There are more than 800 years between the stories of Viking god Loki first being written down and his arrival (in the superb Tom Hiddleston) in the Marvel cinematic universe in 2011鈥檚 Thor. The new Disney+ series Loki, set to be released on June 9, is primed to explore more antics of Thor鈥檚 trickster brother as he attempts to fix the timeline he helped break in Avengers: Endgame. Among his many talents, Loki has cheated death a few times in the MCU, but that amounts to child鈥檚 play for this god.
In Norse mythology, Loki causes just as much confusion as his Marvel iteration. Though there aren鈥檛 any stories of him outwitting death, there are plenty of myths where he shapeshifts, swaps genders, or tricks gods into killing other gods. In the Marvel universe, he鈥檚 quite prone to allegiance swapping. Let鈥檚 dig into this troublemaker鈥檚 journey.
What is Loki鈥檚 origin?
The legends surrounding the Norse god are first documented in writing around the 13th century, primarily in Iceland. There are two versions of these legends that enter the historical record around the same time鈥攖he Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda. The Poetic Edda is an anonymous collection of Old Norse poems that are mainly pulled from an Icelandic medieval manuscript known as the Codex Regius (some of the poems date back to 800 CE). The Prose Edda is an Old Norse textbook for composing poetry that was written by a single author, Snorri Sturluson, a colorful Icelandic historian, scholar, and lawspeaker.
