It will suggest that the shape-shifting of Loki’s story reflects the social and geographical circumstances of its audience something that Day, in his presentation of Loki as a victim in the hyper-masculine world of the gods, uses to comment on contemporary social attitudes to sex and gender. This paper will suggest that Snorri Sturluson’s apparent appropriation of Loki’s shape and gender has less to do with Christian morality, and more with everyday medieval Icelandic social values. Many scholars have considered the ambiguous figure of Loki, but few have associated this ambiguity with contemporary social changes outside of the introduction of Christianity. This paper will look at the medieval poetical treatise, Snorra Edda, alongside a more recent reinvention by Brian Day in his poem: “Loki and Sleipnir” in his publication: Love is not Native to My Blood (2000), and intends to examine these two versions of Loki’s transformation from male to female, and human to animal analysing the changes in form and perspective given to the text through time and translation. Loki, an outcast from the Æsir, is required to assume the role of a female creature and give birth, in order to save the gods from disaster. With the recent publication of The Gospel of Loki (Joanne Harris, 2014), and the forthcoming Vikings exhibition at the British Museum, interest in the life and legends of early Scandinavia is at a high point, but the mythological Old Norse narrative of the birth of Sleipnir has always been treated with caution.
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