I marked April 18^th on my calendar as Day of Resisters. 

Why this day, particularly, I have since forgotten. (I forget a lot these days. I blame it on the firehose excess of information coming in, but it may just be that sometimes I work out a problem in my mind and then once I’ve arrived at a solution, forget all the steps that got me sorted in order to save precious “disk-space” in my aging mind.)

Nonetheless, today — today I will focus on one story of resistance: Lokasenna.

In this poem, Loki has gone to a feast of the Aesir to tell them off. Having said his piece, he is pursued by the angry gods and transforms himself into a fish, but is later caught in a net of his own design. In retaliation, his sons are killed and their entrails are used to bind him in a cave. A snake which drips poison is placed above him, and his wife, Sigyn, holds a bowl over his face to shield him. When she empties the bowl, Loki’s writhing causes the Earth to shake. Basically. 

Now, I don’t think our myths ever need only one interpretation, nor do I imagine them to be literal tales of factual actions which occurred in the linear past. I think our myths are fractal metaphoric stories inspired in human poets by wise spirits, and that these stories endure because of the nearly limitless truths we can perceive in them as we turn them over, gazing into them through our own, changing, multifaceted contexts.

So, here is one interpretation of the Lokasenna.

Imagine that the gods here do not represent the good and kind and wise spirit powers. Imagine instead for a moment, that here they represent the delirious human grasping for absolute power. Capricious, ruthless, authoritarian power. Imperial, expansionist power. 

The kind of power that arbitrarily kidnaps your three children from their mother in Ironwood. 

Your children have committed no crime. Their transgressions are only supposed prophecies — unsubstantiated accusations. Potentialities. So the gods arbitrarily and capriciously toss one of your sons into the sea. They bind another son for a supposed eternity with an unbreakable bond and shove a sword in his open mouth. And they toss your daughter into the underworld — OK, she becomes goddess of said underworld, but still. Your three children have been kidnapped and renditioned to lands you cannot reach. You cannot rescue them.

Then you’re accused of orchestrating Balder’s death (only by Snorri, not by Saxo, but these rumors are clearly dangerous since no one is engaging in due process). Rather than disappearing into the humble, cowed night, you walk yourself directly into the gods’ party and you tell them off.

You use the shield of your old blood oath, your passport, to enter the space of power. You tell them off. And then, you have to flee, to hopefully fight another day, because now, Thor is after you. (Not Thor, protector of Midgard, not our friend, the god, not your longtime traveling companion, but here, a metaphoric representation of violent, irresistible, physical power.)

You slip away, but these authoritarians pursue you. You imagine all the ways they could catch you and you try to plan your various escapes, but in the end, they use your own mind — your own ideas — to snare you.

They imprison you. Tie you to a stone using the guts of your murdered child. Your partner does what she can. She tries to shield your face from the unceasing drops of venom — but sometimes she must empty the bowl.

And then, your writhing is the source of earthquakes. The injustice of your imprisonment and torture shakes the world. 

The story doesn’t end there; authoritarians always sow the seeds of their own destruction. In torturing you and your family, they’ve created the enemies they sought to defeat. And you don’t survive, but you do end their rule.

I think this is one interpretation. I couldn’t really have seen it before now. But today, it feels like the most important interpretation. 

Today, it feels like prophecy.