For much of Norse mythology, Loki is a troublesome but tolerated member of the gods’ company. He causes disasters and then fixes them; he insults, steals, and schemes, but he also brings the gods their greatest treasures. That changes with the death of Baldr. After Loki engineers the killing of the most beloved god and then refuses to weep him out of Hel, the gods at last turn on him. His punishment — bound beneath the earth with a serpent dripping venom onto his face — is one of the most vivid and terrible images in the mythology, and the prelude to Ragnarök.
The story is told by Snorri Sturluson at the end of the Gylfaginning and in the prose epilogue to the Eddic poem Lokasenna (“Loki’s Flyting”), with glimpses in the Völuspá.
Loki’s Last Insult
According to the Lokasenna, the gods were feasting in the hall of the sea-giant Ægir after Baldr’s death. Loki forced his way in, killed one of Ægir’s servants, and proceeded to insult every god and goddess present in turn. He accused the goddesses of infidelity and the gods of cowardice, effeminacy, and shameful deeds. To Frigg, Baldr’s mother, he boasted that he was the reason she would never again see her son ride home to the hall.
The flyting ended only when Thor arrived and threatened to smash Loki’s head with Mjölnir. Loki left, but he knew the gods’ patience was exhausted.
The Flight
Loki fled to a mountain and built a house with four doors so that he could see in every direction. By day he often turned himself into a salmon and hid in the waterfall of Fránangr. He sat in his house and wondered how the gods might try to catch him in the waterfall.
He took linen yarn and knotted it into a mesh — Snorri says he invented the fishing net. Then he saw the gods coming towards the house; Odin had spotted him from his high seat Hliðskjálf, from which he could see all the worlds. Loki threw the net into the fire and leapt into the river.
The Net
The first of the gods to enter the house was Kvasir, the wisest of all. He saw the white ash of the burnt net in the fire and understood that it was a device for catching fish. He told the other gods, and they made a net copying the pattern in the ashes.
(This Kvasir, in Snorri’s account, is the same being whose blood was later brewed into the mead of poetry — a small inconsistency in the tradition.)
The gods went to the waterfall and cast the net. Thor held one end, and all the other gods the other. Loki swam ahead and lay between two stones, so they dragged the net over him. They weighted it so that nothing could slip underneath, and tried again. This time Loki swam ahead and, seeing he was close to the sea, leapt over the net and swam back up the falls.
The gods divided into two groups on the banks, and Thor waded in the middle of the river. On the third attempt, Loki had two choices: swim out to sea and risk his life, or leap the net again. He leapt. Thor grabbed him in mid-air. The salmon slipped through his hand, but Thor caught him by the tail. And that, Snorri says, is why the salmon tapers towards the tail.
The Cave and the Bonds
The gods took Loki to a cave. They set up three flat stones on their edges and bored a hole through each.
Then they brought Loki’s sons, Váli and Narfi (also called Nari). The gods turned Váli into a wolf, and he tore his brother Narfi apart. The gods took Narfi’s entrails and used them to bind Loki across the three stones: one under his shoulders, one under his loins, and one under the backs of his knees. Once he was bound, the bonds turned to iron.
(In the prose of the Lokasenna, the details differ slightly: Loki is bound with the guts of his son Nari, and his son Narfi is turned into a wolf.)
Skaði’s Serpent
The giantess Skaði, whose father Þjazi Loki had helped kill, took a venomous serpent and fastened it above Loki’s face, so that its poison would drip onto him.
Sigyn’s Bowl
But Loki’s wife, Sigyn, did not abandon him. She stands beside him holding a bowl under the dripping venom. When the bowl is full, she must go and empty it — and in that moment the poison drips onto Loki’s face. He writhes so violently that the whole earth shakes.
“That,” Snorri says, “is what you call an earthquake.”
The Völuspá shows the seeress seeing this vision:
A captive I saw lying under the grove of hot springs, like the treacherous Loki in form. There sits Sigyn, not at all glad about her husband.
Sigyn’s faithfulness is one of the few gentle images in a brutal story. She is Loki’s wife, the mother of the sons who were destroyed to bind him, and yet she stays in the cave, catching poison in a bowl for eternity.
Until Ragnarök
Loki lies bound until the end of the world. At Ragnarök, all bonds break. Loki breaks free and steers the ship Naglfar, made from the untrimmed fingernails and toenails of the dead, carrying the hosts of the giants and the dead against the gods. His children are unbound too: the wolf Fenrir breaks free of Gleipnir, and the serpent Jörmungandr rises from the sea. On the battlefield of Vígríðr, Loki and Heimdall, the watchman of the gods, kill each other. See Ragnarök: The Twilight of the Gods.
Parallels: The Bound God
Loki’s punishment has striking parallels in other mythologies.
- Prometheus is chained to a rock in the Caucasus, where an eagle eats his liver every day until he is freed by Heracles (see Prometheus: The Titan Who Stole Fire).
- In the folklore of the Caucasus, the hero Amirani in Georgia and Artavazd in Armenia are chained in a mountain cave, straining against their bonds; blacksmiths traditionally struck their anvils on certain days to strengthen the chains.
- In Persian myth, the dragon-king Zahhāk is chained beneath Mount Damavand until the end of time.
- In Christian tradition, Satan is bound in the abyss for a thousand years in the Book of Revelation, to be released at the end.
Some scholars see Christian influence on the Norse image of the bound evil power who will break loose at the end of days. Others argue that the Caucasian and Norse traditions share a much older Indo-European motif.
The Gosforth Cross
A remarkable carving on the Gosforth Cross in Cumbria, England, a tenth-century stone monument that combines Christian and Norse imagery, appears to show a bound figure with a woman kneeling beside him holding a vessel — widely identified as Loki and Sigyn. The same cross shows other scenes from Ragnarök, including Víðarr tearing the jaws of the wolf, alongside the Crucifixion. It is one of the earliest images of the myth and shows that the story was known in the Viking settlements of northern England long before Snorri wrote it down.
What the Punishment Means
The binding of Loki marks a turning point in the gods’ relationship with him. For most of the mythology he is their companion, even Odin’s sworn blood-brother. Once bound, he becomes their open enemy. His punishment is not justice in a simple sense; the use of his own innocent sons is shocking, and Snorri does not soften it.
The myth also explains natural phenomena — the net, the salmon’s tail, earthquakes — in the way many myths do. But its deeper meaning lies in its place in the story of the cosmos. The gods can bind their enemies — Fenrir, Loki — but they cannot bind them forever. Every bond will be broken when fate demands it.
Last reviewed: September 2026.