As a child I was a mythology purist. I started with retellings by HA Guerber and Robert Graves. I read Snorri Sturluson and Saxo Grammaticus; I snapped up every translation of the Eddas and longed to read them in the original. Finally, I taught myself Old Icelandic and did just that. My interest in Norse myth dates back over 40 years, and my passion for these stories has followed me throughout my life. I am not alone in this: whether in Wagner, Marvel comics, Tolkien, Tennyson or Arthur Rackham, these myths have been reshaped and retold many times, each time in a different way. The 17th century reimagined them as a narrative of exploration. The Victorians reshaped them to fit their dream of an empire. And the 21st century embraced them anew, particularly Loki, the Trickster of Asgard, whose character – whether the sly schemer of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods or the troubled antihero of such Marvel films as The Avengers and Thor – suits our modern times exceptionally well.

Of all the gods of Asgard, Loki is the subversive, the social and racial outsider; a gender-fluid character in a binary world. It seems appropriate, therefore, for Loki to subvert the epic tradition of prose just as he subverts everything else. It is a gesture of defiance – one of many – against authority, convention, even the rules of storytelling.

The Loki of the Eddas is a mercurial character. Little is known of his origins, or of Odin’s reasons for befriending him. He is described as handsome, clever, silver-tongued and unreliable – often, in fact, “womanish” (a damning term), and he is generally unpopular in Asgard, and treated with suspicion – except, of course, when the gods are in need of his particular talents.

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In the early myths, he appears as a classic Trickster figure, acting more out of mischief than malice, but by the end he has become a sinister presence: vengeful, malevolent and self-destructive. Why does this change occur? No one knows. The myths (and subsequent interpretations) suggest that it’s simply Loki’s nature to be evil. But stories and storytellers have evolved since the 12th century. We are now less interested in the simple battle of good v evil; we have begun to enjoy a moral ambivalence in our heroes. And in this, too, Loki appears as a modern antihero. He is also a comedian, playing the gods against each other and coming up with irreverent practical jokes, defeating the enemy with nothing but his quick wits and sharp tongue. Language is his best friend and his keenest weapon – again, a modern idea – and that’s why I’ve chosen to write my version of Loki’s story in a contemporary idiom, to challenge the “epic” stereotypes created by artists and scholars.

Loki’s voice is rarely heard in the myths, except in Lokasenna; the “flyting” in which Loki gleefully, cruelly and hilariously insults the gods, one by one, and exposes their failings. This is pure Loki: crude, irreverent, juvenile and coloured with self-loathing and contempt. There is no heroic language here, just the voice of everyday folk. And that voice has not changed much over the centuries. We still have the same fundamental concerns. We look to the skies with anxiety. We may not be afraid of demon wolves swallowing the sun and moon, but we are conscious of pollution and damage to the environment. The monsters we see destroying the world are not frost-giants, but giant corporations. And in this changing world, Loki has adapted to suit the changing times, and survives to tell his own story, in his own words, from the beginning of the Worlds to Ragnarók.

He is always asking questions. Who am I? What am I? Why am I here? What happens if I break the rules? To the 12th-century Christianised Iceland of Sturluson, that must have been the height of subversion. Loki not only breaks the rules, he questions their very existence. In a world striving towards order, he was chaos incarnate. A demon to rival Lucifer, he was the symbol of everything early Christianity was struggling to overcome and to repress.

But now, in a world in which religion has failed to bring about the civilising effect it promised, Loki’s popularity is growing. He is no longer the voice of the lonely outsider, but the spokesman of the human condition.