Loki and the Gift of Chaos
or how chaos is necessary for growth
Mischief in a Bind
Loki, the Norse God of Mischief, is bound underground.
A snake coils above, its fangs bared. A drop of venom falls onto his face Loki writhes and thrashes. The earth shakes with his agony.
He spent his entire existence making others suffer. Now, he gets his comeuppance. Loki in chains, which the gods fashioned from the entrails of his slain son.
His family weren’t spared either. His children were slain or chained. His wife Sigyn is bound only by her obligation to him.
The gods of Asgard think they’ve won. They think they’ve locked chaos and buried it deep into the earth.
They believed they had circumvented their fate. They believed order was restored.
What they’ve really done is sealing their end.
The Trickster’s Gifts
Loki is a menace. He is an instigator of mayhem.
He lies, cheats, and throws the gods into disasters after disasters. But here’s the thing: he’s also the reason for their glories.
It was Loki who cut off Sif’s golden hair. When caught, Thor the Thunderer, demanded reparations. Loki, on threat of death, sought out the dwarves and tricked them into forging treasures: a new mane for Sif, Odin’s unbreakable spear Gungnir, and the golden ring Draupnir. Gifts for the gods which bolstered their power.
Not satisfied, Loki goaded the dwarves into making even more, leading to Mjolnir—the hammer that would become the Thunderer’s greatest weapon.
Without Loki, the gods would have remained untested, their strength unproven. Thor’s hammer was forged because of him. His mischief was the flames that tempered their steel.
When Loki paid for his misdeeds, it was sometimes to his embarrassment. Like that one time he had to turn into a mare and seduce a magical stallion. He got knocked up and gave birth to an eight-legged horse—Sleipnir.
Loki, God of Mischief, mother of Odin’s horse. Hilarious.
And that’s the thing about chaos—it’s terrifying, it’s dreadful, it brings real pain. But once you’ve faced it, it loses its grip. You stand to gain something. You might even find amusement.
The Death of Light
Even so, a run-in with chaos leaves no one undamaged.
Loki’s tricks were always a nuisance, sometimes downright cruel. In the extreme, it was absolute malice.
Baldr, god of light, was beloved by all. He was beautiful. The gods thought he was invincible. Until Loki manipulated Baldr’s blind brother into killing him with a mistletoe dart.
Light was snuffed out.
The gods panicked. Baldr’s wife was consumed by grief. They mourned.
Their prevailing order was in disarray. In Light’s absence, Darkness reigned.
And so, they reacted—not by confronting Loki, as they did before, but by shoving him underground. They had enough and wanted him locked up for good.
In truth, they feared him. They also feared what his children might become. So, they chained Fenrir. They threw Jörmungandr into the sea. They banished Hel to the underworld.
They thought they had finally triumphed over chaos. Order will prevail. What they had really done was catalyzing Ragnarok—the end of the gods.
Loki, at some point, will be free from his shackles. Heralding the End. Odin will be devoured by Fenrir. Thor will slay Jörmungandr, but will succumb to the serpent’s poison.
By refusing to deal with the turmoil, by succumbing to their fears, they ensured their own destruction.
Confronting Chaos or Succumbing to It
We do the same.
We avoid discomfort. We cling to safety. We make our lives predictable. Manageable. Secure.
We stay in jobs that no longer challenge us, We trade growth for comfort.
We remain in relationships that don’t serve us. Because they’re familiar. Because we fear what might happen if we leave.
We reject challenges because we might fail. We let our dreams die quietly, telling ourselves it was never possible anyway.
We think we can outrun misfortune. We think that if we avoid risk, we’ll avoid suffering. But we can't.
But suffering comes anyway.
And the less we’ve faced it, the weaker we are when it stands in front of us. We become unequipped to deal with that crisis.
Life doesn’t get easier. It never does.
But we can get stronger.
The problems life throws at us, helps us grow, if we rise to meet that challenge.
You see, Loki’s gift isn’t destruction—it’s transformation.
Fear is information. Chaos is a tool. Crises are Opportunities.
Bury them deep, and one day they’ll claw their way out.
Suppress them, the stronger they grow. Face them, the stronger you grow.
And maybe, once you’ve overcome those problems, you can even laugh at them. Wondering, why were you ever so afraid.
So, what are you running from?
Face it now, or face it when it’s too late.
Inspiration
A Netflix animated series co produced by Zack Snyder and Jay Oliva. Loki gets special attention here and is portrayed in a more emphatetic light. A beast of unburdening.
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
Read a few years back, of which notes I took inspired this piece. It’s a fun, light read. You know, before all the horrible things about the author that came to light
Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb