A Brighter Fire in the Dark

[lunik_the_bard]

Title: A Brighter Fire in the Dark
Rating: Gen
Fandom: Thor, Norse Mythology
Summary: Odin discarded the Jotun race and their world into darkness. A necessary iniquity, and the only way to ensure they never again rose up to attack another realm. But how could that place of ice and nothing else have produced a fire so bright as Loki Laufeyson?

An

Comments

[sphinxofthenile]

Such a fresh spin on the myths, I really enjoyed it!

[lunik_the_bard]

Thank you! I adore the myths because the breakdown of Odin and Loki's brotherhood is such a resonating story. Even before you can ask how they go from "Any gift presented to me will belong to you also" to "destroying the world out of hatred for you", you have to wonder how they came to love each other in the first place. Loki was a Jotun halfling; Odin was a god. For those two people to come together in the first place, you know the sentiment between them was real.

Then you get to break your own heart wondering how it all went to shit.

[sphinxofthenile]

Story of my life. Err. I have a thing for breaking my heart, obviously.

But yes, so much this. Granted, there is always the fact that Odin was part-Jotun himself and apparently one crafty bastard.

[lunik_the_bard]

There's that. And the fact that he's the quintessential wandering god means that he had more in common with Loki than, for example, Freyr. But there's the Seidmadr issue as well - somehow Odin manages to get away without the stigma of being a male sorcerer (there's no record of him birthing unnatural children of his own, and the only person to accuse him of sexual 'deviance' is Loki). Association with someone as unapologetically argr as Loki would come with problems. And even if Odin's reaction was fuck you, I'm the Allfather, I'll do what I want he would still be acting in defiance of the expectations of the other gods. I just like to imagine the relationship between the two of them within that framework - because the spark when they met was strong enough that Odin took a stand to give it a chance, and the disapproval of others would have only made it stronger, I think.

(And I do think an awful lot!)

[sphinxofthenile]

Nah. I mean, yes, but that's a good thing. :D

It certainly is a curious relationship, and I very much agree with all that you've said. It's a shame we don't have more resources than what there is. Because the other curious thing about it is most certainly the fact that there seems to be no explanation in the myths themselves. Stories that were made up to explain the world and the order of it, huge events of history, etc usually have really intricate insight into the workings of the societies they come from.

[lunik_the_bard]

An explanation for why Odin wasn't shamed for being a seidmadr? I've got a theory for that, actually. It's all about how seidmadr was pretty much synonymous for homosexual, and the fact that some of the people who shaped these stories would definitely have been closeted gays.

Mythology is full of characters who exhibit horrific flaws and are badass enough to get away with it (see: Gwynn ap Nudd, Sun Wukong etc) - Viking society was a place where calling someone argr was a holmgang-able offense! I figure being allowed to completely ignore Odin's... issues was pretty cathartic for all the people who were terrified of their own sexuality.

Or if you meant an explanation for why Odin and Loki were so tight - I guess brothers have vexed each other since the dawn of time!

[sphinxofthenile]

That makes a great deal of sense. I would just be curious how they got there. Surely they couldn't exactly sit down and say, 'Hey guys, this thing I just thought of, you gonna love it. We shall make our chief god gay! And half not a god. And you know while we are at it, we could bring back this scrap project with that eight-legged horse...'

[lunik_the_bard]

This is my new head canon for how the skalds of old came up with their consensus! They had meetings with chinese food in cartons, and they didn't go home until they'd figured out how Thrym managed to steal the hammer when Thor needed all those special gloves/belts just to lift the thing. (Olav fell asleep into his chow mein and everyone else threw the towel in. No one will even care, the rest of the story has Thor in a dress!)

I figure the stories were built in exactly the same way as fandom comes up with our crazy shit - someone suggests it, someone else thinks it's a cool enough idea that they perpetuate it. I mean, can you remember when people decided that Jotnar are single-gendered? The only difference is that the old storytellers never had to worry about being respectful to their source material, and there was never any danger that canon would disprove whatever they came up with!

[sphinxofthenile]

And then they threw a party with moon cake and booze!

Well, actually, I think the mono-gendered Jotun appeared when Laufey was suddenly a man. But point. Oh god this is such irony. We are taking Norse fanon as our canon. Maybe one day mono-gendered Jotnar will be the undisputed groove.