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Then there was Loki. Loki was a being who was neither this nor that. Neither an Ase or a Jotun, he lived neither in Asgard nor in Jotunheim. The Ases were single-minded beings. They concentrated on battles and food, or in the case of goddesses on beauty, jealousy, rings and necklaces. Iduna the fair lived in the green branches of Yggdrasil and grew the bright apples of youth, which she fed to the gods. Once, when a giant grabbed her and her apples, Loki took the shape of a falcon and carried them home in his talons. Alone among the gods, Loki was a shapeshifter. He ran across the meadows of Midgard in the shape of a lovely mare. This beast distracted the magic horse of the giant who built the wallls of Asgard - so well, that she later gave birth to Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged steed. Loki was a pestering fly, who stole Freya’s golden necklace, Brisingamen. He was intimate with secret places. He disguised himself as an innocent farmgirl, milking cows; he shifted sex as he shifted shape. He was slippery. He wrestled Heimdall the herald in the form of a seal. He was a salmon, leaping up a waterfall, or sliding smoothly under the surface.

The Germans believed his name was related to Lohe, Loge, Logi, flame and fire. He was also known as Loptr, the god of the air. Later Christian writers amalgamated him with Lucifer, Lukifer, the light-bearer, the fallen Son of the Morning, the adversary. He was beautiful, that was always affirmed, but his beauty was hard to fix or see, for he was always glimmering, flickering, melting, mixing, he was the shape of a shapeless flame, he was the eddying thread of needle-shapes in the shapeless mass of the waterfall. He was the invisible wind that hurried the clouds in billows and ribbons. You could see a bare tree on the skyline bent by the wind, holding up twisted branches and bent twigs, and suddenly its formless form would resolve itself into that of the trickster.

He was amused and dangerous, neither good nor evil. Thor was the classroom bully raised to the scale of growling thunder and whipping rain. Odin was Power, in power. Ungraspable Loki flamed amazement and pleased himself.

The gods needed him because he was clever, because he solved problems. When they needed to break bargains they had rashly made, mostly with the giants, Loki showed them the way out. He was the god of endings. He provided resolutions for stories - if he chose to. The endings he made often led to more problems.

There are no altars to Loki, no standing stones, he had no cult. In myths he was the third of the trio, Odin, Hodur, Loki. In myths, the most important comes first of three. But in fairy tales, and folklore, where these three gods also play their parts, the rule of three is different; the important player is the third, the youngest son, Loki.

He had a wife, in Asgard, Sigyn, who loved him, and two sons, Wali and Narwi.

But he was an outsider, with a need for the inordinate.

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