The power of Loki: from 12th-century Iceland to The Avengers

Subversive, demonic, funny … it’s no surprise that Neil Gaiman and Marvel have discovered the mythical god Loki as the perfect modern-day antihero

As a child I was a mythology purist. I started with retellings by HA Guerber and Robert Graves. I read Snorri Sturluson and Saxo Grammaticus; I snapped up every translation of the Eddas and longed to read them in the original. Finally, I taught myself Old Icelandic and did just that. My interest in Norse myth dates back over 40 years, and my passion for these stories has followed me throughout my life. I am not alone in this: whether in Wagner, Marvel comics, Tolkien, Tennyson or Arthur Rackham, these myths have been reshaped and retold many times, each time in a different way. The 17th century reimagined them as a narrative of exploration. The Victorians reshaped them to fit their dream of an empire. And the 21st century embraced them anew, particularly Loki, the Trickster of Asgard, whose character – whether the sly schemer of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods or the troubled antihero of such Marvel films as The Avengers and Thor – suits our modern times exceptionally well.

Of all the gods of Asgard, Loki is the subversive, the social and racial outsider; a gender-fluid character in a binary world. It seems appropriate, therefore, for Loki to subvert the epic tradition of prose just as he subverts everything else. It is a gesture of defiance – one of many – against authority, convention, even the rules of storytelling.

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