LOKI
A furnace stone from Shaptun, Denmark, thought to show Loki with his lips sewn up by the dwarves to punish him for trying to cheat them when they forged the treasure of the gods.
The trickster, the
wolf and the last great battle.
Loki,
who plays an important part in the Northern myths, is a trickster figure,
a theif and a slanderer, abusing the gods and putting them into jeopardy by
his mischief, but also saving them through his cunning. He is a close companion
of Odin and Thor, yet he gives birth to the monsters which will destroy them,
and brings about Balder's death through his malice.
It is never clear whether Loki is a god or a giant. Certainly to some extent he is a creator figure, who caused the dwarves to produce some of the treasures of the gods and he himself gave birth to Odin's horse, as well as monsters such as the World Serpent and Hel, ruler of the dead. One of the monstrous children fathered by Loki was the wolf Fenrir. He grew up among the gods, and none but Tyr, who seems to be a later form of Tiwaz and a god of battle, dared to feed him. The wolf broke free from every chain, until Odin had the gods make a magical band, soft as silk yet invincibly strong, from such impalpable things as the root of a mountain and the noise of a moving cat. The wolf was suspicious and would not let the band be put around his neck, unless one of the gods laid his hand between his jaws as a pledge of good faith. Tyr was the only one willing to do this. As the band tightened and he held the wolf fast, the gods laughed - all except Tyr, who lost his right hand. The wolf was gagged with a sword between his jaws and fastened to a huge rock, where he remained bound until Ragnarok. As a punishment for causing Balder's death, Loki was finally bound across three rocks, unable to break loose until the last great battle, when he joined the giants in the attack on Asgard at Ragnarok. In the course of teh battle Loki and his chief enemy Heimdall, sentry of the gods, fought and slew one another.
