Laufey is named as Loki’s mother in Norse mythology, but the surviving texts preserve almost nothing about her own life. They call her Laufey or Nál, identify Fárbauti as Loki’s father and repeatedly introduce Loki as Laufeyjarson, the son of Laufey. They give her no dialogue, no encounter with the gods and no part in the events of Ragnarök. The evidence for her existence within the myths is therefore secure, while almost everything that might form a biography is missing.
Loki, by contrast, appears throughout the best-known Norse stories. He retrieves Thor’s hammer through an elaborate disguise, advises the gods in dangerous bargains, transforms his body and trades insults at a divine feast. His schemes repeatedly change what happens to the other gods. His mother, whose name identifies him during some of those episodes, receives none of the comparable narrative attention devoted to Loki or his children.
The surviving accounts also disagree about Loki’s family. Snorri’s thirteenth-century account names two brothers, whereas a later Icelandic narrative calls Loki the couple’s only child. The early prose supplies Nál as another name for Laufey; the later story says she was given the nickname because she was slender. These accounts were written at different times for different purposes. Their differences need to remain visible rather than being blended into an imagined continuous history of Loki’s family.
Her clearest traces are found in family lists and poetic forms of address. They establish her relationship to Loki, explain how her name was passed on, and expose what medieval authors chose not to tell. They also leave a question: if the sources knew the name of Loki’s father, why did they so often identify Loki through his mother?
Laufey in Snorri's account of Loki's family
Snorri Sturluson gives the most direct genealogy in chapter 33 of Gylfaginning, the mythological section of his Prose Edda. Writing in thirteenth-century Iceland, Snorri drew on inherited poetry and traditions to explain a world of myth that Christian writers had received from earlier generations. Snorri sets out the relationships explicitly. Yet it remains a medieval literary account, not a family register recorded during the period of pre-Christian worship.
Snorri introduces Loki, also called Loptr, among the Æsir and describes his father Fárbauti as a jötunn. He names Laufey, also called Nál, as his mother, then lists Býleistr and Helblindi as his brothers. These relationships appear directly in the Old Norse text of Gylfaginning 33. Snorri goes on to describe Loki’s intelligence and unstable conduct: he leads the gods into trouble and then sometimes devises the means of saving them. Laufey appears only in the family information preceding that description.
Snorri classifies Fárbauti as a supernatural being but does not say what kind of being Laufey is or give her a divine responsibility. Nothing in the passage describes how the parents met, where they lived or what relationship she had with her son. The text establishes a genealogy and immediately turns to Loki. Treating that brief entry as the basis for a developed account of Laufey would require material it never supplies.
In the same chapter Snorri names Loki’s wife, Sigyn, and a son whose name appears as Nari or Narfi in different manuscripts. The next chapter describes his children with Angrboða: Fenrir, Jörmungandr and Hel. These children are central to threats facing the gods, so the accounts develop their origins and their consequences. Loki’s mother stands in a generation that the preserved stories rarely discuss. The surviving account develops the stories of Loki’s children while leaving Laufey in the genealogy. Whether earlier audiences knew other stories about her remains unknown.
What the surviving manuscripts actually preserve
The Prose Edda and Poetic Edda are separate collections of medieval Icelandic material, produced and transmitted differently. Snorri’s prose work explains myths partly to make older poetic language intelligible. The Eddic poems were transmitted and copied by later scribes, often long after they may first have been composed. Their dates, literary forms and manuscript histories must therefore be considered before treating repeated names as evidence of a single fixed mythological biography.
The main surviving book for the poems discussed here is Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda, manuscript GKS 2365 4to, copied in Iceland around 1270. The Árni Magnússon Institute’s account of its electronic edition describes modern access to its images, diplomatic transcriptions and word-level research. That is the approximate date of this particular manuscript, not a secure date for the composition of each poem in it. The manuscript date cannot establish when Loki’s maternal designation first entered use.
The expression may have circulated for generations before it was written down, but the manuscript cannot show when that circulation began. A poetic expression might be inherited, adapted or retained because it was convenient in verse. The manuscripts show that medieval readers and listeners knew Loki as Laufey’s son. They do not provide a reliable year or century in which that naming tradition originated.
Snorri’s prose has its own manuscript variations. The Uppsala Edda, preserved in DG 11 4to, contains a version shorter in places than other witnesses, with differences that a modern English translation may conceal. The important prose and poetic texts agree that Laufey is Loki’s mother. Readers who want to settle particular wording, however, must still ask which manuscript and edition they are using. There was no single unchanged medieval printed text of the Edda.
Why Loki is called Laufeyjarson
The expression Laufeyjar sonr means “Laufey’s son” in Old Norse. Its form, Laufeyjarson, is a matronymic: it identifies someone through his mother instead of his father. Patronymics were more usual in Icelandic and wider Norse naming practices, making Loki’s maternal identification noticeable. It should not be mistaken for a modern hereditary surname, which passes unchanged through a family across generations.
Poetry gives several practical reasons for choosing one identifying expression over another. A name can supply the required stress, alliteration or sound pattern, while helping an audience recognize the subject of a line. A poet’s use of a maternal name therefore need not imply a rule about inheritance or social rank. Loki’s father was also named, yet poets repeatedly used his mother’s name.
One proposal is that Laufey held higher status than Fárbauti, perhaps even as a member of the Æsir. Another points to the metrical usefulness of Loki Laufeyjarson. It is also possible that older listeners knew a story about her which does not survive. None of these explanations is stated in the poems. They remain ways of accounting for an unusual name-form, and should never be presented as independently attested episodes in Laufey’s life.
The maternal name occurs within stories about Loki, as well as in genealogies. Instead of being confined to a list of relatives, it helps introduce what he says and does. Two Eddic poems offer clear examples in contrasting circumstances: the theft of Thor’s hammer and a feast that deteriorates into bitter accusations. Neither introduces Laufey herself, but both show that Loki’s maternal designation was useful to their poets.
Laufey's name in Þrymskviða
In Þrymskviða, Thor wakes to find that Mjöllnir, his hammer, has disappeared. Loki borrows Freyja’s feather garment and discovers that the giant Þrymr has taken it. Þrymr will return the hammer only if Freyja becomes his bride. She refuses angrily, so the gods devise a disguise. Thor will go to the giant’s hall dressed as the bride, and Loki will accompany him as her attendant, helping to keep the deception intact.
Thor objects to being dressed in bridal clothes. Stanza 18 of the Old Norse edition of Þrymskviða then introduces Loki’s reply with Þá kvað þat Loki Laufeyjar sonr, meaning that Loki, Laufey’s son, spoke. He argues that the giants may occupy Asgard unless Thor gets his hammer back. The poet names Laufey’s son as Loki urges Thor to recover his weapon. The poem offers no additional information about her while using the name to identify the speaker.
The formula appears again in stanza 20, where Loki volunteers to serve as the disguised bride’s attendant. Thor puts on the veil and jewellery, and Loki speaks when the disguise threatens to fail. During the feast he explains Thor’s enormous appetite and burning eyes to Þrymr. The performance lasts until the hammer is produced for the wedding. Thor seizes it and kills the giant, recovering his weapon. The reference identifies Loki as the attendant sustaining the disguise.
Both occurrences suggest that the audience could recognize Loki through his mother’s name without needing a description of her. She does not enter the giant’s hall, advise the gods or participate in recovering Mjöllnir. The poem uses her name as a familiar identifier, without involving Laufey in the events.
Editorial numbering can complicate comparison. In the Old Norse edition followed here, the first line identifying Loki appears in stanza 18. Henry Adams Bellows numbers the corresponding passage differently in his English translation. The poem still contains two relevant uses of the maternal designation. The different numbers reflect editorial practice, not an additional version of Laufey’s story.
The accusation in Lokasenna
Lokasenna gives the name a harsher setting. At Ægir’s feast, Loki kills a servant, is driven out and then returns to insult the assembled gods and goddesses. His accusations attack their sexual conduct, courage, honour and authority. The poem is a flyting, a contest of abusive speech, and its charges serve the antagonism of the scene. They cannot automatically be treated as impartial reports of events in the gods’ lives.
In stanza 52, Loki directs one such accusation at Skaði, alleging a sexual encounter and identifying himself as Laufeyjar son. The expression appears in the Old Norse text of Lokasenna within Loki’s own speech. That differs from the narrator’s introduction in Þrymskviða: Loki himself invokes the maternal designation while attacking another character’s reputation.
Nothing in that reference shows that Laufey knew Skaði or had any connection with Ægir’s banquet. Nor can the accusation itself establish an event that all traditions agreed had happened. Loki is speaking in a deliberately hostile poem. The passage establishes that “Laufey’s son” was an expression Loki could use of himself, even in a scene unrelated to his family.
The two poems place Loki in very different situations. Þrymskviða builds its comedy around a theft, an unwanted marriage and a successful disguise; Lokasenna is a sustained verbal confrontation that leads towards punishment. Laufey does not become a character in either. Yet both use her name to identify Loki, showing how poetic language could preserve a relative’s name without preserving any independent episode about that person.
Snorri uses the name during Loki's greatest disasters
The expression continues in Snorri’s prose. In Gylfaginning 42, a builder offers to fortify the gods’ settlement in return for Freyja, the sun and the moon. The gods accept terms they expect the builder to fail, but his horse Svaðilfari helps the work advance rapidly. They hold Loki responsible for the dangerous bargain. As they demand a solution, Snorri calls him Loki Laufeyjarson, again identifying him by his mother at a moment of crisis.
The Old Norse passage in Gylfaginning 42 goes on to describe Loki taking the shape of a mare and luring Svaðilfari away from the building work. He later gives birth to Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged horse. The episode describes Loki’s bargain, transformation and offspring in detail. Laufey’s name appears in it, but nothing about her nature, character or powers is explained.
Snorri uses the maternal name again when telling of Baldr’s death. Loki resents Baldr’s apparent protection against harm and looks for a way to defeat it. Snorri still identifies Loki through Laufey in the account of Baldr’s death. The text does not make her responsible for what he does. It shows the continuing usefulness of the naming formula even as the events surrounding him become violent and disastrous.
The subject changes in Skáldskaparmál, the part of the Prose Edda concerned with the language of poetry. Snorri explains indirect descriptions known as kennings, through which a poet can name a person by an object, relative or memorable event. His examples for Loki include references to Fárbauti, Laufey, Nál, Býleistr and Helblindi. The English text of Skáldskaparmál and Anthony Faulkes’s scholarly edition make that context clear. These are names that poets could deploy in their compositions, whether or not their bearers had lengthy separate narratives.
A poet working with mythological language needed recognizable references and enough alternatives to fit different verses. Snorri’s teaching text preserves Laufey among them. Her name survives in this text devoted to poetic language, although the stories seldom turn towards her. The presence of a family name in poetic instruction tells us about inherited vocabulary rather than providing a missing biography.
Nál, the second name for Loki's mother
Nál means “needle” in Old Norse. Snorri calls Loki’s mother by this alternative name in Gylfaginning, and Skáldskaparmál includes it among expressions used to identify Loki. Neither passage explains how she acquired the name. These passages preserve the alternative name; a later story offers an explanation for it.
That explanation occurs in Sörla þáttr, a later Icelandic tale copied into Flateyjarbók. Fárbauti appears there as a man or peasant, married to Laufey. She is described as slight and very slender; the narrative says that this appearance earned her the name Nál. The Old Norse text of Sörla þáttr preserves the account. The explanation appears in a medieval text; it is not a modern guess based only on the meaning of “needle.”
The manuscript Flateyjarbók was assembled near the end of the fourteenth century, long after Snorri’s Edda and the main surviving Eddic manuscript. The Árni Magnússon Institute’s manuscript description associates its compilation with around 1390. Later writers could preserve older traditions, but they could also build new narrative explanations around familiar names. We can date this story’s account of Laufey’s slenderness to the later written witness, without assuming it was already known in the Viking Age.
The family also changes between accounts. Gylfaginning names Býleistr and Helblindi as Loki’s brothers, whereas Sörla þáttr says that Fárbauti and Laufey had only one child, Loki. Snorri describes the father as a jötunn; the later tale places him in an ordinary human setting. These accounts conflict. Combining their details would produce a family history found in neither source.
The later story turns toward Freyja’s necklace and Loki’s service to Odin. Its description of Laufey introduces Loki’s family and explains a name before the action proceeds elsewhere. Although it gives her a physical characteristic lacking in Snorri, she still does not acquire an extended life story. The later author’s attention, like Snorri’s, remains largely on what her son does.
Nál illustrates the difference between a name found in an early witness and an explanation attached to it later. The Prose Edda records Laufey or Nál as Loki’s mother. Sörla þáttr tells readers why she supposedly received the second name. The explanation could be older, but its age cannot be established from the surviving evidence. It cannot be used without qualification as a portrait of a goddess in pre-Christian Scandinavia.
What does the name Laufey mean?
The first part of Laufey resembles Old Norse lauf, a word for leaves or foliage. The ending -ey can mean an island and occurs in women’s names. They have led to translations such as “leaf island” or “leafy island.” Translating visible parts of a personal name, however, does not necessarily reconstruct what the whole name meant to the people who first used it. The linguistic relationship is suggestive rather than a settled interpretation.
Scholars have disagreed over how far the name can be interpreted. In comments on Þrymskviða 18, Finnur Jónsson questioned elaborate myths inferred from Laufey’s name, including confident attempts to associate her with pine trees. His 1932 commentary on the Old Norse poem separates the recognizable elements of the word from claims about its original significance. More recent reference works likewise do not establish one indisputable etymology. The possible translations require more caution than a simple English label often suggests.
An influential explanation combines both parents’ names into a natural allegory. Fárbauti, the dangerous striker, is taken to mean lightning; Laufey is made a leafy tree, and Nál is connected with needles. Lightning strikes vegetation and starts a fire, identified in the theory with Loki. The comparison combines the names into a single explanation. No surviving Norse story describes Loki’s birth through lightning striking vegetation.
The allegory also depends on the separate claim that Loki personifies fire. That idea has been encouraged by the resemblance between Loki and Logi, a figure explicitly associated with fire. The two appear as different beings in the tale of Thor’s journey to Útgarða-Loki. There Logi consumes food with the force of fire during a contest, while Loki is another participant. Neither the similar names nor the proposed natural allegory establishes a lost birth story.
Earlier speakers may have heard associations in Laufey that are now uncertain. Whatever the etymology, her name tells us nothing about where she lived, what powers she had or how she gave birth. It cannot make her a tree goddess without separate testimony. The surviving name is evidence for possible linguistic meanings; it does not provide a cult or a full divine personality.
Was Laufey a goddess or a jötunn?
The main genealogy leaves Laufey’s supernatural category undefined. Snorri calls Fárbauti a jötunn, commonly rendered “giant,” although the word does not always describe enormous physical size. Jötnar in Norse stories can be enemies, spouses, ancestors or relatives of the Æsir. The groups interact through marriages and shared family lines, making rigid distinctions between these groups difficult.
Her marriage to Fárbauti does not establish that she too was a jötunn. Nor does Loki’s association with the Æsir establish that his mother was one of their goddesses. In Gylfaginning Snorri includes Loki among the Æsir while openly calling his father a jötunn. Mythological relationships do not conform to a neat rule that everyone in one divine household must share one kind of ancestry.
Some modern descriptions make Laufey a goddess of the Æsir by appealing to lists of women’s divine names. Such lists may combine proper names with poetic designations and leave individual entries unexplained. The claim that Laufey is named among the Ásynjur in the Nafnaþulur remains disputed; the standard Ásynjur list does not clearly settle her identity. Assignments such as “tree goddess” or “queen of the frost giants” require independent evidence beyond an uncertain name-list.
No independently identified shrine, offering inscription or archaeological object shows Laufey receiving worship. Archaeological discoveries can illuminate the broader religion behind the texts, but a carving of a tree, woman or family cannot be assigned to her without evidence. The secure evidence is literary: the texts call Loki Laufey’s son. His mother’s cult, divine office and sphere of influence are not recoverable from that fact alone.
Fárbauti, Býleistr, and Helblindi
Fárbauti’s name is often understood as “dangerous striker,” and Gylfaginning identifies him as a jötunn. He is also used in skaldic descriptions of Loki. Some of the verse Snorri quotes is associated by tradition with Viking Age poets, although its dating and later transmission still matter. These references show that Loki could be identified through his father as well as his mother. Poets continued to know Fárbauti’s name even when they identified Loki through his mother.
Snorri names Býleistr and Helblindi as Loki’s brothers in Gylfaginning, and Skáldskaparmál preserves their names in poetic ways of describing him. Neither brother receives a developed set of adventures beside Loki in these works. Their names broaden the recorded genealogy, but the texts provide few scenes involving them and Loki.
Helblindi also appears in material that lists names of Odin. An identical name in two contexts does not by itself identify the bearers as the same figure. Mythological poets could reuse names or record different traditions. Equating Loki’s brother directly with Odin would add a relationship Snorri never states and that the sources do not establish.
The stories are far more expansive about Loki’s descendants. Fenrir, Jörmungandr and Hel, children of Angrboða, become threats to the gods. Sleipnir, born after Loki’s transformation into a mare, serves Odin as an eight-legged horse. Sigyn remains with Loki in the account of his punishment. Those stories devote far more attention to Loki’s descendants than to his mother. The texts explain the impact of beings descended from Loki in much greater detail than the background of the mother from whom he came.
Laufey and the limits of a Norse mythological biography
The surviving manuscripts cannot show whether Laufey once had stories of her own. Scandinavian traditions passed through many generations, and only a fraction was preserved by Icelandic poets and scribes. Laufey might once have been the subject of a lost tale, or her name may always have served mainly to identify Loki within the material that reached these writers. Both possibilities remain open. There is no surviving account that lets us decide between them.
Modern adaptations often supply what the manuscripts leave blank. Some turn Laufey into Loki’s father or a powerful ruler; others make her a warrior, tree spirit or source of magic. They differ from the genealogy given in Gylfaginning: Fárbauti is Loki’s father, and Laufey, also called Nál, is his mother. The medieval evidence supports those relationships without furnishing the continuous personal story that adaptations may choose to invent.
Her name persists even when the poems focus entirely on Loki’s actions. In Þrymskviða, he is called Laufey’s son while arranging the return of Thor’s hammer. In Lokasenna, he names himself that way as he insults Skaði. Snorri also uses the maternal expression in accounts of dangerous bargains and death. None of these scenes is about Laufey. Yet the name of a woman with scarcely any surviving story accompanies one of Norse mythology’s most active characters through very different events.
The Eddas establish Laufey as Loki’s mother, also called Nál, and give Fárbauti and the brothers named by Snorri a place in the family record. The later Sörla þáttr explains the nickname while contradicting parts of the earlier genealogy. Her origins, nature and voice remain unknown. The most durable trace she has left is the designation Laufeyjarson, passed from one story to another without the narratives ever turning towards the woman who supplied it.
