Loki’s Binding and Punishment

At a Glance

• Central figures: Loki, the trickster and shape-shifter counted among the Aesir; Sigyn, his wife; Váli and Narfi, his sons; and the gods of Asgard who carry out the punishment.
• Setting: Asgard and a cavern beneath the roots of Yggdrasil, the world-tree; from Norse tradition as recorded in the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda.
• The turn: Loki engineers the death of Baldr by tricking the blind god Höðr into throwing a mistletoe dart, then flees and hides as a fish in a mountain river until the gods drag him out with a net.
• The outcome: Loki is bound to three great stones with the entrails of his own son Narfi, while a serpent drips venom onto his face; Sigyn holds a bowl above him to catch the poison, but each time she empties it, the venom falls and his convulsions shake the earth.
• The legacy: Loki remains bound beneath the earth until Ragnarok, when the bonds break and he leads the armies of chaos against the gods in the final battle.

Loki had done worse things than kill Baldr. He had stolen Idunn’s apples and handed them to a giant. He had cut off Sif’s hair while she slept. He had helped himself to whatever the gods valued and talked his way out of the consequences every time. The gods endured it because he was useful, and because his tongue was quick enough to fix what his hands had broken.

Baldr was different. Baldr was dead.

The Death of Baldr

Frigg had taken oaths from every thing in the nine worlds - fire, water, iron, stone, every tree, every sickness - that none would harm her son. She missed one thing: mistletoe, too small and too young to bother with.

Loki found this out. He made a dart from the plant and brought it to Höðr, Baldr’s blind brother, who was standing apart from the game the gods were playing. The game was simple: they threw things at Baldr and watched them turn aside. Spears stopped in the air. Stones crumbled. Baldr stood untouched and laughed with the rest of them.

Loki guided Höðr’s hand. The dart flew straight. Baldr fell, and did not rise.

The gods stood silent. Then Frigg wept, and the sound of it moved through Asgard like a cold wind off the sea.

The Fish in the River

Loki knew what came next. He ran. He went into the mountains and built himself a hall with doors facing four ways so he could watch all approaches, and when the gods came near he dropped into the river below and took the shape of a salmon.

Odin saw him from the high seat at Hlidskjalf. He always saw everything.

The gods came with a net - some accounts say Kvasir helped weave it, the knots tight and the mesh fine. They dragged it through the river. Loki swam for the waterfall, and Thor waded in and caught him with his bare hands.

He thrashed. Thor held.

They brought him back to his true shape, and he did not speak. There was nothing left to say.

Váli and Narfi

The gods took Loki down into a cavern beneath the roots of Yggdrasil. They brought his sons - Váli and Narfi - before him.

Before Loki’s eyes, they transformed Váli into a wolf. The wolf turned on Narfi and killed him. The gods took Narfi’s entrails and used them to bind Loki to three flat stones - one under his shoulders, one under his hips, one under the backs of his knees. The sinews hardened into iron as the binding was set.

Iron might have been broken. These held.

The Serpent and Sigyn

They set a serpent above him, fixed to the rock, its head aimed down. It dripped venom onto his face. The burning was constant - the sort of pain that does not let the mind rest for a moment, that does not become familiar.

Sigyn stayed. The gods had not forbidden it, and she was his wife, and she had done nothing to deserve any of this. She stood over him with a bowl and caught the drops before they fell. When the bowl filled she carried it away to empty it, and in those seconds the venom struck Loki’s face, and the screaming that came up through the rock made the mountains move and the sea pull back from the shore.

People who did not know what lay beneath the earth called it an earthquake.

The Wait

So he lies there still - bound by his son’s own body, burned by the dripping venom, kept by a wife who will not leave him. Sigyn empties the bowl and comes back, empties it and comes back. The shaking comes and goes.

He is waiting. The bonds will break. The serpent will be knocked away. And when Loki rises from that cavern, the horn will sound at the ends of the world, and he will sail for Asgard with the armies of the dead, and everything the gods have built will burn.

He knows this. The gods know it too. They bound him anyway, because it was all they could do, and because Baldr was dead, and some things cannot be forgiven even knowing the cost.