Laufey (mythology)

• 1. Introduction

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  Laufey, also called Nál, is a figure in Norse mythology, and her chief claim to fame is that she gave birth to Loki. Yet she barely speaks, acts, or appears in any story. What survives of her is mostly a name, and that name is strangely powerful. In the Poetic Edda, Loki is often called Loki Laufeyson, meaning son of Laufey. That choice is odd. Norse kinship was usually traced through the father, and Loki had a perfectly good father whose name could have been used instead. So why does the mother's name stick to him? What does her name mean? And why does she have a second name that sounds like a household object? The surviving texts offer only small clues, and each one is worth weighing carefully.

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• 2. A Name From the Leaves

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  The Old Norse word lauf means leaves or foliage, and that is where most scholars begin with the name Laufey. The meaning of the name is not certain, though. One reading attaches lauf to the ending -ey, which turns up in other women's names such as Bjargey and Þórey. Another reading goes further back, to a hypothetical tree goddess called *lauf-awiaz, which would mean the leafy one. Her husband's name adds a second layer. Fárbauti translates as dangerous hitter, and some scholars have seen a natural image hidden in the pairing. In that reading, lightning strikes the leaves or needles of a tree, and fire is born. If that is right, the mother of Loki may have started out as a tree struck by a storm. That idea is an interpretation offered by some scholars, and no medieval text states it.

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• 3. Counted Among the Gods

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  Snorri Sturluson gives the fullest family portrait in Gylfaginning, a work whose title means The Beguiling of Gylfi. There the figure called High introduces Loki as the son of Fárbauti. High names the mother as Laufey or Nál, and gives Loki two brothers, Býleistr and Helblindi. The same book uses the form Laufeyson two more times for Loki. A third use appears in Skáldskaparmál, The Language of Poetry, which also allows him to be called either son of Fárbauti or son of Laufey. Both parents therefore stay in play, but the mother's name is the one that keeps surfacing as a label. One of the þulur, which are versified lists of names, places Laufey among the Ásynjar, the goddesses. Snorri says Loki was enumerated among the Æsir, and her place on that list may help explain how a figure of mixed background ended up in their company.

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• 4. The Needle

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  Nál is the stranger half of her double name. It appears twice in the Prose Edda, once in Gylfaginning and once in Skáldskaparmál, always in the phrase Laufey or Nál. Those passages treat the two names as alternatives for one mother, without explaining why. An explanation does arrive in the poem Sörla tháttr, where the two names are treated as belonging to one person. It says of her: "She was both slender and weak, and for that reason she was called Nál Needle." The nickname is a physical description, a thin figure compared to a sewing needle. The scholar John Lindow urges caution, however. In his view, "the late date of the text makes this piece of information suspect." The tale may be a later attempt to account for a name whose original sense had already faded, which leaves the goddess of leaves and the woman called Needle only loosely joined.

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