Loki

Loki is one of the most notorious beings of Norse mythology, and subsequent modern story lines, but he gets a bad rap as a delinquent and intentional troublemaker. In truth he is the kid in the neighborhood that has a less than favorable home life so other households unofficially adopt him. For Loki that means he's the son of a giant who the gods and goddesses of Asgard tolerate because of the boys will be boy’s mentality. The legends of Ragnarok state that Loki will be part of the opposing force against the Aesir, which makes people think that he is a villain. It's important to look deeper though because the Aesir sealed their own fate when it comes to Loki being a villain.

Although Loki is often depicted as either Odin's or Thor's brother, he was really born a giant. His mother and father were both nameless in most myths, as were his two brothers that were born to the same parents. The devious little trickster wormed his way into the central myths by pulling various pranks, but when he was close to getting into serious trouble, he would undo the action and earn brownie points by going above and beyond. Despite usually doing things that put the Aesir ahead in life, the rest of the deities still counted Loki as little more than an irritation.

When the Aesir settled Asgard they desired to have a wall build around the city for protection. A master-builder from the land of giants came and negotiated a deal to build a strong impenetrable wall in a limited amount of time, different retellings use different measurement, in exchange for Freya's hand in marriage and the sun and moon. Due to Loki's prompting the builder was allowed the assistance of his horse. It doesn't sound like much but with his horse the giant was close to completing the wall before the deadline. The Aesir started getting nervous and turned to Loki to fix the problem, and he did so by using his transformative magic. He turned into a female horse and led the giant’s stallion on a wild chase for a few days. The stallion did catch the transformed god and the result was Odin's eight-legged horse, Slepnir.

Loki's tomfoolery also had him getting caught cutting the goddess Sif's hair. This doesn't sound like a major issue, but it was as she was extremely vain and prided herself on her hair. It's unclear whether she was the driving force behind Loki being punished or Thor did it to make his wife happy, but he was pushed to make it right. He went to the best crafters he could think of, dwarves, and challenged them to fix his mistake. They created a wig that was made of gold and would grow with time. With taunting from Loki the dwarves proceeded to make a few other inventions for some of the high-ranking Aesir, including Odin's spear that always hits the mark, Frey's gold chariot pulling boar, and Mjolnir. Mind you Loki proceeded to mess with the crafty dwarves the entire time to avoid having to follow through on rewarding them.

Like any petulant child Loki became known for becoming more obnoxious and flamboyant in his negative actions. From getting into poetic insult battles, also called flyting, to dragging Thor into trouble, his antics became progressively more aggressive. During a feast for all the gods and goddesses, Loki started a flyting wherein he accused several known Aesir of various atrocities including Freya of incest and equivocally sleeping her way to the top. He got into similar disagreements with giants which lead to him kidnapping Indunn, the goddess of golden apples, and trying to turn her over to a giant. He also stole Thor’s hammer and gave it to one of the worst giants. In order to get it back Thor had to dress as Freya in bridal attire and pretend to be willing to marry the giant. Overall a lot of Loki’s antics were nothing more than a headache for the other gods and goddesses that changed after they messed with his kids.

At some point in time during the mythological timeline, Loki was married to a giantess named Angrboda. This marriage resulted in three offspring: Jormungandr, Fenrir and Hel. Each of these kids was treated like trash in various ways by the powers that be. Hel, who is described as appearing half dead, was banished to rule the world of the dead. Unlike Greek mythology this is the only mention of her and she doesn’t hold sway over everyday actions. Jormungandr, the Midgard Serpent, was thrown into the oceans of Earth where he ate everything he could until he was so large that he ended up trying to eat his own tail and was stuck that way. Lastly Fenrir, the wolf that terrified most of the gods was chained away. This happened after Tyr fed and cared for the wolf for years because the canine became large and gruesome. From caretaker to betrayer, Tyr had to be the one who helped chain the beast who was predicted to be a crucial enemy at Ragnarok. Considering what happened to three of his kids it’s no wonder that Loki became a little malicious.

Sometime after the dispersal of his children we find the story of Frigg going to every living body, sentient and otherwise, to take a promise of no ill will towards her son Baldur. It would be understandable that this alone would have rubbed Loki the wrong way after having his kids treated awfully, but it was only exaggerated when everybody would get together to make jokes and games out of targeting Baldur with arrows, rocks, spears, and anything else that would normally cause harm. Loki disguised as a nameless old crone and approached Frigg about the promise she’d demanded of everything only to find that there had been an exception. Frigg had seen Mistletoe as too young and innocent to do any harm, so she hadn’t asked the plant to make the oath she had of everything else.

Be it revenge, spite or downright maliciousness as a motive, Loki took that information and fashioned a spear from mistletoe. Knowing that he could not be directly involved in the death of somebody that all the other gods loved so much, he approached Baldur’s blind brother and gave him the spear. Turning the brother in the right direction, like one would a child getting ready to hit a pinata and convinced him that he should be able to take part in the fun and games as well. The spear flew true and hit its mark. All the gods and goddesses were devastated when Baldur died much to their surprise. In response to the widespread distress one of Baldur’s other brothers went to Helheim, the world of the dead to appeal to Hel for his return.

Hel agreed to return Baldur if, and only if, every living thing in the nine worlds would weep for him. When the gods and goddesses heard this message, they assumed this would be easy as Baldur was so loved. Loki received this news with a little bit more malice that nothing would ever be done to right what had happened to his children. He slunk off to one of the far reaches of the worlds and transformed his image yet again. This time he appeared as an elderly giantess and refused to weep for the lost son of Odin. Presumably, the gods didn’t think anything of Loki’s absence at the time because he was always getting himself into trouble, but Loki’s roll in Baldur’s death and continued existence in Helheim did come to light. It took some time for the population of gods and goddesses to find Loki; when they did his fate was tragically sealed.

Loki’s final punishment was the epitome of the gods and goddesses being completely fed up, but it was still overboard. He had found a place to hide and spent some of his time living as a salmon. When the hideout was found there were still remnants of a net he’d made, and the gods copied the design and proceeded to hunt for the trickster in the nearby rivers. It took a few tries but eventually they captured him. At some point a long the way, Loki had two sons with a second wife, Sigunn. The punishment handed down by the ruling deities was to transform one of Loki’s remaining sons into a wolf. That wolf then tore apart the other brother. The gods took the intestines from the second brother and, turning them to iron, used them to bind Loki so he was laying flat on his back. Above him was placed a venomous serpent with its mouth open dripping the painful liquid on Loki’s face. Despite having just lost her sons, Sigunn was loyal to the shamed father. She holds a bowl above her husband’s face, but it fills up every so often. When she goes to empty the bowl, Loki is said to fight his binding because of the pain, causing mild earthquakes.

Knowing how the descendants of Loki were treated it’s easy to understand the argument that he’s caught a really cruddy rap. Sure, Loki played jokes on countless members of the Norse pantheon, but usually they ended up better off than they would have without his interference. The only truly malicious thing that Loki did was in response to his children getting screwed over. As if they had to have the final word and one up Loki in atrocious acts they went way overboard in his final binding. He was just the poor kid from down the street who wanted to impress his friends but ended up being the butt of their jokes.