In Norse mythology, Loki is a figure of almost unrivalled ambiguity. He is a giant by birth, but he has sworn blood-brotherhood with Odin, the chief of the Aesir, and lives among them. He is the most cunning of the gods — and the most dangerous. He is the father of some of the most terrible beings in the cosmos, the cause of the death of the most beloved of the gods, and the leader of the forces of chaos at Ragnarök. He is at once the helper of the gods and their ruin. No other figure in the Norse pantheon so thoroughly blurs the line between hero and villain, friend and enemy, divine benefactor and bringer of doom.
In many ways Loki is the Norse answer to the trickster figures of other traditions — the Greek Hermes and Prometheus, the West African Anansi, the Native American Coyote and Raven. But Loki is darker and more dangerous than most. He is not a marginal figure. He is central to the Eddas, central to the development of the divine world, and central to its ending.
Parentage
Loki is the son of two giants: Fárbauti (“the dangerous striker”) and Laufey (“the leafy island,” or, in the Skáldskaparmál, “the needle”). He has two brothers: Helblindi (“the death-blind”) and Býleistr. The family of giants to which he belongs is also the family from which his monstrous children will come — the giantess Angrboða, the “she-who-offers-sorrow,” bears him the three beings who will define the shape of Ragnarök.
That Loki is a giant by birth is crucial. The Norse cosmos is structured as a war between the gods (the Aesir) and the giants (the Jötnar), and Loki, by his very origin, is on the wrong side. He lives among the gods by an oath — the blood-brotherhood he swore with Odin — and yet, as the story of his life progresses, the obligation breaks down, and the cosmos unravels.
The Blood-Brotherhood with Odin
The Lokasenna, the “Flyting of Loki,” describes how Loki, in ancient times, mixed his blood with Odin’s. In the Norse tradition, this was a sacred pact: it made them brothers, in some sense, equal in honor and obligation. The pact is invoked repeatedly — and broken repeatedly. It is the form of Loki’s entire relationship with the gods: he is bound to them, but he is not one of them.
It is also Odin himself who, according to the Younger Edda, is the one who brings Loki into the world of the gods. The Skáldskaparmál describes Odin and Loki mixing blood, and it is on this basis that Loki is admitted to the company of the Aesir. The reader of the Eddas is invited to see Loki’s story as, in some sense, Odin’s own story — and to see Odin’s role in fostering Loki as one of the chief errors of the god of wisdom.
Shape-Shifter and Traveler
Loki’s defining feature is his shape-shifting ability. He is the only figure in Norse myth who can take on multiple forms with ease, and his transformations are always tied to a particular trick:
- As a fly, he pestered the dwarves Sindri and Brokkr during the forging of Mjölnir, biting Brokkr’s eyelid.
- As a fly, he also stole Idunn’s apples of youth from a giant, with disastrous consequences.
- As a mare, he turned himself into a female horse, drew away the stallion Svaðilfari, and gave birth to Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged horse.
- As an old woman, he tricked the goddess Frigg into revealing the location of Thor’s hammer when Thrym had stolen it.
- As a salmon, he tried to escape the gods at his capture, but Thialfi caught him.
- As an eagle, in the Skáldskaparmál, he carried off the mead of poetry from the giant Suttungr’s mountain hall and delivered it to the gods, regurgitating the draught into the vats that Odin had prepared.
His transformations show Loki as a being at home in the boundaries between categories: male and female, animal and human, divine and giant. He lives in the threshold.
Loki’s Deeds for the Gods
Loki is not always a troublemaker. In many of the central myths of the Eddas, he is the indispensable agent of the gods. He is, in a sense, the Reynard the Fox or the Till Eulenspiegel of Asgard — a creature of cunning who solves problems that no one else can.
The Theft of Idunn’s Apples
The goddess Idunn keeps the apples of youth that keep the gods young. Loki, at the request of the gods, lures Idunn out of Asgard and into the hands of the giant Thjazi, who carries her off to the world of the giants. The gods begin to age rapidly. Loki, sent to retrieve her, transforms into a fly, follows Thjazi home, and rescues Idunn, turning her into a nut and flying her back. The myth is one of the central pieces of the Norse tradition.
The Building of Asgard’s Wall
When a giant builder comes to Asgard and offers to build a defensive wall in exchange for the goddess Freya, the sun, and the moon, the gods agree — but with the condition that he do it in a single winter, with the help only of his stallion Svaðilfari. As the wall nears completion, the gods begin to panic, and Loki, by transforming into a mare, draws Svaðilfari away. The builder’s work is unfinished, and Thor kills him. From this trick, Sleipnir is born.
The Fishing Trip and the Theft of Brísingamen
Two of the most famous stories in the Eddas involve Loki and the gods in tight crises. In the fishing trip of Thor (the Hymiskviða), Loki is the companion of Thor and the giant Hymir, and his capers help lead to the near-confrontation with the World Serpent. In the theft of Brísingamen, Loki is the one who steals Freya’s necklace at the command of Odin, leading to the famous chase through the air.
The Children of Loki
The most important dimension of Loki is his role as the father of monsters. With the giantess Angrboða, he has three children:
- Fenrir, the great wolf, destined to kill Odin at Ragnarök.
- Jörmungandr, the World Serpent, encircling the world, destined to fight Thor at Ragnarök.
- Hel, the death-goddess, ruler of the realm of the dead.
With the goddess Sigyn, Loki has a son, Narfi (also called Nari or Nörr), whose entrails will be used to bind his father in the cave.
These monstrous children, more than any other feature, are the mark of Loki’s relationship to the cosmos. They are the world-encircling serpent, the world-swallowing wolf, the death-ruling goddess of the underworld. By fathering them, Loki has placed the catastrophic potential of the cosmos inside the family of the gods themselves.
When the prophecies about the children reached Asgard, Odin — with the support of the gods — took the children from Angrboða and dealt with each. Fenrir was brought to Asgard and bound. Jörmungandr was cast into the ocean, where he grew to encircle the world. Hel was sent to the underworld, where she ruled over the dead who died of sickness and old age.
The Death of Baldr
The defining event of Loki’s later life, and the one that seals his fate, is the death of Baldr. The most beloved of the gods, Baldr the Beautiful, has been dreaming of his death. His mother Frigg extracts oaths from every thing in the world not to harm him — except the mistletoe, which she thought too small to bother with.
Loki, the trickster, learns of the loophole. He fashions a dart from the mistletoe, and he tricks the blind god Höðr — Baldr’s own brother — into throwing the dart at Baldr during a game in which the gods are hurling objects at the invulnerable Baldr for sport. The mistletoe kills him. The death of Baldr is the central tragedy of the Eddas. It is the first blow of Ragnarök.
The Punishment
For his role in the death of Baldr, the gods punish Loki terribly. The myth of his punishment is one of the most striking in Norse literature.
The gods capture Loki and take him to a cave, where they bind him over three sharp stones. To make the binding unbreakable, they transform his son Narfi into a thin, sinewy creature, and the gods turn his entrails into iron bands. To ensure that the bands hold, they tie a serpent over Loki’s head, dripping its venom into his face. Loki’s faithful wife Sigyn sits beside him, holding a bowl to catch the venom. When the bowl fills, she leaves to empty it, and the venom drips onto Loki’s face. He writhes in agony, and the writhing shakes the earth: this is the cause of earthquakes, according to the Gylfaginning.
Loki will stay bound in this way until Ragnarök, when the chains will break and he will lead the forces of chaos against the gods.
Loki and the Forces of Chaos at Ragnarök
At Ragnarök, the great battle of the end of the world, Loki breaks free. The ship Naglfar (made of the nails of the dead) sets sail with the sons of Muspell; the World Serpent Jörmungandr rises from the sea; the wolf Fenrir breaks loose. Loki, the captain of the ship of the dead, leads the host.
On the plain of Vígríðr, the gods take their places. Heimdall blows the Gjallarhorn. Odin rides out to face the wolf. Thor faces the World Serpent. Tyr faces the hound Garmr. Freyr faces the fire-giant Surtr. And Loki faces Heimdall, the watchman of the gods. The two fight, and they kill each other — the last great duel of the world.
Loki is the most powerful symbol of chaos in the Norse cosmos, and his presence at the head of the army of ruin is one of the most chilling images of the Eddas. He is the friend who has betrayed them all, the brother who has become the bringer of doom.
Cultural Influence
Loki has been one of the most influential trickster figures in the modern imagination. In the Marvel Comics universe, beginning with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s 1962 Journey into Mystery, Loki has been reinvented as the brother (rather than blood-brother) of Thor, the god of mischief, the arch-villain of the Avengers. Tom Hiddleston’s performance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (2011–) has made Loki a global figure. The trickster-god, the shape-shifter, the silver-tongued destroyer, is one of the most powerful images of modern myth.
In Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle, the trickster role is split between several figures — Loge (Loki), Mime, and Hagen — but the spirit of Loki is there.
In the modern revival of Heathenry, Loki is a more contested figure than the other gods. Some Heathens honor him as a complicated and necessary part of the pantheon; others treat him as a cautionary figure of the consequences of betrayal. He remains, however, the most human of the gods — and the most difficult to pin down.
The Trickster and the World
Loki is the most modern of the Norse gods. He is the trickster who becomes the destroyer, the helper who becomes the doom. In him, the Norse saw a truth about the world: that the most useful people are sometimes the most dangerous, that the cleverest tongues are sometimes the most destructive, and that a brotherhood sealed in blood can become a brotherhood sealed in blood. The Eddas do not offer a moral resolution. They offer Loki: at once the most entertaining and the most terrifying of the gods.
Last reviewed: June 2026.