Norse myth blamed earthquakes on Loki writhing under dripping serpent venom
After engineering the death of the beloved god Baldr, Loki was bound beneath a venomous serpent. His wife Sigyn catches the poison in a bowl, but each time she empties it, drops strike him and his convulsions shake the earth. His name may mean tangler, the maker of knots and cobwebs.
Loki is the son of the jötunn Fárbauti and the goddess Laufey. With his wife Sigyn he has two sons, Narfi and Váli. With the giantess Angrboða he fathers a monstrous brood: the underworld ruler Hel, the giant wolf Fenrir and Jörmungandr, a serpent encircling the world. A shape-shifter, he also appears as a salmon and a fly, and once, as a mare, bore the eight-legged horse Sleipnir after being chased by the stallion Svaðilfari.
His fate is bound up with Ragnarök. He will slip his bonds, march with the jötnar against the gods, and help bring about a destruction that leaves only two humans alive. He and Heimdallr, old enemies, are destined to kill each other. The Lokasenna shows his talent for trouble: at a feast in the sea-figure Ægir's hall he murders a servant, is chased out, then returns to trade insults with each god in turn.
Sources include the thirteenth-century Poetic Edda, Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda and Heimskringla, skaldic verse and Scandinavian folklore. Carvings may show him too, with lips sewn shut on the Snaptun Stone and in bonds on the Gosforth Cross. Scholars doubt anyone ever worshipped him, and many call him a trickster.
The link between his name and logi, flame, lacks a firm linguistic footing. Later Scandinavian forms such as Loke and Lokke point instead to a Germanic root to do with loops, knots, hooks and locks, echoed in Swedish and Faroese words for cobweb meaning Lokke's web. Eldar Heide argues that premodern people saw him as a causer of tangles, which suits his role as inventor of the fishnet and possibly his closing part at the end of the world. He is also called Loptr, probably from a word for air.
Source: Loki
