Loki Ragnarok: The Viking Armageddon retold by the trickster

By Mark Binder

2019 AUDIE AUDIO BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR ORIGINAL WORK

Who says Thor’s a good guy?

An epic revision of the Norse myth of apocalypse

They broke into his home. They left his wife bound and gagged on the floor, where she choked and died. They kidnapped his children. He had trusted them, helped them. The gods of Asgard betrayed him.

Marvel has it all wrong. Loki is neither a fool, nor ambitious, nor a “good guy” waiting for redemption.
He was willing to destroy everything to make them pay.

Based on the Prose and Poetic Eddas of Norse mythology, LOKI RAGNAROK is the Viking Armageddon retold by the trickster.

Developed as a spoken-word performance by author Mark Binder, LOKI RAGNAROK was released as an audiobook, followed by hardcover library and ebook editions.

It begins with Loki, chained to a boulder, listening for the trumpet that will announce the end of the world. In the shadow of prophecy, his family is torn asunder, leading to betrayal, torture, madness and revenge.

“For nearly a thousand years, the tale of Ragnarok – the Norse myth of Apocalypse – has painted Loki as a Satan-like evil. With a fast-paced blend of prose and poetry, award-winning author Mark Binder offers an epic revision of the Eddas with modern resonance.”
– Duval, Between Myth, Lies, and History

“A well-told tale of the Norse gods.… Binder’s voice swoops and soars, now angry, now gleeful and now mocking, as Loki tells stories of the gods run amok.” — Providence Journal

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Binder
• Release date: Jan 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781940060262

Book preview

Loki’s Saga

This tale I tell began long before time, and will not finish until the last coals of creation burn to smoldering dust.

This is a tale of gods and giants,

of ice and fire.

Of the world of men, small though they be,

unmatched in their scrabbling, scratching, fighting, clawing, biting, hacking their way into the brief and glorious light of the sun before their flimsy candles are snuffed,

extinguished,

and darkness is all once more.

This is the tale of Ragnarok, the end of the world,

the end of time.

The great and glorious battle between the giants and the gods –

Ragnarok.

It begins…

The Prophecy

Ages ago, when the world was young,

Odin went to the seeress, Vala,

and asked her,

What will come?

Odin, the allfather, lord of the Aesir,

seeker of truth.

Thor’s sire, Baldur’s father,

Loki’s brother in blood.

Ages ago

or was it yesterday?

Odin, who gave up one of his eyes for knowledge,

Hung himself upside down by his foot

for nine days upon Yggdrasil,

The tree of the world,

hoping to learn all.

Odin

the damned fool

asked Vala, the seer,

to scry him the future.

What a fucking idiot.

For she told.

Vala told Odin.

Told of the beginnings,

of the creation of the nine worlds,

the birth of the gods and the giants and men.

Vala foretold the great days

when the gods ruled the nine worlds.

But Vala did not stop there. 

She told him.

He told us in Asgard.

Told us of the doom

Told of the death

Told the destruction, devastation, desecration, demolition

The demise of all we know.

All we love.

Once you set a prophecy in motion,

like a sled racing down a the side of a cliff,

you cannot hop off in the middle

but must ride it through,

beyond frolic and fun,

past pleasure,

into fear,

through terror,

until the end.

So, Odin asked and Vala told, and

from the beginning, from the first days,

we knew our time was limited.

Set, like an hourglass

sifting away the moments invisibly,

until at last, the last,

gone!

Vala told Odin

and Odin told all

of Ragnarok.

Ragnarok, the battle at the end of time,

when gods battle giants,

and win not.

We will know it is neigh,

when brave Baldur dies.

When three winters, dark and cold,

arrive without summers in between.

When the wolf Fenris breaks his bonds,

and swallows the sun.

When the earth shudders.

When the seas foam and then freeze.

When Heimdall sounds his echoing horn thrice

Ragnarok begins.

So, from the beginning we knew it all.

Baldur’s demise.

Odin’s wolf-torn doom.

The bitch Vala even told how many steps

Thor, hammerslinger, would take before

collapsing, melting to the earth, drenched

in the poison of the world serpent’s blood.

Nine. Nine steps.

And, from the beginning of days I knew.

Vala said.

My son, Fenris, a good