The Pre-Christian Norse Spiritual Worldview Is Animistic, Which Means That It's Informed By Direct Experiences

The pre-Christian Norse spiritual worldview is animistic, which means that it's informed by direct experiences and observations of nature, interpreted through the lens of human experience and feelings. You know how we watch snow swirl around think that it looks playful, or watch a wildfire and think that it looks angry? It involves that kind of thing.

But when most people think of pre-Christian religions, they tend to imagine later forms of Greek and Roman polytheism. The problem here is that these Greeks and Romans had begun to think of divinity in more abstract, transcendent ways, and had begun to imagine the gods as rulers of things rather than the spirits of things.

Loki isn't the lord of mischief, he's the spirit of mischief. He's in the little voice telling you make that shitpost and to stop caring about being "cringe." He's in your cat's impulse to knock something off the counter to watch it bounce or roll. Loki manifests in every accidental innuendo and hilarious typo, in every spilled cup of coffee, and every paperwork mix-up. (This is why he's a shapeshifter! He can be anything!)

So when media depicts a Loki riddled with repression and shame - say, for example, a Loki who sneers at modern media or the culture of the common folk - it's depicting a Loki who can't really Loki. That poor spirit has been bound and gagged.

Certain popular media has depicted Thor and Loki as some kinds of opposites, but when we consider the animist perspective we can see there is a serious problem with this. Loki and Thor being depicted as companions isn't some random whim; it's a reflection of the reality that thunderstorms bring chaos.

A Loki informed by Norse mythology shouldn't be complaining about Thor's "oafishness" or whatever, he should be encouraging him to wreak even more havoc. Loki shouldn't be here out of some real or imagined obligation, he should be here because he expects he's going to have a pretty good time, and because he hopes to make the situation as ridiculous as possible.

Loki being the spirit of mischief is also why depicting him as hostile to humanity isn't really in the spirit of the pre-Christian Norse worldview. Mischief and chaos are not anti-human; they're just realities of the world that humans inhabit. I get how it's easy to infer that Loki must have something against humans due to his oppositional role toward the Aesir in the Ragnarok story, but that's an extremely Christian reading of the narrative. The story is simply describing the collapse of civilization and end of the world as we know it through Norse animistic comprehension. Loki only has an issue with the Aesir, who bound him in a cave to be tortured with serpent venom. Humanity is neither here nor there for him.