Norse God of Mischief, Trickery. Divine Catalyst, Breaker of Stagnation, Force for change. Giant brother of Odin. Loki wavers between a weal-bringing culture-hero/trickster and a woe-bringing destroyer. He is responsible for getting the gods most of their good, but only after he has led them to the edge of destruction. He often travels with Thor, sometimes leading him into trouble and sometimes getting him out of it. Loki also brings a surprising amount of humor into the Norse tales (and into the practice of the Northern religion today). The need for this function of his appears explicitly in the tale of how the giantess Skadi was reconciled to accepting weregild from the gods instead of insisting on revenge: one of her conditions is that they must make her laugh, and it is only Loki who can accomplish this. Loki may have appeared in cultic dramas as a ritual Lord of Misrule: inversion and reversal of all sorts are typical for him. As well as being the father of the Wolf Fenrir, the Midgard Serpent, and, allegedly, Hel, he is also the mother of Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir, and cross-dresses in the typically feminine falcon-hides of Frigga and Freyja when he needs to fly between the worlds.
Bad nineteenth-century etymology associated Loki with Logi (fire) and, helped along by Wagner, the image of Loki as a fire-being seems to be with us to stay. After the death of Balder, the gods bound Loki in an underground cave, and Skadi hung a venom-dripping snake over his face. The venom is caught in a cup by his Aesir-wife Sigyn; supposedly, when she turns away to empty it, his writhings cause earthquakes. There is much debate among true folk as to whether Loki is really bound, or just how bound he is, however. Not surprisingly, views on Loki range from those who think of him as a merry friend to those who see him almost as a Nordic Satan. Although he plays a key role in many of our holy tales, it is fairly safe to guess that he was not worshipped in the sense that the other gods and goddesses were - but whenever a drink is given to Odin, according to the terms of their oath, Loki also gets one.
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