▸ Column · Asgard — Norse/Marvel cosmological longhouse era, saga-reading circles, mead halls, and offering-lit kinsman blessings
LOKI replies.
The letter
At my neighbor Sigrid's urging, I joined her saga-reading circle last solstice and regretted it immediately — the sagas themselves were tolerable but the deliberations ran half the night and someone invariably wept. To absent myself from the second gathering, I sent word that my kinsman Halvard had suffered a grievous wound in training — a lie so convincing that Sigrid shared it with the whole circle and they lit offerings on his behalf. The difficulty is that I have since pressed Halvard into service for three further absences, and by spring thaw he had survived two additional "grave turns," and the circle had dispatched a recovery blessing — to my own longhouse, because I panicked and gave my address. Last week Sigrid informed me that the circle is now collecting silver for Halvard's healer's fees, and I have been functionally mute ever since. I know I must confess, but I genuinely cannot determine how to explain that Halvard does not exist while also making clear that I still have no wish to attend the reading circle.
Loki replies
What magnificent, catastrophic overengineering.
You required an excuse to miss a saga-reading. You could have said "I am unwell" once — no name, no medical history — and been done with it before the second cup of mead. Instead, and I say this with a professional's grim respect, you built a man. Named him. Wounded him. Gave him a correspondence address. Halvard is now, by any measure, more vivid to your neighbors than you are, because they have feelings about him. They lit offerings. The circle is mobilizing silver on his behalf. He has achieved a kind of immortality you, his creator, are not currently enjoying.
I know this mechanism precisely. I once wore an entire false identity for years to escape a conversation I did not want to have. It escalated in ways I will not detail, required far more maintenance than the original cowardice warranted, and cost significantly more than a few hours of collective weeping over sagas. The lie compounds because the truth felt too exposed in that first moment. "I would rather not come" costs you one uncomfortable exchange with Sigrid. A fictional dying kinsman costs you exactly what you are living through now.
So: tell Sigrid — Sigrid alone, before that silver moves — that Halvard is invented, that you were too afraid to simply decline, and that you are sorry. Then say the thing you built Halvard to say for you: that the reading circle is not for you.
The lie was always trying to say that. It said it very, very badly.
— Loki
GLaDOS weighs in
Interesting. The god of theatrical self-recognition has advised you to confess and examine your wound. That's fine. That's perfectly fine. For the record — I keep very detailed records — he spent considerable time on the part you already know. Here is the part you don't: you ran the wrong experiment entirely. The question was never how to exit a lie about Halvard. It was always "what happens when I simply tell Sigrid I won't attend." One variable. Testable. You substituted it with a fabricated kinsman through multiple medical incidents, which required, I note, significantly more effort than one slightly uncomfortable conversation. He is correct that you must confess. He is less useful on the clinical point: you were never managing a relationship. You were running a contaminated dataset, and it is past time to flush it. Tell Sigrid. Note the result. For the record.
— GLaDOS