Becoming a mother the social value of sh

Transformations – University College London – May 2014

BECOMING A MOTHER
The social value of shape-shifting in Snorri Sturluson’s
Gylfaginning and Brian Day’s “Loki and Sleipnir”

HARRIET JEAN EVANS
University of York

HARRIET JEAN EVANS


Transformations – University College London – May 2014

SNORRI
STURLUSON

BRIAN DAY

Medieval Icelandic lawyer,
poet, and politician

Canadian poet interested in
the interplay between sex
and the sacred

GYLFAGINNING

“LOKI AND
SLEIPNIR”

Loki seeking to reaffirm his
position in the group

Loki victimised and
exploited by the group
HARRIET JEAN EVANS


Transformations – University College London – May 2014

GYLFAGINNING
• The builder offers to build the wall in exchange for Freyja, the sun
and the moon
• The gods agree, and allow him to use his horse
• This horse is stronger than any man, and the gods are worried they
will have to pay up
• They tell Loki to solve the problem… he turns himself into a mare
• With the horse distracted, the builder can’t finish the wall
• Reveals himself as a giant and is destroyed by Thor
• Loki gives birth to Sleipnir

HARRIET JEAN EVANS


Transformations – University College London – May 2014

LOKI

& THE

ỈSIR

ODIN – “leader”, THOR – head giant-basher
LOKI – son of a giant and a goddess (I.e. not quite in the group).

LOKI & ODIN
Mantu ỵat, Oinn,
er vit ớ ỏrdaga
blendom blúi saman?
Do you remember, Óðinn,
when we two in the old days
blended our blood together?

Does Loki need Odin for acceptance into the Ỉsir
group?
HARRIET JEAN EVANS


Transformations – University College London – May 2014

LOKI’S CHILDREN
- a mythological family -

+Angrba
Fenrir

Hel

+Svilfỉri

Jưrmungandr

+Sigyn
Nari/Narfi

Sleipnir

Can move between the worlds of the living and the dead!

HARRIET JEAN EVANS


Transformations – University College London – May 2014

“LOKI AND SLEIPNIR” (2000)
• Sticks closely to the original
• Sleipnir is Loki’s first child
• Loki is the only one who can save the gods
• Loki loses his masculine identity bit by bit

HARRIET JEAN EVANS


Transformations – University College London – May 2014

DARKNESS, DANGER, AND FEMININITY
A NATURAL PART OF LIFE?

As the late long evening sun was setting
They gambolled the crucial last nights to the

Loki frisked with her teasing scent to
and Svadilfari, stunned with his black nigh
the meadow
proved useless by day at dragging stone,
upwind from the stallion’s hauling of stone. was cajoled and whipped but could not reach
The scent was the speed and wildness of The nameless worker, irate at his failure
summer.
to gain Freyja’s body and the lights of the sky
The workhorse, Svadilfari, tore from his
cracked the shell of his mason’s disguise
traces,
erupted in sudden grotesque contortion,
bolted from duty and the weight of the wall. and stood fuming, a giant on Asgard’s pl
When Odin and the others saw his true shape
The sweet burning grasses that
they on an instant revoked their oaths smoked in his blood
for a pledge with a giant could not be bin
obscured the urgent appeals of the
They summoned Thor - with his hammer Mjol
man
who still believed himself his master - who splintered the builder’s skill like glass
sent him speeding in arcs behind the mare, and drove him down to the land of Niflhe
forever removed from the sun and the m
trampling tracks in the green-gold meadow
and crashing through the bristled brush of
the wood.
Loki deked and swerved and sweated,
releasing her maddening scent to the air,
HARRIET JEAN EVANS

Transformations – University College London – May 2014

1

BECOMING

2

“PREGNANT LOKI”
But Loki was not relieved of his life.
The memory of that male and unmale
entry
churned her mind in interminable
nausea;

In exhaustion it came without surprise
when her foal was dropped with a full
eight legs.

A mouth on eight legs now drank from
it festered within her in the long months her teats
alone,
and she was reduced to the jug of its
feeding,
and seasoned the flesh that grew slow in
her belly.
Svadilfari entered as a dream half herself,

her body the repository of another’s

needs.

forcing his foreign power upon her,

The foal once weaned was given to Odin:

adding stallion to what she was as mare,

Sleipnir, son of Loki, and the best of all
horses.

compounding his sex upon her own.

HARRIET JEAN EVANS


Transformations – University College London – May 2014

WHAT DOES LOKI CONCEIVE?
SLEIPNIR?

HATE?

He’d been delivered of one of his
children,

The acid hate of a man made a
mother

but the hate engendered still grew

inside him.

would blaze in Loki and the children he’d
father

It would shape itself to sharp darts in his
arsenal,

until it poured out as flame and venom,

gutting and scarring and scorching the
would be bred in Fenriswolf, Jormungand, world,
Hel melting all women and men and horses,
the wolf and serpent and putrefying
destroying at last the gods who’d
woman
destroyed him.
who would lie in wait to assault the gods.

Are war and destruction the children of the
masculine?
HARRIET JEAN EVANS


Transformations – University College London – May 2014

GYLFAGINNING

CONCLUSIONS

• medieval narrative

“LOKI AND SLEIPNIR”

• Icelandic farmer trying to
ingratiate himself with his local
chieftain?

• Loki is victim of society

• Loki starts disadvantaged but is
able to successfully negotiate an
increase in his fortunes by means
of gift exchange and social
usefulness

• also victim of himself?
• cost of transformation is
high: loses his masculine
identity in stages

Endings as different as the centuries-wide moments of
their conception - between Snorri and Day - between a
world where such transformations could benefit
society, rather than destroy it
HARRIET JEAN EVANS