Loki
Loki, in Norse mythology is the god of mischief and is described as the "contriver of all fraud". The trickster god is Thor's half-brother, and is also known as Loki Laufeyiarson. His is a complex character, a master of guile and deception. He is also conceived of as a fire spirit, with all the potential for good and ill associated with fire. Loki is also an adept shape-shifter, with the ability to change both form (examples include transmogrification to a salmon, horse, bird, flea, etc) and gender.
Loki is by far the most interesting character in the Nordic pantheon, at least as seen from our perspective. He was unusual for a god in once having had a brief liaison with a giantess, by whom he had three children; the sea-serpent, Fenrir the giant wolf preordained to slay Odin at the time of Ragnarok and Hel, the goddess of the realm of the dead.
Loki was the god of evil and trickery, yet not so much a figure of unmitigated badness as a kind of celestial confidence trickster, who always managed to persuade the gods to give him another chance. Some anthropologists have compared him to Coyote, the trickster figure of the Native American mythology.
Loki overplayed his hand in this respect: disguised as a giantess, he arranged the murder of Baldur, although earlier versions of the myth, attributed to Saxo Grammaticus do not implicate Loki. Significantly, also, the poem in the Elder Edda most associated with Loki, the Lokasenna, does not directly implicate Loki in Baldur's death.
When the gods discovered that the giantess had been Loki in disguise, they hunted him down and bound him to three rocks. Then they tied a serpent above him, the venom of which dripped onto his face. His wife Sigyn (a goddess, not the giantess who was the mother of Loki's monster brood) gathered the venom in a bowl, but from time to time she had to turn away to empty it, at which point the poison would drip onto Loki, who writhed in pain, thus causing earthquakes. He would free himself, however, in time to attack the gods at Ragnarok.
Other spellings
- Common Danish, Swedish and Norwegian form: Loke