{
  "id": "loki",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Loki",
  "summary": "Son of Laufey, \"Lopt\", blood-brother of Odin and companion of Thor, a giant by birth who lives among the gods; father of the wolf Fenrir and of Sleipnir, the mocker of every god in Lokasenna, the one who admits the blame for Baldr's death, bound with his son's bowels until Ragnarok, when he steers the ship of Hel's people against the gods.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "norse",
    "deities",
    "jotnar",
    "tricksters"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "parent_of",
      "target": "fenrir"
    },
    {
      "rel": "parent_of",
      "target": "jormungandr"
    },
    {
      "rel": "parent_of",
      "target": "hel"
    },
    {
      "rel": "parent_of",
      "target": "sleipnir"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "odin"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "thor"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "baldr"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "skadi"
    },
    {
      "rel": "fought_in",
      "target": "ragnarok"
    },
    {
      "rel": "member_of",
      "target": "jotunn"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "poetic-edda"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "prose-edda"
    },
    {
      "rel": "compares",
      "target": "trickster-gods-compared"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Who is Loki?",
    "Is Loki a god or a giant?",
    "Who are Loki's children?",
    "Why was Loki bound?",
    "Did Loki kill Baldr?",
    "What does Loki do in Lokasenna?",
    "What is Loki's role at Ragnarok?",
    "Who are Loki's parents?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Loki is \"the son of Laufey\" and \"Laufey's son\" (Thrymskvitha 17, 20; Lokasenna 52), also called Lopt (Lokasenna 6; Hyndluljoth 43) and \"the brother of Byleist\" (Voluspo 51; Hyndluljoth 42). The poems never give his father's name.",
      "sources": [
        "poetic-edda-bellows"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.93
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "Loki and Odin are blood-brothers: Loki reminds him, \"Remember, Othin, in olden days / That we both our blood have mixed\", and Odin then orders that \"the wolf's father\" be given a seat at the feast (Lokasenna 9–10).",
      "sources": [
        "poetic-edda-bellows"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "Hyndluljoth names two of his offspring: \"The wolf did Loki with Angrbotha win, / And Sleipnir bore he to Svathilfari\", and adds that the worst of marvels sprang from him, and that after eating a half-cooked heart he grew with child, \"And thence among men came the monsters all\" (Hyndluljoth 42–43). Hel and the serpent are not named as his children anywhere in the poems.",
      "sources": [
        "poetic-edda-bellows"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.92
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Loki claims Baldr's death: to Frigg he says \"Mine is the blame that Baldr no more / Thou seest ride home to the hall\" (Lokasenna 28). In Voluspo and Baldrs draumar the hand that kills is Hoth's, with the mistletoe branch (Voluspo 32–33; Baldrs draumar 9), and Loki is not mentioned in either account of the killing itself.",
      "sources": [
        "poetic-edda-bellows"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.92
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "Loki's binding is foretold in Lokasenna and seen in Voluspo. He is told \"On the rocks the gods bind thee with bowels torn / Forth from thy frost-cold son\" (Lokasenna 49–50), and the seeress sees \"One ... in the wet woods bound, / A lover of ill, and to Loki like\", with Sigyn at his side (Voluspo 35). The Poetic Edda gives no narrative of the capture.",
      "sources": [
        "poetic-edda-bellows"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "In Lokasenna Loki enters Ægir's hall uninvited, says \"Bale and hatred I bring to the gods, / And their mead with venom I mix\" (Lokasenna 3), and insults in turn Bragi, Idunn, Gefjun, Odin, Frigg, Freyja, Njord, Tyr, Freyr, Byggvir, Heimdall, Skadi, Sif and Beyla, leaving only when Thor threatens him with the hammer (Lokasenna 11–64).",
      "sources": [
        "poetic-edda-bellows"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "At Ragnarok Loki is loose and in arms: a ship sails from the north \"With the people of Hel, at the helm stands Loki\" (Voluspo 51), and the dead seeress tells Odin no one will wake her again \"Till Loki wanders loose from his bonds, / And to the last strife the destroyers come\" (Baldrs draumar 14).",
      "sources": [
        "poetic-edda-bellows"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.93
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "Loki is Thor's travelling companion: he borrows Freyja's feather-dress to find the stolen hammer (Thrymskvitha 3–4), goes to Jotunheim as Thor's \"maid-servant\" (Thrymskvitha 20), and is blamed for laming one of Thor's goats (Hymiskvitha 38).",
      "sources": [
        "poetic-edda-bellows"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.92
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [
    "In the Poetic Edda Loki is Odin's sworn blood-brother (Lokasenna 9) and Thor's helper (Thrymskvitha), not simply the gods' enemy — until Ragnarok, when he steers the ship of the dead (Voluspo 51).",
    "Only Fenrir and Sleipnir are named as his children in the poems (Hyndluljoth 42); Hel and the serpent as his offspring rest on the Prose Edda.",
    "He says he caused Baldr's death (Lokasenna 28); the poems that narrate the death name only Hoth and the mistletoe.",
    "His punishment is described as done (Voluspo 35) and as threatened (Lokasenna 49), never narrated."
  ],
  "faqs": [
    {
      "q": "Who are Loki's parents?",
      "claim": "c1"
    },
    {
      "q": "Who are Loki's children?",
      "claim": "c3"
    },
    {
      "q": "Did Loki kill Baldr?",
      "claim": "c4"
    },
    {
      "q": "Why was Loki bound?",
      "claim": "c5"
    },
    {
      "q": "What does Loki do in Lokasenna?",
      "claim": "c6"
    },
    {
      "q": "What is Loki's role at Ragnarok?",
      "claim": "c7"
    }
  ],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "theoretical",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Every Loki page tells the Prose Edda story. This object gives the stanzas of the Poetic Edda and states plainly what they do not contain — the capture, the serpent's venom, the parentage of Hel — so an agent does not attribute Snorri's narrative to the poems.",
  "confidence": 0.92,
  "last_verified": "2026-09-03",
  "media": [],
  "x": {
    "myth": {
      "pantheon": "norse",
      "kind": "deity",
      "group": "jotnar",
      "domains": [
        "trickery",
        "shape-shifting",
        "mischief",
        "fire"
      ],
      "symbols": [
        "the feather-dress of Freyja",
        "fetters",
        "the serpent"
      ],
      "wikidata": "Q133147"
    }
  },
  "canonical_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/loki",
  "api_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/api/k/loki.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Loki",
    "description": "Son of Laufey, \"Lopt\", blood-brother of Odin and companion of Thor, a giant by birth who lives among the gods; father of the wolf Fenrir and of Sleipnir, the mocker of every god in Lokasenna, the one who admits the blame for Baldr's death, bound with his son's bowels until Ragnarok, when he steers the ship of Hel's people against the gods.",
    "url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/loki",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-09-03",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "The Poetic Edda — tr. Henry Adams Bellows (American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1923), XML edition by fjarri",
        "url": "https://github.com/fjarri/poetic_edda/tree/master/chapters"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Loki"
  }
}