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Lokasenna
http://www.voluspa.org/lokasenna.htm
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 29, 2024
Thanks to the good offices of my Icelandic colleagues, I've been able to appreciate some of the Old Norse classics in multimedia LARA form with integrated audio and translations. I read Völuspá in 2020 and Hávamál last year, and I've just finished Lokasenna. With the additional multimedia, I found the first two very accessible. Völuspá is soaring and majestic -- at last, I understood why it was Tolkien's favourite poem -- and Hávamál is full of deep poetic wisdom. But so far, I'm not connecting with Lokasenna.
I'm not quite sure why, but I suspect a large part of the problem is that Lokasenna is apparently a comic poem, and to my disappointment I still don't get Icelandic humour most of the time. Not and I have watched several movies over the last couple of years that are billed as Icelandic comedies, and pretty much without exception we find them deeply disturbing rather than funny. I'm the first to admit that there's a hair-fine line between deeply disturbing and funny, but, for whatever reason, we're not laughing. We're just disturbed.
Lokasenna seems to be another example of the genre. Ægir, the Norse Poseidon, is giving a huge party and all the gods are invited. Loki turns up drunk in a bad mood, gets into a fight with one of Ægir's servants, and kills him. He's thrown out but comes back and starts insulting everyone. He calls all the goddesses hos and skanks, even Gefjun, who apparently was noted for her eternal virginity, and reminds the male gods of all the times they've had to suffer various indignities; the best one is Njörðr, who was offered as a hostage in the Æsir-Vanir War and tormented by the daughters of Hymir, who according to Loki used to piss in his mouth.
The other guests alternate threats with attempts to get Loki to quieten down, but he just carries on. Sif, Thor's wife, makes a final attempt: she says she at least is blameless (does this mean the other accusations are basically true?) and offers him a drink. Loki, undeterred, calls her a ho and a skank as well. But this is a mistake. Thor, who we realise hasn't arrived yet, turns up surrounded by thunder and wielding his fearsome hammer Mjölnir. He doesn't say much except that he's going to give Loki a beating. Loki tries to run for it, but the gods catch him, bind him with the intestines of one of his own sons, and place him for all eternity under the mouth of a venomous snake. His wife Sigyn -- if she's also a ho and a skank, she's a very kind one -- sits next to him catching the venom in a bowl; but every time she needs to get up and empty it, the snake spits in Loki's eyes and the whole world shakes.
I can tell from the way Ingibjörg Iða is reading it that all of this must be hilariously funny! But damn, I still don't get the joke. Either we need more annotations explaining the double entendres, or I just haven't yet managed to acquire a proper Viking sense of humour.
___________________
If you want to check out the LARA multimedia yourself, the best version is probably the one posted here. It combines the texts of all ten Edda poems so far created by the Icelandic team; clicking on a word shows you examples on the right taken from every poem where it occurs, so if you've seen it before in one of the other poems you'll be reminded.
We had a fun reading group for the Lokasenna, here. Many interesting comments, particularly from the astonishingly knowledgeable Max.
I'm not quite sure why, but I suspect a large part of the problem is that Lokasenna is apparently a comic poem, and to my disappointment I still don't get Icelandic humour most of the time. Not and I have watched several movies over the last couple of years that are billed as Icelandic comedies, and pretty much without exception we find them deeply disturbing rather than funny. I'm the first to admit that there's a hair-fine line between deeply disturbing and funny, but, for whatever reason, we're not laughing. We're just disturbed.
Lokasenna seems to be another example of the genre. Ægir, the Norse Poseidon, is giving a huge party and all the gods are invited. Loki turns up drunk in a bad mood, gets into a fight with one of Ægir's servants, and kills him. He's thrown out but comes back and starts insulting everyone. He calls all the goddesses hos and skanks, even Gefjun, who apparently was noted for her eternal virginity, and reminds the male gods of all the times they've had to suffer various indignities; the best one is Njörðr, who was offered as a hostage in the Æsir-Vanir War and tormented by the daughters of Hymir, who according to Loki used to piss in his mouth.
The other guests alternate threats with attempts to get Loki to quieten down, but he just carries on. Sif, Thor's wife, makes a final attempt: she says she at least is blameless (does this mean the other accusations are basically true?) and offers him a drink. Loki, undeterred, calls her a ho and a skank as well. But this is a mistake. Thor, who we realise hasn't arrived yet, turns up surrounded by thunder and wielding his fearsome hammer Mjölnir. He doesn't say much except that he's going to give Loki a beating. Loki tries to run for it, but the gods catch him, bind him with the intestines of one of his own sons, and place him for all eternity under the mouth of a venomous snake. His wife Sigyn -- if she's also a ho and a skank, she's a very kind one -- sits next to him catching the venom in a bowl; but every time she needs to get up and empty it, the snake spits in Loki's eyes and the whole world shakes.
I can tell from the way Ingibjörg Iða is reading it that all of this must be hilariously funny! But damn, I still don't get the joke. Either we need more annotations explaining the double entendres, or I just haven't yet managed to acquire a proper Viking sense of humour.
___________________
If you want to check out the LARA multimedia yourself, the best version is probably the one posted here. It combines the texts of all ten Edda poems so far created by the Icelandic team; clicking on a word shows you examples on the right taken from every poem where it occurs, so if you've seen it before in one of the other poems you'll be reminded.
We had a fun reading group for the Lokasenna, here. Many interesting comments, particularly from the astonishingly knowledgeable Max.
August 28, 2025
Loki slinging insults doesn't get much better.
April 24, 2025
A poetic word battle between the gods that reveals all to be more deeply flawed individuals than what other poems would have you believe. Perfect.
January 14, 2026
Í grófum dráttum: Loki segir öllum að halda fokkings kjafti á meðan hann sakar æsina um samkynhneigð og getuleysi en konurnar um lauslæti.
July 16, 2021
about Loki's mess at a party
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews