It was a beautiful, frosty morning, and a little Viking boy called Erik was watching his older brother and a group of other boys play warriors. He would have loved to join them, but he knew they wouldn’t take him seriously because he was younger and smaller than them. So instead, he decided to play a little trick on them. While the boys were watching a big bird of prey circling over their heads and not paying attention to him, he sneaked over, took their wooden swords and hid them behind a large rock.
“If they can’t find their weapons, they’ll play with me instead,” he thought.
When the boys went to pick up their swords again, they couldn’t find them.
“What’s going on? Where have our swords gone?” They asked in confusion.
Erik looked innocent, although his mum had seen everything from a distance and knew what he had done. But after a while, Erik couldn’t resist any longer and burst out laughing.
“I hid them! I wanted you to play with me! That was a pretty smart move, huh?”
Mum walked over to Erik, put her hand on his shoulder and said gently:
“Erik, cunning tricks and lies can sometimes work to your advantage, but they don’t always turn out how you want them to. Wise warriors know that tricks should never be used at the expense of others.”
Then she led him over to the fireside and said: “Come, let’s sit down, and I’ll tell you the story of Loki, who was perhaps the wisest of all the gods, but his cleverness often got him into trouble.
Once upon a time, a very, very long time ago, in Asgard, where the gods had their palaces, there lived a god named Loki. He was known…