Loki's Role in Norse Myth

Loki is the trickster of the Norse gods, and one of the most complex figures in any mythology. He is the son of the giant Fárbauti and the goddess Laufey, and yet he is also the blood-brother of Odin and the companion of Thor. He is a giver of gifts: he gives Odin the gift of poetry, he procures the hammer Mjölnir from the dwarves, he arranges the building of the great wall of Asgard. He is also a taker of gifts: he steals the apples of Idunn, he orchestrates the death of the god Baldr, and he is the cause of the binding of the god Fenrir. He is the figure through whom the Norse world becomes what it is, and the figure through whom the Norse world comes to an end.

This article is part of the wider survey of the Trickster Figures of world myth and of the larger survey of Folk Heroes and Legendary Figures. It follows Loki from his earliest appearances in the Lokasenna and the Skáldskaparmál through the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson to the modern rehabilitation of the figure in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it connects to the wider currents of Norse Folklore, the Coyote of North America, the Anansi of West Africa, and the great world-trickster tradition.

The Parentage of Loki

The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, composed in Iceland in the early thirteenth century, gives Loki two parents: the giant Fárbauti (“cruel-striker”) and the goddess Laufey (“leaf-island”). His liminal nature is reflected in this dual parentage — he is both divine and giant, both inside and outside the community of the gods. His wife is Sigyn, with whom he has the son Narvi. With the giantess Angrboda he has three children: the wolf Fenrir, the world-serpent Jörmungandr, and the half-blue, half-flesh-coloured goddess of the dead, Hel. With the stallion Svaðilfari he fathers the eight-legged horse Sleipnir, given to Odin. The children of Loki are the great monsters of the Norse end-time, and they are the proof, to the gods, that they must be removed from Asgard.

Loki the Helper

Loki’s first appearances in the surviving sources are as a helper of the gods. In the Skáldskaparmál he replaces the golden hair of the goddess Sif, arranges the building of the great wall of Asgard by transforming himself into a mare to distract the mason’s stallion, and steals back the apples of Idunn from the giant Þjazi. He is the one who procures the great gifts of the gods: Mjölnir, the ship Skíðblaðnir, the boar Gullinbursti, the spear Gungnir, the ring Draupnir. He is, in this sense, the figure through whom the divine order of Asgard is made possible.

The Troublemaker and the Death of Baldr

In the Þrymskviða of the Poetic Edda, Loki dresses Thor in a bridal gown to recover the stolen hammer. The great poem of his troublemaking is the Lokasenna, the “Flyting of Loki”, in which Loki, having been driven out of Asgard, returns to a feast of the gods and insults each of them in turn. The poem is the most cutting satire in the whole of the Norse mythic corpus, and it gives us, in Loki’s own words, the most devastating critique of the gods that the Norse ever produced.

The greatest of Loki’s crimes is the death of Baldr, the beautiful god of light and joy. According to the Gylfaginning, Baldr had a dream of his own death, and his mother Frigg extracted an oath from every creature, plant, and object in the world that they would not harm him. Loki, in disguise as an old woman, learned that Frigg had omitted the mistletoe, gathered a sprig, fashioned it into a dart, and persuaded Baldr’s blind brother Höðr to throw it at him in sport. The dart pierced Baldr, and he fell dead. The death of Baldr is the central tragedy of the Norse world, the moment when the divine order begins to break down, and Loki’s responsibility for it is the source of his final punishment.

The Binding of Loki and the Ragnarök

After the death of Baldr, the gods seized Loki and bound him with the entrails of his son Narvi, transformed into iron chains. They bound him to three great stones on a rocky island, and they placed over him a serpent whose venom drips into his face. Loki’s faithful wife Sigyn sits beside him with a bowl to catch the venom, but when the bowl is full she must empty it, and the venom then drips onto Loki’s face, and he writhes in agony, causing the earthquakes of the world.

In the Norse end-time, the Ragnarök, the bound Loki will break free. The ship Naglfar, made of the nails of the dead, will carry the giants and the monsters across the seas. Loki will lead the host of the dead, and the wolf Fenrir will swallow Odin. The world-serpent Jörmungandr will rise from the sea and fight Thor, and the two will kill each other. The fire-giant Surtr will burn the world. The Norse tradition is unusual among the great mythologies in having its end be a true ending, in which most of the gods die, and in allowing the trickster to play a central role as the leader of the forces of chaos.

Loki in the Modern World

Loki has been a major figure of the modern popular imagination, especially in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where he appears as a complicated anti-hero, played by Tom Hiddleston in the 2011 Thor film and in the Disney+ series Loki of 2021-2023. The Marvel Loki is a charming, vulnerable, androgynous figure, the brother of Thor and the adopted son of Odin, and his character is developed into one of the more interesting anti-heroes of the modern superhero genre. He is, in some ways, a faithful descendant of the Norse Loki: a trickster, a figure of transformation, a character who is at once comic and dangerous.

Sources and Further Reading

Snorri Sturluson. The Prose Edda. Translated by Anthony Faulkes. Everyman’s Library, 1987.
Lindow, John. Loki (in Scandinavian Studies 1982).
Abram, Christopher. Monsters in Our Midst: An Exploration of the Supernatural in Old Norse and Old Irish Literature. Oxford University Press, 2011.
McKinnell, John. Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend. D. S. Brewer, 2005.