Loki- Norse GodDeity"The Trickster"

Origins and Blood Brotherhood

Though Loki is counted among the Æsir, he is by birth a jötunn, the son of the giant Fárbauti ("Cruel Striker") and Laufey ("Leafy Island"), sometimes called Nál ("Needle"). Loki is often referred to by his mother's name as Loki Laufeyjarson, a rare matronymic that sets him apart from the start.

His position among the gods comes from his blood-brotherhood with Odin. In the Lokasenna, Odin and Loki mixed their blood in a sacred oath, binding themselves as brothers. This bond granted Loki a seat at the gods' table and the protection of Odin's word. The gods honored it even as Loki's behavior grew destructive. To harm a blood-brother was among the worst of crimes in Norse society, and the Æsir tolerated Loki longer than they should have because of it.

The Shape-Shifter

Loki's powers of transformation surpass those of any other figure in the Norse sources. When the master builder was constructing Asgard's walls with the help of his stallion Svaðilfari, and the gods faced losing the wager they had made, Loki transformed into a mare and lured the stallion away into the forest. The wall went unfinished. From the union with Svaðilfari, Loki gave birth to Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse who became Odin's steed. The gods got their walls for free, and the builder, revealed as a giant, got Thor's hammer in his skull.

When Odin commanded Loki to steal Freyja's necklace Brísingamen, as told in the Sörla þáttr, Loki turned himself into a fly to enter her sealed chamber, then a flea to bite her neck and make her shift so he could unfasten the clasp. He could become anything. A seal, when he fought Heimdall for the necklace on the skerry of Singasteinn. A salmon, when he fled the gods' vengeance after Baldr's death. Whatever the moment required, Loki wore.

Sif's Hair and the Dwarves' Treasures

Loki cut off Sif's golden hair while she slept, for no reason but spite. Thor seized him and would have broken every bone in his body if Loki had not sworn to replace what he had ruined. He went to the sons of Ívaldi, who forged new hair of real gold for Sif and, while their furnaces were hot, Odin's spear Gungnir and Freyr's ship Skíðblaðnir.

Not content to leave well enough alone, Loki wagered his own head with the dwarf brothers Brokkr and Sindri that they could not craft anything finer. They forged Mjölnir. Loki lost the bet and nearly lost his head. He argued that the dwarves could take his head but not his neck, since the neck was not part of the wager, and Brokkr settled for sewing Loki's lips shut with a leather thong. The stitches did not hold long.

The same pattern repeated on larger scales. Loki helped the giant Þjázi kidnap Iðunn and her apples of immortality, then had to borrow Freyja's falcon cloak and rescue the goddess he had betrayed. Each time, the gods ended up with more than they started with. Each time, they trusted Loki a little less.

Father of Monsters

With the giantess Angrboða, Loki fathered three children who terrified the gods. The first was Fenrir, a wolf who grew so fast that only the gods' constant vigilance kept him contained. They tricked Fenrir into wearing a magical fetter forged by dwarves from impossible things: the sound of a cat's footfall and the roots of a mountain among them. Týr placed his hand in the wolf's mouth as a pledge of good faith, and when Fenrir found he could not break free, he bit it off.

The second was Jörmungandr, a serpent Odin cast into the ocean, where it grew until it encircled the world. The third was Hel, half living and half dead, banished to rule the dishonored dead in Niflheim. Prophecy said all three would return at Ragnarök to destroy the gods who had cast them out. Every precaution the Æsir took only delayed the inevitable.

The Death of Baldr

Loki's worst and most consequential act was engineering the death of Baldr. When Baldr dreamed of his own death, his mother Frigg extracted oaths from fire and iron, from every creature and substance in every world, that they would not harm her son. All swore except the mistletoe, which Frigg thought too young and small to matter.

The gods made sport of Baldr's invulnerability, hurling weapons at him and watching them bounce away. Loki found the overlooked mistletoe, fashioned a dart from it, and approached the blind god Höðr, who stood apart because he could not aim. Loki guided his hand. The mistletoe pierced Baldr and killed him.

Hermóðr rode to Hel to bargain for Baldr's return. Hel agreed to release him if all things would weep for him, and all things did. All except a giantess named Þökk, who refused: "Let Hel hold what she has." The giantess was Loki. Baldr stayed with the dead.

The Flyting at Ægir's Feast

The Lokasenna recounts the moment the break became final. Uninvited, Loki forced his way into a feast held by the sea giant Ægir. He killed the servant Fimafeng, whose attentiveness the guests had praised, and was driven out. He returned.

What followed was a systematic destruction of every god's dignity. He reminded Odin of the blood-oath that protected him, taunted Frigg with Baldr's death, and mocked Týr for the hand Fenrir bit off. Each god who tried to silence him received a worse insult than the last. Only when Thor arrived and threatened Mjölnir did Loki flee, but his parting words promised that Ægir's hall and everything in it would burn.

Punishment and Imprisonment

The gods hunted Loki down. He fled and hid, building a house with doors facing every direction so he could see pursuit coming, then transforming into a salmon and hiding in a waterfall. The gods caught him with a net, an invention Loki himself had devised.

They seized his sons Váli and Narfi. The gods turned Váli into a wolf, and the maddened beast tore his brother apart. They used Narfi's entrails to bind Loki to three sharp rocks. Skaði placed a venomous serpent above his face, positioned so that poison would drip onto him without end.

Loki's wife Sigyn stays beside him, holding a bowl to catch the venom. When the bowl fills and she turns to empty it, the drops fall on his face. His writhing causes earthquakes. There he lies until Ragnarök.

Ragnarök

At the end of the world, Loki breaks free. He captains the ship Naglfar, built from the fingernails of the dead, sailing from the east with an army of the damned and the fire giants of Múspellsheimr. His children join the assault: Fenrir devours Odin, Jörmungandr battles Thor, and Hel's legions march against the Æsir.

Loki faces Heimdall, the watchman of the gods, on the burning plain of Vígríðr. They kill each other. No temple was ever raised to Loki. No place-name preserves his worship, no inscription asks his favor.