What is a trickster?
Characters of this type appear in many different cultures: the clever one, the deceiver, the rule-breaker. He doesn't fight the gods; he gets in their way and changes the state of things through his antics. It is through him that new objects and new rules enter the world.
This kind of hero works like an engine. When everything is in order, there is nothing to tell: stories begin with disruption. That's why every mythology needs a trickster, and judging him in terms of good and evil is as pointless as judging a plot twist.
- The Wall and HorseOn his advice, the gods agree to an unfair bargain. He then gets out of it by distracting the builder's horse, and the bargain falls through.
- The Gods' TreasuresBecause of his prank, the gods are left without the goddess's hair, but in the end they receive a hammer, a spear, and a ship. A problem turns into a gain.
- The Stolen AppleHe betrays the goddess with the rejuvenating fruit, then brings her back himself because without her everyone dies, including him.
Notice the pattern: every story begins with his fault and ends with his own solution. The gods regularly threaten to kill him but leave him alive every time, because without him they won't get out of their next predicament.
Loki is a Scandinavian devil, the gods' original enemy.
In most stories, he is a companion and accomplice, not an opponent. The stark opposition between good and evil came later, along with the Christian perspective of those who recorded these myths.
How he becomes an enemy after all
The turning point comes in the story of the death of the bright god, where Loki is already the culprit without providing any benefit to the others. After that, he is bound, and at the end of time he takes the side of the forces destroying the world.
It's worth remembering how we know all this. The myths were written down two or three centuries after the adoption of Christianity, by people for whom the opposition between good and evil was familiar. It's hard to judge how much this framework changed the original stories.
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Sources
- The main sources on Norse mythology are the Poetic and Prose Eddas, written down in the 13th century, more than two centuries after the Christianization of Iceland