Váli (son of Loki)
In some versions of
In the account in Gylfaginning, after the death of Baldr the Æsir chase down and capture Loki:
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Nú var Loki tekinn griðalauss ok farit með hann í helli nökkvorn. Þá tóku þeir þrjár hellur ok settu á egg ok lustu rauf á hellunni hverri. Þá váru teknir synir Loka, Váli ok Nari eða Narfi. Brugðu æsir Vála í vargslíki ok reif hann í [sundr] Narfa, bróður sinn. Þá tóku æsir þarma hans ok bundu Loka með yfir þá þrjá [egg]steina, einn undir herðum, annarr undir lendum, þriði undir knésfótum, ok urðu þau bönd at járni. — Eysteinn Björnsson's edition[1] |
Now Loki was taken truceless, and was brought with them into a certain cave. Thereupon they took three flat stones, and set them on edge and drilled a hole in each stone. Then were taken Loki's sons, Váli and Nari or Narfi; the Æsir changed Váli into the form of a wolf, and he tore asunder Narfi his brother. And the Æsir took his entrails and bound Loki with them over the three stones: one stands under his shoulders, the second under his loins, the third under his houghs; and those bonds were turned to iron. — Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur's translation[2] |
Váli, son of Loki, is otherwise unknown. A variant version in the Hauksbók manuscript of stanza 34 of "Völuspá" refers to this event; it begins: "Þá kná Vála | vígbǫnd snúa", usually amended to the nominative Váli in order to provide a subject for the verb; in Ursula Dronke's translation in her edition of the poem, "Then did Váli | slaughter bonds twist".[3] This presumably refers to Váli, son of Óðinn, who was begotten to avenge Baldr's death, and thus it is not unlikely that he bound Loki; but the Hauksbók stanza interrupts the flow of "Völuspá" at this point and presumably draws on a variant oral tradition. It is likely that this was Snorri's source,[4] and that he interpreted the manuscript text Vála vígbǫnd as "bonds from Váli's act of slaughter", thus inventing a second Váli.[3] In the rather cryptic prose at the end of "Lokasenna", which appears to be derived from Snorri's account, Narfi transforms into a wolf and his brother Nari's guts are used to bind their father.[5]
References
- ^ Eysteinn Björnsson, ed., Snorra-Edda: Formáli & Gylfaginning: Textar fjögurra meginhandrita, 2005.
- ISBN 9780559130960), pp. 76–77.
- ^ ISBN 9780198111818, p. 76.
- ISBN 9780195153828, p. 309.
- ^ Dronke, pp. 347, 371–72.