Loki as Fixer

I’ve come to to doubt the universal description of the Norse god Loki as a trickster. Perhaps “fixer” would fit him just as well, or better.

Tricksters and Fixers

According to Wikipedia, a trickster character “exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and defy conventional behavior.” Jesse Shipley, in an encyclopedia entry on “Trickster Ethnography,” describes the trickster as “a mediator who stands on the border between realms, showing how a society understands itself by embodying its transgressions.” Shipley contends that the trickster category is recent academic construct, coalescing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It’s evidently quite a stretch to force such diverse characters as Coyote, Loki, Reynard the Fox, Anansi, Legba, Hermes, and Odysseus into one analytical box.

A fixer is someone skilled at navigating complex situations or solving problems. They are often resourceful, discreet, and well-connected. They're pragmatic problem-solvers who operate in ethically ambiguous or legally gray areas. They're often discreet and often work behind the scenes.

My go-to image of a fixer is Winston Wolf in the movie Pulp Fiction (catchphrase, “I solve problems”) who efficiently cleans up messy situations.

Fixers and tricksters have overlapping qualities, including cunning, resourcefulness, and operating in grey areas. However, while fixers’ primary goal is to resolve problems, usually for others, tricksters are driven by personal motives like amusement, gain, or disrupting the status quo. Fixers typically operate within a (possible non-standard) code of ethics that justifies their actions. Tricksters tend toward amorality. While fixers stabilize a situation and restore order, tricksters introduce chaos and provoke conflict.

Loki

“Loki as Trickster” seems to be a 20th century notion, not a category that would’ve made much sense to the Norse themselves. Dutch scholar Jan de Vries noted in a 1957 article that “in a book on Loki, published in 1933 […] , I followed the lead of the great Danish scholar Axel Olrik, attributing to Loki the role of an impostor god, a crafty and astute trickster, a figure who often doubles as a civilizing hero.” Olrik got his PhD in 1892 and died in 1917.

Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology paints Loki as a trickster: “He is plausible, convincing, likable, and far and away the most wily, subtle, and shrewd of all the inhabitants of Asgard. It is a pity, then, that there is so much darkness inside him: so much anger, so much envy, so much lust. . . . He is more cunning, subtler, trickier than any god or giant.” Gaiman goes on to give my favorite Loki description, and the one that got me thinking about tricksters and technology: 

“He is tolerated by the gods, perhaps because his stratagems and plans save them as often as they get them into trouble. Loki makes the world more interesting but less safe.”

Loki not only gets the gods into trouble, like a trickster, but also gets them out of trouble, like a fixer. 

Here are Loki stories from the Eddas that show him as both a fixer and a trickster, with my commentary in italic [thus].

Treasures of the gods

Loki cut off all Thor’s wife’s hair. Enraged, Thor intimidated Loki until he promised to replace it with a head of hair made of gold by the dwarves. Loki first went to Ivaldi’s sons, who made Sif’s golden wig, the ship Skidbladnir, and Odin’s spear Gungnir. Not content, he then went to more dwarves, Brokk and Eitri, and wagered his head that they couldn’t make things as good as these., 

In spite of Loki interfering in the shape of a biting fly, they successfully made a golden boar and Odin’s gold ring Draupnir. While making Thor’s hammer, however, the fly managed to interrupt proceedings sufficiently that the hammer’s handle came out short. Back at Asgard, the gods judged that the hammer was best, losing Loki his bet. However, Loki prevented Brokk from cutting off his head by saying that the wager was for his head but not his neck.

The story’s inciting incident is implausible. Why would Loki cut off Sif’s hair? And why would Thor need a golden replacement—wouldn’t it just grow back? It seems like a dubious but necessary justification for Loki’s dealings with the dwarves. And why would Loki, once he had the hair replacement in hand, make a fatal wager with other dwarves for more gifts for the other gods? If Sif’s new hair wasn’t enough, he already had Skidbladnir and Gungnir to put him in the gods’ good graces. “The love of mischief” seems an inadequate motivation. Perhaps Snorri Sturluson just made this up to stitch together story fragments into the Prose Edda narrative.

Loki’s mainly a fixer in this story, solving the problem of Sif’s missing hair. Admittedly, in the story’s own terms—which I question—he caused the problem. Primarily, though, Loki is an abundant source of magical technology: he just needed to produce a wig for Sif, but he also came up with five more iconic items. There are, to be fair, a few trickster elements. Loki tricked Brokk and Eitri into making three treasures for only the consolation prize of sewing Loki’s mouth shut rather than cutting off his head.

Walls of Asgard

An unnamed builder offered to build a fortification around Asgard in exchange for the goddess Freyja, the sun, and the moon (Wikipedia). The gods agreed but placed a time-limit on the completion. The builder’s single request was that he might have help from his stallion, and due to Loki's influence, this is granted. With the stallion’s invaluable help, the builder made fast progress and was shaping up to finish the work before the deadline. The gods blamed Loki, who then took on the form of a mare and lured the stallion away on the last night, causing construction to be delayed and the deadline to be missed.

Loki solves the problem and ensures that the gods get their walls without payment. He’s a source of order, not chaos. He’s persuasive in the assembly, and resourceful when forced to solve the problem. In other words: a fixer, not a trickster.

Idun’s abduction

Loki was traveling with two other gods (Wikipedia). The ox they had set in an earth oven wasn’t cooking, prevented by the “giant” (the common mistranslation of the Old Norse jötunn) Thiazi’s magic. Thiazi, who had taken the shape of an eagle, said he would make the oven cook if he could eat from the ox. He ate so much of it that Loki became angry and attempted to hit him with his staff. The staff stuck to the eagle’ feathers, and Thiazi flew off, taking Loki along. Thiazi only agreed to let him down if Loki lured the goddess Idun, keeper of the fruits of youth, out of Asgard. Loki did so, Idunn was abducted, and the gods started ageing rapidly. They threatened Loki with torture and death unless he rescued Idun, which he he duly did.

The impetus for the story is Loki’s quick anger. It leads to the abduction of Idun, which Loki only resolves under pain of death. 

There is no sign of cunning or subversion on Loki’s part. Thiazi is the crafty one, engineering the situation that enables him to to abduct Idun.

Insulting the gods

This poem relates a contest of mutual insults, a common trope in northern tales. Loki could not bear to hear praise of the host’s servants at a party and kills one of them. The gods chase Loki out of the hall, but he returns. After trading insults with several gods and goddesses, revealing many shameful secrets, Thor arrives and tell Loki to be silent. After taunting Thor, Loki leaves. The gods pursue and capture him.

Here we see Loki at his impulsive and subversive best, losing his temper and insulting the most powerful beings in Norse creation. However, there’s no indication of cunning or trickery, merely malice.

Thor the Bride

In the poem Þrymskviða, Thor woke and found that his powerful hammer, Mjöllnir, is missing (Wikipedia). He sought out Loki for help. Loki discovered that the “giant” (jötunn) lord Thrymr had stolen it, and would return it only if Freyja is brought to marry him. Freyja refused, and so Heimdal suggested that Thor should go, dressed as the bride. A very reluctant Thor is persuaded to go by Loki, who will accompany him disguised as a handmaiden. During the evening Chez Thrymyr, Loki explains away the supposed bride’s fierce demeanor. The giants (jötnar) bring out Mjöllnir to "sanctify the bride", to lay it on her lap. Thor seizes the hammer, strikes Thrymr, beats all of the jötnar, and kills one of them.

Thor goes to Loki before anyone else to help solve the problem: Loki’s the fixer. The cunning plan comes from Heimdal, not Loki. Loki persuades Thor to go, and deflects the jötnar’s suspicions about the “bride,” ensuring success in retrieving the gods’ most precious treasure. There is no evidence that any of this served Loki’s selfish interests.

Implications

Loki still works as a symbol of technology, perhaps even more so when portrayed as a fixer as much as a trickster. Those different aspects show up in competing framings of technology, seen by some as malicious and dangerous, and by others as solving the world’s problems.

The pattern works in other mythologies, too. The technologists of Greek mythology are Prometheus and Hephaestus. Prometheus is the trickster, a rebellious thief who makes humans and becomes partial to them, tricking Zeus at Mecone and stealing fire for them when Zeus withdraws it. Hephaestus is armorer to the gods, the underappreciated technologist solving problems for Zeus, for example by fixing Prometheus to the rock (under duress, like Loki) and by creating Pandora. (And then there’s Hermes, also supposedly a trickster, the god of thieves and commerce.)

We are so fond of categorization that it’s hard to escape putting gods like Loki into a neat box. Figures like these, more than most phenomena, resist categorization. Perhaps it might help to think of gods not as nouns, but as verbs, as Buckminster Fuller said—though I’m sure the idea predates him. Georges Dumézil’s trifunctional hypothesis, for example, posited that the deities in Indo-European mythology reflected social groups and their associated functions (sovereignty, warfare, and productivity) rather than mere identities.

So, what does it mean “to Loki”? I think the stories summarized above suggest that it means “to solve, extricate, create” as much, or more, than it means “to trick.”