It is autumn, it is gloomy, it is almost Halloween, so what better time than now to dive into the dark gods of Norse myth.
Norse mythology, we can safely say, is the furthest thing from being simple and straightforward. That being said, we will begin to take a look at Loki and his children and why we named our first kids collection after them. While we talk about the designs, they are done by Isar and May Oakmund’s children and we shall be using their preferred aliases when talking about them for privacy reasons.
This collection is a first from Northern Black and to make it extra special, we are having a limited edition launch with Halloween colours, so grab them while you can, because they are going away after Halloween, to be replaced with more standard colours.
LOKI
To start, Loki, often referred as the Trickster God, is always somewhere in between ally ship and being the antagonist alongside the rest of the Norse gods. How come?
Well, the Britannica describes him as “a cunning trickster who had the ability to change his shape and sex. He was represented as the companion of the great gods Odin and Thor, helping them but sometimes also causing embarrassment and difficulty for them and himself.” They also mentioned that due to Loki getting bound to a rock as a punishment, he ended up resembling Prometheus and Tantalus from the Greek Mythology.
So, god of fire, trickery and the like, he will as almost all gods do, have children. The first child we are going to talk about is Fenrir. The order of these descriptions is primarily based around how we want to present our new line of kids shirts.
FENRIR
Fenrir. Norse mythology’s monstrous wolf. The gods feared his strength and thinking only evil can be expected of him, they bound him with magical chains. While getting chained up, Fenrir managed to bite off the hand of Tyr. After that, he was fully bound and destined to lay there until Ragnarök (Doomsday).
Fenrir’s shirt design was done by Nora. This sketch was hung up on the wall for a long time and it was calling Isar to make something of it. Inspired, Isar took the design to his trusted iPad, added a bit of rendering and a special bindrune to go with it, making it perfect for a quality print.
HEL
The next child of Loki we are going to talk about is Hel.
Hel is a female being who is appointed by Odin to rule over an underworld realm that shares her name, where she receives a portion of the dead. Her appearance is described as half blue and half flesh coloured and further as having a gloomy downcast appearance. She also plays a key role in the attempted resurrection of the god Baldr.
The Hel shirt in our collection is done by Jef. It’s a recently drawn skull that is covered in mushrooms. Isar took this one as well into his iPad and added a bindrune, splashes and made it more fitting for printing.
Jörmungandr
The third child of Loki we will be talking about is the serpent.
Jörmungandr, or the World Serpent is a gigantic sea serpent that dwells in the world sea, encircling the Earth (Midgard) while biting its tail (a perfect example of Ouroboros). It is said that at the beginning of Ragnarok, the World Serpent will release its tail from his mouth. He is also seen as the archnemesis of Thor. It is said that Thor and Jormungandr will fight to death during Ragnarok.
The last of the three shirts is done by Star. This design was done long ago in the form of a sketch on a blackboard with chalk and it’s a bunch of eyes and teeth. It was captured on Isar’s phone and has been also calling him ever since. Again, he put it into his trusty iPad and cleaned it up, added a bindrune, warped it and prepared it for printing.
So, we went through some myths told throughout history, showed some designs that are depicting the Old Gods of those myths, all we can leave you with is a link to see them on our website and if you are into history lessons you can subscribe to our newsletter that comes out every week at least once.
