Loki

Loki is the most entertaining character in Norse myth and the hardest to pin down. He is clever, funny, handsome and completely unreliable. In the early stories he gets the gods into trouble and then gets them out of it, usually to their profit. In the later ones the jokes turn sour, and he ends as the enemy who leads the attack on Asgard.

Is Loki a god

Loki's father was a giant named Farbauti, which by rights puts him on the wrong side. Yet he lives in Asgard, travels with Thor and long ago mixed his blood with Odin's in an oath of brotherhood. He is counted among the gods without quite being one of them, and that position on the edge is the key to his character.

He is not the god of anything. Nobody prayed to him, no places are named after him, and he had no temples. The old idea that he was a god of fire rests on a confusion with a different figure called Logi, and has largely been dropped.

The shape shifter

Loki can become anything. In the stories he turns into a salmon, a fly, a seal, a falcon, an old woman and, most famously, a mare. When a giant builder was about to win the sun, the moon and the goddess Freya as payment for building the wall of Asgard, Loki took the form of a mare and lured away the giant's stallion so that the work could not be finished. Some months later he gave birth to a grey foal with eight legs. This was Sleipnir, the horse he gave to Odin.

Loki's children

With the giantess Angrboda, Loki had three children who terrified the gods: the wolf Fenrir, the serpent Jormungand and a daughter, Hel. Odin threw the serpent into the sea, where it grew until it encircled the world, and sent Hel down to rule over the dead. The wolf was kept in Asgard until it grew too large, and was then bound with a magic ribbon at the cost of the god Tyr's hand. All three return at Ragnarok.

How Loki gave the gods their treasures

One of the best stories begins with a prank. Loki cut off all the golden hair of Sif, Thor's wife, and Thor threatened to break every bone in his body. To make amends Loki went to the dwarves, who spun new hair of real gold and added a ship that folds up like a cloth and the spear Gungnir. Loki then bet his own head that a second pair of dwarves could not do better. They made a golden boar, a gold ring that drips copies of itself and Thor's hammer, Mjolnir. Loki lost the bet, and escaped with his head by pointing out that he had not wagered his neck.

The death of Baldur

Here the mischief turns to murder. Baldur was the best loved of the gods, and his mother Frigg made every thing in the world swear never to harm him. She skipped only the mistletoe, which seemed too young to matter. The gods then made a game of throwing weapons at Baldur and watching them bounce off. Loki found out about the mistletoe, made a dart from it and put it into the hand of Baldur's blind brother, Hod. The dart went straight through him.

Hel agreed to release Baldur from the dead if everything in the world would weep for him. Everything did, except one old giantess in a cave, who is generally understood to have been Loki in disguise.

Loki's punishment

The gods caught Loki, although he had turned himself into a salmon, and bound him to three rocks inside a cave. Above his face they hung a snake that drips venom. His wife Sigyn stays beside him and catches the drops in a bowl, but when she turns away to empty it, the venom strikes him and he writhes so hard that the earth shakes. That was the Norse explanation for earthquakes.

Loki at Ragnarok

At the end of the world Loki breaks free. He sails against the gods at the head of an army of the dead, and his children come with him. In the last battle he meets Heimdall, the watchman of the gods, and each kills the other.

Loki in the myths and Loki in the films

The modern Loki shares the wit and the shape shifting. The family tree is the main change. In the myths he is Odin's blood brother, not his adopted son, which makes him something closer to Thor's wayward uncle. The original is also a darker figure by the end, with no redemption on offer. For the rest of the family, see our guides to Odin and Thor.

Last reviewed 12 November 2026