lut 65
its slender tail, a reminder, Northmen say, of how
strongly Thor had held Loki in his powerful hand.
This story of Loki is told at the end of Lokasenna
and in Snorri Sturluson’s G ylfaginning .
Loki’s Punishment After the gods captured
Loki, they dragged him into a dark cave. They
changed Loki’s son Vali into a wolf, which immedi-
ately attacked his brother, Narfi, and killed him. The
gods took Narfi’s intestines and bound Loki with
them. Once Loki was firmly bound, they changed the
horrid bonds into iron. Then the icy goddess Skade
placed a serpent over Loki’s upturned face so that its
venom would drip onto him.
Only Sigyn, Loki’s faithful wife, stayed with Loki
in the miserable cave. She held a bowl to catch the
drops of venom, but when she turned aside to empty
the poison, the drops fell on Loki’s twisted face. He
writhed with pain and terror, causing the Earth to
tremble and quake. So Loki, the Norse myths say, is
the cause of earthquakes.
Loki remained a prisoner until Ragnarok, when
he took his revenge on the gods and they on him.
L othur (L oður )
According to the V oluspa ,
part of the P oetic E dda , one of the three original
Aesir gods who, along with his brothers Odin
and Hoenir, created the world (see “The First
Humans,” under creation). In his P rose E dda ,
Snorri Sturluson identifies Lothur as Ve and
Hoenir as Vili.
Some mythologists have tried to identify Lothur
with Loki, but virtually nothing is known about
this god.
L ut (L it )
A giant, perhaps the father of a family
of giants or the leader of a group of giants, appar-
ently killed by Thor. Little is known of Lut. His
name is used in kennings by early skalds who praise
Thor for his defeat of this giant. In some of the
manuscripts of these poems, this giant is named Lit,
Loki’s Punishment (1923) by Ida Matton (Photo by Hedning/Used under a Creative Commons license)