Loki


Loki or Loke is the mythical Fire-deity of mischief. A son of the giants Farbauti and Laufey. Loki also had two brothers (Helbindi & Byleist) of whom nothing is known. He is described as the "contriver of all fraud". He mixed freely with the gods for a long time, even becoming Odin's blood brother.
Despite much research, "the figure of Loki remains obscure; there is no trace of a cult, and the name does not appear in place-names." Sources inconsistently place him among the Aesir; however, this may only be due to his close relation with Odin and the amount of time that he spends among the Aesir.
Like Odin (though to a lesser extent), Loki bears many names: Lie-Smith, Sly-God, Shape-Changer, Sly-One, Lopt, Sky Traveller, Sky Walker and Wizard Of Lies among others.
The trickster character is a complex character, a master of guile and deception. Loki was not so much a figure of unmitigated badness as a kind of celestial con-man. He would often bail out the gods after playing tricks on them, as illustrated by the myth in which he shears Sif's hair and then replaces it, or when he is responsible for the loss of Iounn's apples of youth and then retrieves them again. Loki is an adept shape-shifter, with the ability to change both form (examples include transmogrification to a salmon, horse, bird, flea, etc.) and sex.
In some stories, Loki is conceived of as a fire spirit, with all the potential for good and ill associated with fire. However, this view may be due to linguistic confusion with logi "fire", as Loki's primary role is predominantly associated with Odin, typically as Odin's wily counterpart. That said, there is a story in Gylfaginning in Snorra-Edda where Loki competes against a jotunn called Logi in an eating competition, and loses miserably when Logi has not only eaten all the meat, but the bones and the tray as well. Later, it turns out that Logi was in fact not a real jotunn, but wildfire given a lifelike appearance by magic.
Yet another explanation of the name and hence the character, is not that the word Loki is related to the old German verb lukijan, connected to the closing of a ring (to lock it). Thus, the word is connected both to the action of "locking" circlets, and hence to "travel by crooked paths", something that might well be an apt description of a trickster god.

Loki was the father (and in more than one instance the mother) of many beasts, humans and monsters.
Having liaisons with giantesses was nothing unusual for gods in Norse mythology—both Odin and Freyr are good examples; and since Loki was actually a giant himself, there is nothing unusual about this activity. Together with Angrboda, he had three children:

•Jormungandr, the world serpent;
•Fenrir the giant wolf preordained to slay Odin at the time of Ragnarok;
•Hel, ruler of the realm of the dead.

Loki also married a goddess named Sigyn who bore him two sons: Narfi and Vali. (This Vali is not to be confused with Odin's son with the giantess Rind). To punish Loki for his part in Balder's death, Odin turned Vali into a rabid wolf who proceeded to tear Narfi's throat out. Narfi's entrails were used to chain Loki to a large rock until Ragnarok.
While he was in the form of a mare Loki mated with the stallion Svadilfari and gave birth to Sleipnir, the eight-legged steed of Odin.
One story in the Hyndluljoo states that Loki ate the heart of a woman and proceeded to give birth to a monster whose name is not given.

Loki occasionally works with the other gods and goddesses. For example, he tricked the unnamed giant who built the walls around Asgard out of being paid for his work by distracting his horse while disguised as a mare—thereby he became the mother of Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir. In another myth, he puts the dwarves against each other in a gifting contest. The dwarves make Odin's spear, Freyr's ship and Sif's wig. He even rescues Iounn. Finally, in Prymskvioa, Loki manages, with Thor at his side, to retrieve Mjolnir after the giant Prymr secretly steals it, in order to ask for Freya as a bride in exchange.
Even though Loki may have been a liability to gods (leading to the death of Balder, the birth of Fenrir and other monsters that would eventually engulf the world), he provided the gods with all their most precious items, from Thor's hammer to the flying ships, and these artifacts help the gods ultimately defeat evil.

Not all lore depicts Loki as a malevolent being. An 18th century ballad (that may have drawn from a much earlier source) from the Faroe Islands, entitled Loka Tattur, depicts Loki as a friend to man: when a thurs (troll or giant) comes to take a farmer's son away, the farmer and his wife pray to Odin to protect him. Odin hides the son in a field of wheat, but the thurs finds him. Odin rescues the son and takes him back to the farmer and his wife, saying that he is done hiding the son. The couple then prays to Hoenir, who hides the son in the neck-feathers of a swan, but again the thurs finds him. On the third day, they pray to Loki, who hides the son amidst the eggs of a flounder. The thurs finds the flounder, but Loki instructs the boy to run into a boathouse. The giant gets his head caught and Loki kills him by chopping off his leg and inserting a stick and a stone in the leg stump to prevent the thurs from regenerating. He takes the boy home, and the farmer and his wife embrace both of them.

Loki may have overplayed his hand when, disguised as a giantess, he arranged the murder of Balder. He used mistletoe, the only plant which had not sworn never to harm Balder, and made a dart of it, which he tricked Balder's blind brother Hoor into throwing at Balder, thereby killing him. Another version of the myth, preserved in Gesta Danorum, does not mention Loki.
It was also possibly he who, in the shape of the giantess Thokk, was the only being that refused to weep for Balder, preventing the defunct god's return from Hel.

The murder of Baldr was not left unpunished, and eventually the gods tracked down Loki, who was hiding in a pool at the base of Franang's Falls in the shape of a salmon. There they caught the Trickster with his own famous invention, the fishing net. They also hunted down Loki's two children with Sigyn, Narfi and Vali (not to be confused with Vali, the son of Odin and Rind). They changed Váli into a wolf, and he then turned against his brother and killed him. They used Narfi's entrails to bind Loki to three slabs of stone, and Skaoi placed a snake above his head so that its venom would pour onto him. Sigyn sits beside him and collects the venom in a wooden bowl, but she has to empty the bowl when it fills up, during which time the searing venom drips onto the Trickster's face. The pain is then so terrible that he writhes, making the earth shake.
Baldr's murder was also one of the events that precipitated Ragnarok. Loki would stay bound until then. When Ragnarök finally comes and Loki is freed by the trembling earth, he will sail to Vigrid from the north on a ship that also bears Hel and all those from her realm. Once on the battlefield, he will meet Heimdall. They will fight and though Heimdall is ultimately victorious, he later dies of his wounds.