The Trial of Loki: a Study in Nordic Heathen Morality

Iceland, about 1270 Ad. A Christian scribe writes down a heathen poem composed three centuries earlier. He probably thinks the verse exposes inadequacies in the old northern gods and goddesses. But does it? Alan James' essay explores the Old Norse poem Lokasenna and was first published as a booklet in 1997. This second and fully revised Australian edition includes a new introduction and a rollicking translation of the poem. James shows Lokasenna to be "the psychological tale of the progressive deterioration of a sociopathic, perhaps psychopathic personality, from mere heavenly mischief-maker to deicide bound down on a rock for the crime of conspiring to destroy the cosmos for the gratification of his own sick monster ego" (Gárman Lord, reviewing the first edition, Theod, volume 14, number 3, 1997).