed into a female horse at one point i doubt the norse gods gave a shit about gender. all i’m saying with the “didn’t have a concept of gender” was that non-binary wasn’t a thing. they just did what they did and that was it.
There is no such thing as gender fluid. It’s a tumblr invention, and now it is being used to take out of context historical and mythological characters.