Fall                                                                         Harvest Moon

A fascinating journey into Loki scholarship and through it into international scholarship on folklore has made me blink more than once in its equivalency to the methods of biblical scholarship I learned in seminary.  First, there is textual criticism.  That is, did this instance of a Loki tale originate in an Old Norse tale or a broader European context?  If it originated in an Old Norse tale we imagine it may accurately reflect the actual sentiment toward Loki held by those who followed the old Norse faith.

However.  Even if it originated in an Old Norse folktale, does it have antecedents in either nearby folkloric material, especially Celtic since the Norsemen conquered and occupied Ireland, or in traditions from a larger ambit, say Greek or Roman mythology?  To the extent the story reflects Greco-Roman or Celtic material it cannot be said with confidence to reflect the view of the ancient Norse.

Here’s an example.  There is, in a tale in which Loki, traveling, takes a staff to a large eagle, really a giant named Thjassi in animal form.  The staff sticks to Thjassi and Loki to the staff through the giant’s magic.  In return for his release Loki agrees to get Idunna and her apples for the giant.

(Edward Burne Jones the_garden_of_hesperides_1870)

Once released Loki goes to Idunna and tells her he’s seen better apples in the forest.  She wonders at this, gathers her apples for comparison and leaves Asgard with Loki.  When she does, Thjassi in his eagle form swoops down and gathers her up.

Without Idunna’s apples the gods and goddesses of Asgard wrinkle and turn gray, beginning to grow old.

There’s more, but there’s enough here to make the point.  Here’s a paragraph from Wiki on the Garden of the Hesperides:

The Garden of the Hesperides, Atlas’ daughters, was Hera‘s orchard in the far western corner of the world, where either a single tree or a grove of trees bearing immortality-giving golden apples grew. Hera placed in the garden a never-sleeping, hundred-headed dragon (named Ladon) as an additional safeguard. The 11th Labor of Hercules was to steal the golden apples from the garden. He stole the apples by asking Atlas to steal the apples and in return he would hold up the sky for him. After Atlas picked the apples Hercules asked Atlas to hold up the sky for him while he made a pad of the lion skin. He never took back his job of holding up the sky and ran away.

So this Loki story recapitulates a Greek story about the hero Hercules.  Not likely to be a source of good information about Loki and the ancient Norse faith.

Here’s one other thing I’ve relearned in this foray.  Folklorists have a numbered system for the appearance of story types.  In the myth of Baldr, after he dies from an arrow made of mistletoe, an attempt is made to bring him back from Niflheim, the realm of Hel, Loki’s monstrous daughter.   In the Aarne-Thompson system of folklore classification this is a 931, in essence a variation on the story of Orpheus.