Oft cited to appear
He cowers the Ash before.[[60]]
At Odin’s table near
His place to Asa Thor.[[61]]
He was, indeed, as a god, the familiar companion of Thor; who, however, had no great wish for his society. Like most of the gods, he was married. His wife, Signe, was an amiable being, who loved him in spite of his depravity. By her he had two sons, Nari and Vali, whose fate will be mentioned in the proper place. But he had other and more mischievous offspring by the giantess Augerbode,—Fenris the wolf, Jormungandur the great serpent, and Hela the queen of death. This alleged affinity will confirm the observation, that there was originally but one Loke, the lord of Utgard, and consequently the everlasting foe of the gods. How the Asgard Loke should become so wicked as to produce such offspring, might surprise us, if we were not assured that he was not so originally, and that he became so by eating the half-roasted heart of an enchantress.
These three children of Loke were reared in Utgard by the mother. The fatal influence which they were to exercise over the universe, was not concealed from Vala, the mysterious prophetess of heaven, or from Skulda, the Norny of the future. The gods being warned, sent to secure them. Jormungandur, one of the most dreaded, was seized, and by Odin cast into the great sea that separates the human from the giant world. There so large did it become, that it surrounded the whole earth,—being condemned to hold its tail in its mouth, and thus to form a circle. There he lies, waiting for the time when destiny will unloose him—the Ragnarok, or the twilight of the gods; when he will assist in the destruction of the visible universe.
Hela, the next mythologic offspring, is hideous to behold,—her body being half livid, half of natural colour. By Odin, or rather by destiny, of which he was merely the instrument, she was placed in the upper confines of Nifleheim,—in the region which, from her, is called Hell (Helheim). She was invested with dominion over six, or perhaps seven, of the nine worlds, (as we have before observed, there is some doubt whether Muspelheim be eternal,)—over men, and dwarfs, and giants, and gods. All who die a natural death proceed to her “drear abode:” hence her title, queen of the dead. “Hela’s hall,” says the prose Edda, “is affliction; her table is famine; her knife is hunger; her threshold, a drawbridge; her bed, lingering sickness; her tent, cursing.” She too, like Odin, had nornies, whose province it was to summon mortals to her vast domain. But these were much inferior in loveliness and dignity to the celestial nornies. They appeared to the fated victim by night only. Hela herself was sometimes believed thus to appear. She had a dark red cock, to signify, by its crowing, the approach of fate; and a spectre horse, to carry the doomed to her gloomy abode.
The third demon offspring of Loke, the wolf Fenris, is no less wonderful than his brother and sister. The one had been surprised and, thrown into the sea; the other had been partly persuaded to submit, through the high dignity offered to her; but Fenris, who was more powerful, was also more troublesome. He was taken, indeed, and bound; but he snapped his fetters, strong as they were, as if they had been nothing. A massive chain was now made, and he was bid to try its strength: it snapped as if it had been dried clay. Another was made double the strength of the preceding,—the strongest that the gods could make; but with a very slight effort it too gave way. What was to be done with this formidable criminal,—one destined, if oracles were true, to endanger the world? The gods had no fetter in which to bind him; the giants, who were skilful, could not be expected to join in any design against one of their own body,—one, too, that was naturally hostile to the Aser. In this, as in many other dilemmas, recourse was had to the Dwarfs in the bowels of the earth. At the instance of Skirnir, the messenger of Freyr, they constructed a chain called Gleipner; which, though so slender as to resemble a silken thread, was nevertheless not to be broken by gods, or giants, or dwarfs. The Edda acquaints us with the materials of which it was constructed. These were six, all curious enough to deserve mentioning:—the sound made by the feet of a cat; the beard of a woman; the roots of huge rocks; the fibres of trees; the breath of fishes; the spittle of birds. But how bind by it the formidable monster? Deceit must be used. Repairing with him to a solitary island, the gods desired him to try his strength on this, as he had done on preceding things. “Little honour,” replied the cunning demon, “can result from breaking a silken thread; but probably it may be enchanted!” and he refused to try it. He was next taunted and jeered; and in vexation he at length consented to be bound; but then, to be assured that the gods were honest in their proffer, he insisted that some one of them should put a hand in his mouth. They were in utter dismay; but the undaunted Tyr[[62]], the northern Mars, the defender of the gods, at length resolved to sacrifice a member for the preservation of the universe. He therefore placed his hand in the open jaw, and the wolf allowed himself to be fettered. The chain was cunningly fastened round his body, passed through a rent rock, carried downwards to the centre of the earth, and there made fast. Fenris now tried as before; but so far from escaping, every effort that he made only entangled him the more, and rivetted his bonds the more firmly. He therefore desisted; but in his anger he bit off the hand of Tyr. From that moment the god has been only left-handed; but as he uses that hand with much effect, he is still to be dreaded. He alone had courage to take food to an animal, the roaring of which was felt by all nature, until the gods thrust a sword into his jaws, and thus gagged him. There he lies until Ragnarok, when, like Midgard’s serpent, he will break loose.
There is no personage in the whole system of a more mythic character than Loke. He was evidently the personification of the active evil principle. His name signifies flame; and he is a representative of the demon of fire—the destructive, in opposition to the alimentary, aerial fire, of which Balder may be considered the symbol. At this day the devil is called Loke by the Norwegians. Still there is frequently some obscurity in the mythi respecting him, and it is occasioned by his being so often confounded with the demon king of Utgard. Though they were originally one, the Edda has made him into two, in conformity no doubt with the genius of two distinct systems of mythology. The mysterious allusion to the assistance which he afforded Odin in the work of creation, is one great proof of his identification with the powers of evil: his relationship with the giants, on both sides, sufficiently accounts for his hostility towards the gods, with whom he associated that he might find an opportunity of triumphing over them. He is styled a coward, because his deeds will not bear the light—the inventor of deceit, of lies, of every thing base. The first of his offspring, the great serpent, is evidently a relic of the Celtic creed. The Britons acknowledged its existence; and there are two bold promontories on the coast to which they have given the name of the Worm’s Head.[[63]] Of the wolf Fenris the character is more obscure, though no less confirmatory of the mythos. It is doubtless a symbol of destruction. In several countries of the East, it is believed that a wolf will finally destroy, if not the world, the sun and moon. Thus, in the Budhist system, a wolf, Rakoo, is always on the watch to swallow both luminaries. This mythos, we suspect, with a living writer[[64]], has given rise to the superstition so common in the middle ages,—that of men-wolves; viz., the power possessed by some men of assuming the form of that animal. Hela, or death, the offspring of sin, or Satan (Loke), needs no explanation. We may, however, observe, that there is some plausibility in the arguments of Magnussen, when he attempts to show that Helheim is more ancient than Valhalla; that it is the place of punishment acknowledged by the original inhabitants, while the warrior’s heaven was introduced by the Gothic conquerors.
The mythological fables in which Loke so prominently appears, will illustrate his character better, and certainly more agreeably, than any formal description. In most of them he was associated with Thor; but we select one in which Odin and Hoenir were concerned with him. Hoenir, we must observe, is but another name for Vile, the brother of Odin, who assisted in the work of creation.[[65]]