I personally don't see that is one of those trans Loki moments, because I'm cis, love joking, and identify with Loki in the tale.
If I were in that situation, I would 1000% find it hilarious to convince my best bro the only way to get their most prized possession back is to crossdress and trick a King.
Nice try viking. By viking law you can only keep what you kill and a dead slave is worthless, therefore taking a corpse as a slave has no standing. You will just have to settle for the plunder and be on your way.
Loki turned into a mare to get properly fucked by a stallion, get pregnant and deliver an 8 legged super horse (Sleipnir) that Odin proudly rode around... yeah, they are very fine with gender fluidity
I mean, Loki was ultimately a villain, so it's more like they perfected the queer-coded villain archetype, but there's also evidence both that Shieldmaidens were a thing and some Shieldbrethen were assigned-as-Shieldmaidens-at-birth. How accepted that would have really been we simply do not know, or how much norms changed by region and time. Or even whether they would have thought you were stupid for asking if ladies could fight in "men's clothing," aka, armor.
There is also quite a lot of difference between a Dane, a Kievan Rus, and a citizen of what was basically a republic in Iceland in 930 AD.
Pretending the Vikings/Norse/Whatever were some pinnacle of ancient tolerance is just as wrong as pretending they followed practices that map 1-to-1 on modern bigotry. They were an immensely patriarchal culture, whose economy was quite literally based on chattel slavery on a scale that would only be matched by American plantatioms, with a whole slew of what can only be called toxic masculinity, who only could ever look good in comparison to Roman and Abrahamic norms, but that's the comparison Westerners will inevitably make in their favor because that is the standard they know.
Doesn't Loki being a villain vary from myth to myth? In some he's just mischievous, in others outright malicious.
The Ragnarok myth has him leading the armies of the dead, but I've always wondered how modified the story is due to the influence of Christian monks...
Pretending the Vikings/Norse/Whatever were some pinnacle of ancient tolerance is just as wrong as pretending they followed practices that map 1-to-1 on modern bigotry...
I'm not pretending any of that... nor I am implying they are an example of morality about anything... All I am saying is that, what we now call "gender fluidity" or simply anything in the "LGBTQ+" spectrum does not seem to be, in and of itself, a "sin" or a morally reprehensible act in the Nordic mythology.
Also, Loki wasn't really a villain... he was more the "anti hero" type... From all the Nordic mythology I have read (I just like it, I'm not a scholar) the attitude towards him always seemed to be "Damn it Loki, we could get along if you stop being an asshole for a day"... not "I shall vanquish Loki and end his evil ways"
He’s a war-god, but also a poetry-god, and he has prominent “effeminate” qualities that would have brought unspeakable shame to any historical Viking warrior.
cal tradition known as seidr, of which Odin and Freya are the foremost divine practitioners. In traditional Germanic society, for a man to engage in seidr was effectively to forsake the male gender role, which brought considerable scorn upon any male who chose to take up this path. As the sagas show, this didn’t stop some men from practicing seidr anyway. However, even Odin wasn’t exempt from such charges of “unmanliness,” and was taunted for adopting the feminine traits and tasks that form part of the backbone of seidr. Saxo, in the passage on Odin’s exile alluded to above, relates that “by his stage-tricks and his assumption of a woman’s work he had brought the foulest scandal on the name of the gods.”[16] Note also the reference to being “fertilized” in the verse quoted above – while this is certainly a metaphor, it’s a metaphor loaded with sexual implications that would have been immediately recognizable to any Viking Age or medieval reader or hearer of the poem. A fuller discussion of the relationship between Germanic shamanism and gender roles can be found here: https://norse-mythology.org/concepts/shamanism/
A lot of alt right dickheads use viking insignia and culture to their advantage in dogwistling and such, which sucks and I'm assuming what is being referenced.
The vikings only cares if you behave Viking. Ethnicity don’t matter. Sexuality don’t matter. And I can’t fathom that they’d care for how you dress. As long as you have Viking values you are top notch
Yeah this thread is full of idiots who care more about Marvel movies than about historical fact.
Norse society was hyper masculine and being called womanlike was just about the worst insult you could give to someone. Nobody "worshipped" Loki, he was the antagonist/occasionally the antihero of their stories, but the takeaway of the stories was always meant to be "Loki is not a role model"
Why do people care if a society of slavers and pillagers from 1200 years ago were progressive by modern standards? What an idiotic thing to be so confidently wrong about.
Ooo - a true master on Viking history here!! Tell us all about how it really was and what values they had. What ethnicities they accepted and how they viewed homosexuality?
Viking virtues like staying true to your word, even if that means death. A deviation of this is the stoning of men that tried to flee from combat - by their wives.
Viking society was very gender based with clear roles for man and woman, and while being a bottom would hurt your manly rep, being the active partner in a homosexual relation would bolster it.
Children still had top prio, so without a wife being too didn’t make the cut.
I'd have let her do it, not that I'd have a choice, but I'd rather be willing, conscious, and proven a fool than unconscious and left only with the smell of her victory.
It's not about caring what Vikings wanted, it's just illustrating it was found even in some of the most ancient and "less civilized" cultures. The point being it's not unusual, new, or unique to our culture.