What He Was Willing to Be

In the Eddic poem Lokasenna, Loki charges him with having worked seiðr on an island and gone about among people in the manner of a völva, a seeress — and the insult is aimed at the gender of the practice rather than at the magic. Snorri's Ynglinga saga explains why the charge lands: seiðr came from the Vanir, Freyja taught it, and a man who practised it was held to be shamed by it. The interesting part is the reply. There is not one. Set beside the eye and the tree, a pattern appears — nothing he wanted was ever refused on the grounds that getting it would cost him face.