 Written by: Markuz, May 16, 2021 We continue our analysis dedicated to the ending of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and the context surrounding it with our third installment, which will be dedicated to the early stages of Odin’s and Loki’s story shown in the Asgard arc, building up on what we saw in our last article. More specifically in this analysis we are going to try and see what might have been the real actions taken by the Isu Odin in order to try and overcome his foretold fate and, on the other side, we’re going to have a look at what were the actual motivations that pushed Loki to put in place all the machinations and intrigue surrounding his secret son, Fenrir. We’ll also try, just like in our latest article of this series, to pierce through the mythological veil of the Asgard Arc in order to better understand the actual events, the characters and even the locations that were involved in this specific time during the Isu Era. Once again, we have a lot to discuss so let’s jump right in. It’s time to discover the secrets of Odin’s and Loki’s story from the Asgard Arc of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Odin’s story in the Asgard Arc is very interesting once you get to read between the linesand start to interpret what the events in the game were actually trying to portray. In fact, the arc already starts pretty strong when Odin discusses with the Nornir the various events they have foretold. As we hinted at in our last article of the series, these glimpses in the future can be easily interpreted as the Isu Odin reading the calculations about his own future and the future of the Earth and the First Civilization.
While checking again the calculations, Odin re-experienced a new one dedicated to – within the Norse Mythology layer - a wolf called Fenrir (which as you might know by now is an allegory for the son of the Isu Loki), howling terribly before the gates to Hel, Hel being both the name of another daughter of Loki and the realm she presided over. The calculation also mentioned Fenrir breaking his bonds and running, a reference to some events which we actually can witness in the Asgard arc and that we’ll interpret later, and finally showed Odin that Fenrir would have killed him right before or during the Toba Catastrophe, that is Ragnarok within the Norse Mythology layer. Because of the calculations he saw, Odin got haunted by the idea of being killed by this other Isu called – for lack of a more official name – Fenrir. Moreover, it seems like the calculations did not show him *how* Fenrir would look like exactly, as in the subsequent events in the arc he wasn’t able to recognize Fenrir at first sight, but they did mention some sort of trait that might broadly identify him, which in the Asgard arc is represented by wolves. Our wild guess would be that, as Fenrir, Jormungandr and Hel, the sons of Loki and Angrboda, were disparagingly considered as monsters in the Norse Mythology, then in the First Civilization story they might have been some malformed Isuor Isu of a different race who might have been looked upon equally disparagingly both by the Greco Roman and the Asgardian Isu. But like we said, it’s a wild guess, this unusual trait that Odin would be able to try and identify could be anything. The first time Odin meets Fenrir in the Asgard Arc is in the Well of Urdr, as this was supposedly the location where Loki had smuggled him in. Based on what we mentioned in our previous analysis, this may mean that it was Loki himself who had tampered with the calculations room, in order to hide his son in there.
Odin then ordered the wolf puppy to be caged, which through the mythological veil means he had Fenrir imprisoned, again, likely in his early age, in order to make sure he could not be felled as foretold by the calculations themselves. Upon exiting the calculations room Odin found Loki who insistently asked him about that room and what he found in it – obviously worried for his son. When Odin told him the boy had been taken care of, he worried Fenrir had died. Odin confirmed he had the wolf caged (meaning the boy imprisoned) and that he wanted no free wolves in Asgard, meaning that he ordered a specific subset of Isu who possessed *that* specific trait, maybe even youngsters or kids to be imprisoned, in order to prevent his fate. Supposedly some time later, the boy, still imprisoned, had grown up (unless that’s just part of the mythology veil), with Odin growing more worried once again. By this time apparently Odin had told at least Tyr about the calculations and the Toba Catastrophe but in our idea he did not mention about his personal destiny of being killed by Fenrir (as he did not in the Asgard arc). That’s why Tyr possibly told him not to worry about the boy, as he expected and hoped he wasn’t a sign of the impending catastrophe. Eventually, Fenrir, the Isu Fenrir we mean, as foretold by the calculations, was able to “break its bonds and run”, thus escaping his
Some sort of fight between the two Isu ensued, with Odin prevailing but just as he was about to deal the killing blow, Loki stopped him. In the Asgard arc, in that very moment Odin looks at the sky which had just darkened and that, again in the Asgard arc is considered as a sign of the arrival of Ragnarok. In the actual Isu times he might have seen the sky darken as well, or some sort of aurora borealis or some other sign that led him to understand that the Toba Catastrophe was upon them, and not only that. In fact, this proved that Tyr was wrong and that the wolf, or more properly the boy was, in fact, a sign of the impending disaster which also means that *that* might have been the moment Odin realized that that specific boy was Fenrir. In order for him to stop Odin, Loki was forced to reveal that the boy was his own son. This angered Odin quite a lot and we believe that this happened, in the Isu story, not only because Loki had hidden this from him but also because this is where Odin might have found about Loki’s and Aletheia’s union, the secret union of a member of the Asgardian Isu and a member of the Greco-Roman ones, during a time of war that involved both of these sides of the First Civilization. In Eivor’s “debrief” with Valka she also states that Odin was enraged because Loki had flaunted his command of not having wolves in Asgard, which, as mentioned earlier, can be interpreted as an order by Odin to not have in Asgard either kids or Isu with the specific traits that were foretold to belong to Fenrir. The chance of Odin also understanding that the boy foretold by the calculations to be the cause of his own demise was the son of a member of his inner circle who even got into a clandestine relationship, behind his wife’s back, with a member of the opposing faction no less may also be why he told Loki that there would surely be a reckoning, but Loki was enraged too because of what Odin had done to his son.
While in the Asgard Arc Havi asked about an unbreakable cord to bind the wolf Fenrir, it is likely that the Isu Odin went to ask for some kind of technology, maybe even a dedicated and impenetrable jail to hold Loki’s son Fenrir captive as long as possible, maybe even for hundreds or thousands of years, so that he could at last escape his own destiny, his own death. If that were the case, this prison, this technological Isu jail might be what Basim / Loki will be looking for in the upcoming content for Valhalla… but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. So, Odin reached Ivaldi and had him build what he needed to imprison Loki’s son, and that required a long time apparently… But before that, a “cousin” of Ivaldi came to him mentioning that a relative of theirs had actually tested the method of conscience transfer that was created by the Greco-Roman Isu. This boosted Odin even more towards looking into this method developed by his opposing faction, especially after hearing about it also in the words of the Builder. Alas, as Ragnarok was getting closer and the protection offered by the Builder did not work towards their enemies at war, let alone against a potential cataclysm, and thus being back to the starting point, Odin’s only option was to pursue the conscience-based salvation methods concocted by the Jupiter-led group of the First Civilization, and more specifically, the so called Seventh Method. So he set out to travel to that area of the world, even if that meant risking his life as he was the leader of the opposing faction during the war… But, as they say, desperate times require desperate measures.
In the Norse Mythology Loki is a Jotunwhichin our allegory means he was part of the Greco-Roman side of the First Civilization, even though it is not clear whether this was a secret or not for the Asgardian Isu. Nonetheless, we now know that Loki allowed for the gates to the Asgardian Isu territory to be open so that the Greco-Roman Isu could attack the city and in the turmoil he could smuggle in both the Builder and his son in the Asgardian territory. This is proven both by the ending of the arc and also by a written note where H – that is, Heimdall - wrote to Odin that the Jotnarhad been helped by someone in invading the Asgardian territory and breaching the borders. It is very interesting to notice that the final scenes of the arc actually show that Loki had smuggled the Builder in the Asgardian territory because he had rescued Fenrir from the area controlled by the Greco – Roman Isu, the keyword here being rescued. This also means that even the Greco-Roman Isu got to know about Fenrir and thus of Loki’s relationship with Aletheia, and this is confirmed in a dialogue between Havi and Loki in the Jotunheim arc. In this dialogue Loki said that Fenrir was not safe in the area controlled by the Greco-Roman Isu because they knew who he was and knew about his destiny, along with him being an omen for the Toba Catastrophe, which caused them to hunt Fenrir down, which is why Loki smuggled him in Asgard in order to save him. So once again, Loki seems to be pushed by personal interests, compared to the bigger forces at play here, but such interests are those of a father. In fact, while he goes against the orders of his leader and does not seem to care about the war raging on Asgard, all he does is oriented to saving his son. For example, Loki always tries to nudge Odin into following the Builder’s offer and using him, and into not being that scared of wolves – or in this allegory - by kids or by the Isu that share *that* specific trait. Sometimes he even shows how proud he is of his son, almost even boasting. And perhaps more importantly, because it’s not outright visible, he even wrote two unsigned documents that he left in the Well of Urdr / calculations room, that really show his love for his son, along with proving that it was indeed him that tampered with the room itself.
In the document Loki mentioned that Fenrir’s name was cursed by the Nornir, meaning it appeared in the calculations, even before he was born, and that his name poisoned foolish ears, meaning he knew that Odin was looking for Fenrir because of the calculations he had experienced. In the second document Loki wrote that it was getting tougher to hide Fenrir from Odin and that he was considering smuggling Fenrir again to another location. One option was to transfer him to an area controlled by Fenrir’s sister Hel, Helheim in the Norse mythology, while another idea was to move him to quote and quote Midgard, so possibly an area with a higher density of humans or maybe a completely different area. Sadly though, not being able to outright tell Odin about having a son with the enemy forced Loki to have Fenrir illegally smuggled to Asgard and to do everything in secret, which led to the events we showed in our previous article of the series. Thus, Fenrir was imprisoned for the second time in front of Loki’s eyes and this was particularly painful for him, as he also saw his son attacked and almost killed by Odin, the Mad One. This led him to vow vengeance and this is where we can possibly find a point of contact with the hidden dialogues of the Animus Anomalies. In fact what we might have seen in this scene of the arc might be a lead in to the second dialogue of the anomalies, where Loki told
Eventually Loki *did* end up backing his talk of vengeance and killing Odin’s son, Baldr, as we saw in our first article, but that happened possibly further down the line, as the last we see of Loki in the Asgard arc is his quarrel with the Asgardian Isu, before Odin moved on to go to the Greco-Roman Isu territories to know about their conscience transfer methods in order to save himself and the other Asgardian Isu from the impending catastrophe. And that was it for the third part of our analysis, where we started having a look at two of the most important characters surrounding the ending of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and its context! Join us in our next article of the series, where we’ll travel to Jotunheim and get to know *what* Odin really did to save himself and his people while we’ll also find several characters and references to the First Civilization lore of the early games of the franchise. There’s a lot of juicy stuff you don’t want to miss! Go to the FOURTH CHAPTER of this series, go back to the SECOND CHAPTER of the series or go back to the HUB.
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