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giant

Laufey

Loki's mother, also called Nál; known only as a name, but so often used for her son that he is regularly called 'Laufey's son'.

Laufey is Loki's mother; Snorri gives her other name as Nál and her husband as the giant Fárbauti Gylfaginning 33. Nothing at all is told about her life. Her second name, Nál ("needle"), turns up again in Snorri's list of poetic names for Loki, "Son of Fárbauti and Laufey, or of Nál" Skáldskaparmál 16.

Her importance is in her son's name. Norse names normally follow the father, but Loki is regularly named after his mother. In Þrymskviða he is "the son of Laufey" Þrymskviða 17; in Lokasenna he calls himself "Laufey's son" Lokasenna 52; Snorri uses "Loki Laufeyarson" repeatedly, at the wall-builder's bargain and at Baldr's death Gylfaginning 42 Gylfaginning 49. Why the mother's name stuck is never explained.

In the sources

Quoted from the hosted translations; each line is checked against the text when the site is built. Select a reference to read it in context.

his mother was Laufey or Nál
Gylfaginning 33 Snorri names Loki's mother, with her alternative name.
Then Loki spake, the son of Laufey
Þrymskviða 17 Þrymskviða identifies Loki by his mother.
More lightly thou spakest with Laufey's son
Lokasenna 52 Loki uses the same name for himself.

Where the sources disagree or fall silent

  • The sources never say whether Laufey was a giantess or a goddess; she is filed with the giants here because her husband is one.

In modern culture

Not from the medieval sources.

Marvel's films make Laufey a male king of the frost giants and Loki's birth father; in the medieval sources Laufey is Loki's mother.

Related

Loki The giant-born trickster counted among the Æsir: father of Fenrir, the Midgard Serpent and Hel, contriver of Baldr's death, bound until Ragnarök. Fárbauti The giant father of Loki, known only from Snorri and from one line of a tenth-century skaldic poem.