Of all the figures in Norse mythology, Loki is the most dangerous — but much of the danger is in his children. With the giantess Angrboða — “she-who-offers-sorrow” — Loki fathered three of the most fearsome beings in the cosmos: Fenrir the great wolf, Jörmungandr the World Serpent, and Hel, the half-dead goddess of the underworld. Together these three are the forces of chaos in the Eddas, and each of them plays a central role in the events of Ragnarök, the doom of the gods.
The myths of Loki’s children are at the heart of Norse theology. They show the gods at their most desperate, and the cosmos at its most vulnerable — and they give the Eddas their tragic shape.
The Mother: Angrboða
The name of Angrboða is preserved only in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda. The compound is a striking one: angr is “sorrow,” “grief,” or “vexation,” and boða is “she who offers.” The mother of the monsters is, therefore, “she-who-brings-sorrow” — an apt name, given the doom her children will bring.
Angrboða lives in Jötunheimr, the land of the giants. She is one of the Jötnar, the primal beings older than the gods. Her union with Loki is a renewal of the old enmity between the gods and the giants, but with the children of the gods. The gods recognize the threat of this union, and they respond by separating mother and children.
The Prophecy
According to the Gylfaginning, when the gods learned of Loki’s three monstrous children with Angrboða, Odin perceived that the children would one day bring great harm to the gods and to the world. He acted swiftly, taking the children from Angrboða and dealing with each according to his own nature. The placement is also a kind of containment — each child is held in check, but the holding is precarious, and at Ragnarök the holding fails.
Fenrir the Great Wolf
Fenrir (also called the Fenrisúlfr, “Fenrir-wolf”) is the eldest of Loki and Angrboða’s children. From the moment the gods took him to Asgard, he was a problem: the wolf was the largest ever seen, and he grew rapidly. Only Tyr, the god of oaths and the bravest of the Aesir, dared to feed him.
The gods, fearing the wolf, decided to bind him. They fashioned a series of fetters: Læðingr, Drómi, and finally Gleipnir — the silken cord of impossible thinness, made by the dwarves from the sound of a cat’s footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish, and the spittle of a bird. The gods brought it to Fenrir, but the wolf, suspicious, demanded that one of the gods place a hand in his mouth as a pledge of good faith. Only Tyr would do it, and when the cord held, the wolf bit off Tyr’s right hand at the wrist. The price of binding the wolf was the cost of an Aesir’s hand.
The wolf is left bound on the lonely island of Lyngvi in the lake Amsvartnir, with a sword laid in his jaws to keep them open. From this position, the wolf howls, and the saliva that flows from his mouth is the source of the river Ván, which runs through the worlds.
At Ragnarök, the wolf breaks free. His mouth gapes so wide that the upper jaw touches the sky and the lower jaw the earth. Odin rides out to face him on the plain of Vígríðr, and the wolf swallows the Allfather. Víðarr, Odin’s silent son, avenges him: he steps into the wolf’s mouth with one foot on his lower jaw and one on his upper, and he tears the wolf’s jaws apart.
Fenrir is the most important of Loki’s children. He is the destined killer of the chief of the gods, and the act of binding him — with the cost of Tyr’s hand — is the moment when the Aesir first admit that they cannot control the children of Loki and Angrboða.
Jörmungandr the World Serpent
Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent or World Serpent, is the second of Loki and Angrboða’s children. The gods, knowing his nature, cast him into the deep ocean that surrounds the world. There he grew so large that he encircled the entire earth, holding his own tail in his mouth. From this position he rules the world-sea.
Jörmungandr is most often encountered in two myths. In the first, told in the Hymiskviða, Thor goes fishing with the giant Hymir. They row far out into the sea, and Thor baits his hook with the head of an ox. The serpent takes the bait, and Thor pulls him up, his hand pressing the great jaw of the serpent against the gunwale of the boat. The giant Hymir, terrified, cuts the line, and the serpent sinks back. The two will meet again.
In the second, the confrontation is finally realized at Ragnarök. The serpent rises from the sea at the end of the world, thrashing the waters into mountains. He meets Thor on the plain of Vígríðr, and the two fight. The accounts vary, but the most common form of the myth has Thor killing the serpent, then walking nine paces before falling dead from the serpent’s venom.
Hel the Death-Goddess
Hel is the third of Loki and Angrboða’s children, and the most surprising. She is described in the Gylfaginning as being half-dead, half-alive: her face is that of a living woman, but her body is that of a corpse, blue-black, and rotted. The gods, knowing her nature, sent her to the underworld, where Odin gave her authority over the dead who died of sickness, old age, or any other cause. The slain in battle, by contrast, go to Valhalla (Odin) or Fólkvangr (Freya).
Hel rules the realm of the same name, Helheimr or Hel, at the bottom of the world, beneath one of the three roots of the world tree Yggdrasil. Her hall is Éljúðnir, “the rain-sodden,” and her dish is Hungry and her knife is Famine. Yet she is not unsympathetic. In the myth of Baldr the Beautiful, Hermóðr the Bold rides to Hel to negotiate. Hel agrees to release Baldr if every thing in the world, alive and dead, will weep for him. They do — except for a single giantess (in some versions, Loki in disguise) who refuses, saying, “Let Hel hold what she has.” So Baldr stays in the realm of the dead until the rebirth of the world.
In the Prose Edda, Hel is sometimes identified with the half-dead seeress of the Völuspá, who returns from the dead to foretell the doom of the gods. She is the most pitiable of Loki’s children, since she did nothing to bring about her exile.
The Other Children
Loki has additional children as well. With the goddess Sigyn, he has a son Narfi (also called Nari or Nörr in different sources). Narfi’s fate is the worst of all: in some versions, when the gods punish Loki for the death of Baldr, they transform Narfi into a thin, sinewy creature, kill him, and use his entrails as the bands to bind Loki.
With Svaðilfari, the giant stallion, Loki also gave birth to Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse of Odin. Sleipnir is a creature of great power, a boundary-crosser who can move between the worlds.
Cultural Influence
The children of Loki have been among the most influential figures in the modern imagination. Fenrir appears in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a huge wolf that the Avengers battle in Thor: Ragnarok (2017). Jörmungandr appears as a great world-encircling serpent in the God of War series. Hel appears as the ruler of the underworld in Thor: Ragnarok (played by Cate Blanchett).
In the modern revival of Heathenry (Ásatrú), Loki and his children are understood as part of the cycle of wyrd — the inevitable doom of the gods.
The Doom That Comes from the North
Loki’s children are the doom. The three children of the giantess Angrboða — the wolf, the serpent, and the death-goddess — are the forces that bring about the end of the world. The Eddas do not offer a redemption. They offer fate. Last reviewed: June 2026.