14
votes
What is Loki considered to be?
I have slightly modified the following from a Yahoo! Answers question I answered sometime ago.
He is referred to as a god in the Nibelungenlied and the Völsungasaga. In the Eddas he is generally ...
- 9,772
9
votes
Accepted
Why is the meaning of Loki's name considered unclear?
Because there are many possibilities. Lewk, as you mentioned, but also:
leugh - To tell a lie
leug - To break
lok/loka/luka - Either a lid, a container, or To close; this could be a reference to his ...
- 206
9
votes
Accepted
When did Odin and Loki became blood brothers?
According to an annotation by translator Henry Adams Bellows,
There exists no account of any incident in which Othin and Loki thus swore blood-brotherhood, but they were so often allied in ...
- 551
9
votes
Accepted
Did Loki give birth to a monster?
The verses you're quoting come from an extremely cryptic poem called the Shorter Voluspa, which is inserted into the longer poem Hyndluljod, and has little to do with it. Like the Volupsa itself, you ...
- 5,878
8
votes
Are Fenrir and Jormungandr Jötnar?
The available sources on Norse mythology do not seem to give much importance to (for a lack of a better term) "biological relations". Instead, they place a lot of emphasis on the "...
- 1,689
7
votes
Why is the meaning of Loki's name considered unclear?
Just because two words look similar does not mean they are related. Coincidental resemblances are very common between unrelated words.
Etymology as a science is based on the comparative method where ...
- 213
7
votes
Why did Loki want Baldur dead?
The why is largely a mystery, and depends a fair bit on exactly what you perceive Loki's general function to be (Jens Peter Schjødt seems to have considered Loki a sort of personification of fate, ...
- 6,006
7
votes
Why did Loki want Baldur dead?
The Prose Edda is unclear on this. All it tells us is that when Loki saw that Baldr could not be harmed,"he was not pleased". (Gylfaginning 49) In my own opinion, the way that Loki's three children by ...
- 5,878
7
votes
Why was Loki bound, really?
Murder was very much a capital crime: Icelandic sagas are typically all about grand vendettas were there is one death upon another. However, there were honorable and not honorable killings, different ...
- 6,006
7
votes
Accepted
Why was Loki bound, really?
In a way, you could say that Loki was bound to fufill a prophecy. As the cosmological poem Voluspa tells us, when Loki frees himself from his bonds, the doom of the gods will begin. So Loki has to be ...
- 5,878
5
votes
Did Loki give birth to a monster?
The thing about this fragment is that half of it is dual-layered, and the rest is poetic. How it is being read above (that he ate an actual heart, got physically pregnant, etc.) is utterly at odds ...
5
votes
Did Loki give birth to a monster?
Since solsdottir has answered the part about the parentage of the monsters, I'll try to answer the part of why Loki would eat the heart:
The motif of eating the cooked heart of a monster also appears ...
- 6,006
5
votes
Accepted
How often were Odin and Loki allied?
There is their visit to Regin in Reginsmál; this is part of the background for the story of Sigurd, known from the story fo the Völsungs. Odin, Loki and Hœnir are on a journey. Loki kills what he ...
- 6,006
5
votes
Accepted
How did the animosity between Loki and Heimdal start?
You are thinking about a story referenced in the Húsdrápa, which Snorri excerpted in his Edda. It plays out more or less as you described, except Heimdall does not catch Loki in the act, but is asked ...
- 6,006
4
votes
How did the animosity between Loki and Heimdal start?
I don't think it was as much Loki doing anything to Heimdallr in particular as much as it was the fact Loki betrayed all the Aesir when he orchestrating Baldur's death. It is this reason that Loki was ...
- 281
4
votes
Does Loki die at the end of Ragnarok?
Yes. Heimdall and Loki slay one another.
From the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturlson in the Gylfaginning Ch 16, emphasis mine:
The Wolf shall swallow Odin; that shall be his ending But straight
...
3
votes
Why does Loki borrow Freya's feathered coat to fly
This is something very usual to happen in old stories, specially in the mythological ones. They have a dream-like logic and a dream-like inconsistency. The latter is clear, for example, when talking ...
- 364
3
votes
Is Odin brother of Loki?
The Marvel characters are not the real mythological characters and resemble the actual portrayals of the Norse gods in almost no ways beyond the superficial (name, vague powers).
So any and all ...
- 7,157
3
votes
Accepted
Does Loki grow old and infirm while chained beneath the serpent?
In the Poetic Edda, it's clear that Loki is different from the Aesir. He descended from Ymir, whereas the Aesir did not. It's possible that his rules are different from the Aesir's, too. For ...
- 46
3
votes
Does Loki grow old and infirm while chained beneath the serpent?
Loki isn't necessarily going without Iðunn's apples. Although it is not specified anywhere, it seems reasonable to assume that his wife Sigyn is feeding him. The Gylfaginning states that Loki's ...
- 7,786
2
votes
Does Loki die at the end of Ragnarok?
According to Snorri's texts, yes, but it is the only source of such a story. He says:
"Loki á orrostu við Heimdall, ok verðr hvárr annars bani."
My own translation:
"Loki goes to battle against ...
- 364
1
vote
How often were Odin and Loki allied?
Odin Hoenir and Loki appear as a trio in Haustliong the prologue to the theft of Idunn and in Loka Tattur the three are summoned separately to aid a farmer's boy from a giant. After the first 2 fail ...
1
vote
When did Odin and Loki became blood brothers?
In the first chapter of “Demonology and Devil-lore”, Moncure Conway proposes that Loki's reminder to Odin in the Lokasenna suggests the two gods may have originated from the same primitive concept; ...
- 17k
1
vote
What is Loki considered to be?
I would say he is by biology half Jotunn half Aesir. The only reasonable reason he would be called as a son of Laufey and not of Farboti is that she was a goddess most likely exiled as a result of her ...
- 11
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