Loki is among the most complex and ambiguous figures in the Norse mythological corpus, classified among the Æsir in the Prose Edda despite his giant heritage — his father is the giant Fárbauti and his mother Laufey. He is not attested as a deity of active worship; no cult sites, sacrificial practices, or place-names associated with Loki have been identified. He functions primarily as a narrative agent: a shape-shifter, schemer, and ambivalent helper who assists the Æsir and then later turns irrevocably against them.

The pivotal shift in Loki’s narrative arc is his orchestration of Baldr’s death. Having learned that mistletoe was excluded from Frigg’s oaths, Loki fashioned a dart from it and guided the blind Höðr’s throw, killing Baldr. He subsequently prevented Baldr’s return from Hel by refusing — disguised as the giantess Þökk — to weep. For these acts, Loki is eventually captured and bound beneath the earth. He is bound with the entrails of his son Narfi, and a serpent drips venom on his face; his wife Sigyn holds a bowl to catch the drops.

Loki’s Lokasenna — the poem in which he disrupts a feast of the gods and exchanges flyting insults with each deity in turn — provides one of the densest concentrations of mythological detail in the Poetic Edda. By the giantess Angrboða he fathered Fenrir, Jörmungandr, and Hel; by his shapeshifting union with the stallion Svaðilfari he gave birth to the eight-legged horse Sleipnir. Loki will captain the ship Naglfar against the gods at Ragnarök.