Loki’s Children

At a Glance

• Central figures: Loki, the trickster god of Aesir blood and jotunn heritage; Angrboda, a giantess of Jotunheim; and their three children - Fenrir the wolf, Jormungandr the world-serpent, and Hel, ruler of the dead.
• Setting: The nine worlds of Norse mythology - Asgard, Jotunheim, Midgard, and Niflheim - in the age of the gods before Ragnarok.
• The turn: Odin looks into the future, sees the destruction Loki’s children will bring, and moves to contain them - casting Jormungandr into the ocean, sending Hel to Niflheim, and binding Fenrir with the magical chain Gleipnir.
• The outcome: All three children survive their banishment and grow only more powerful. Tyr loses his hand. The gods’ attempts at control fix the very destinies they feared.
• The legacy: At Ragnarok, each child fulfills the prophecy: Fenrir devours Odin before being slain by Vidar; Jormungandr and Thor kill each other; Hel leads an army of the dead against Asgard alongside her father Loki.

Odin had looked ahead. What he saw there drove him to act, and every action he took made the outcome worse. This is the shape of the story, and the Norse knew it before the telling began.

Loki had fathered three children with Angrboda, a giantess of Jotunheim. Fenrir. Jormungandr. Hel. Each one was enough reason for dread. Together, they were the end.

Angrboda’s Children Come to Asgard

Loki lived among the Aesir, but he was jotunn-born, and his offspring with Angrboda carried that nature doubled. Fenrir came into the world already enormous and still growing. Jormungandr was a serpent that seemed to have no limit to its length. Hel was born half-living and half-dead, her face and body split between the two states. Odin looked at the three of them and saw Ragnarok. He saw Asgard burning. He saw himself in the jaws of the wolf.

He brought them in anyway - or had them brought. The Aesir took Fenrir and raised him in Asgard. Tyr, the god of war and justice, fed him. Tyr was the only one who would go near him. The others watched from a distance and counted the days until the wolf outgrew all management.

The Binding of Fenrir

The gods tried chains first. Fenrir snapped them. They tried heavier chains. He snapped those too, and he seemed pleased by the game. Odin sent to the dwarves.

What came back was Gleipnir - a ribbon-thin cord made from the sound of a cat’s footsteps, 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. It looked like nothing. Fenrir looked at it and did not trust it.

He agreed to let them bind him with it, but only if one of the Aesir put a hand in his mouth as surety. If the binding was a trick, the god would pay for it.

No one moved. Tyr stepped forward.

Gleipnir held. Fenrir felt the cord tighten past what any iron had managed, felt himself pinned to the rock, and he bit down. Tyr’s hand was gone at the wrist. The wolf howled and strained and could not move. He lay there, bound, and waited. At Ragnarok he would break free and swallow Odin whole. Vidar, Odin’s son, would kill him after. But Odin would already be dead.

Jormungandr and the Depths of the Sea

Odin cast the serpent into the ocean. He thought the depths would hold it.

Jormungandr sank and kept growing. It coiled through the cold water at the edge of Midgard and grew until its body wrapped the entire world - until it held its own tail in its mouth. The seas churned where it moved. Storms rose without warning. Its venom was such that a single drop could kill a god.

Thor hated the serpent. There are stories of him hauling it up on a fishing line before a jotunn companion cut the line in panic. The two of them would meet again at the last battle, and that meeting would end both of them. Thor would kill Jormungandr and walk nine steps before the poison finished him.

Hel’s Realm Below Niflheim

Hel was sent down. Odin gave her Niflheim, the cold realm of mist and shadow beneath the nine worlds, and with it dominion over every dead soul who had not earned a place in Valhalla - those who died sick, old, drowned, or simply worn out. All of them went to her.

Her hall was called Eljudnir. It was cold there and dim. Her dish was Hunger. Her knife was Famine. The threshold was a pitfall, the bed was Sickness, the curtains Gleaming-Bale. Snorri Sturluson recorded these names, and they carry their own weight.

Hel did not complain. She ruled her dead and kept them. Among those who came to her was Baldr, Odin’s radiant son, killed by a sprig of mistletoe that Loki had guided. Baldr’s arrival in Eljudnir was the first sign that the end had begun.

The Three at Ragnarok

Fenrir broke free. Jormungandr rose from the sea, and where its body left the water the shores flooded and the sky went dark. Hel marched out of Niflheim with the army of her dead, and Loki came with her - Loki unchained at last, sailing a ship made from the fingernails and toenails of the dead.

It went the way Odin had seen it would. He was swallowed. Tyr died fighting Garm, the hound of Hel, and Garm died too. Thor killed the serpent and fell nine paces later. The fire-jotunn Surt burned what was left.

The wolf had waited. The serpent had coiled. The dead had gathered in the cold. Odin had known and had bound and cast and imprisoned and it had made no difference at all.