Loki Symbols in Norse Mythology: Artifacts, Runes, and Real Meaning

Loki isn’t like other Norse gods. No temples were built for him. No amulets carved in his honor. Not a single place name across all of Scandinavia carries his name. Yet his symbols — serpents, wolves, tangled knots, fire — appear on more jewelry and tattoos today than almost any other figure in Norse mythology.

That gap between ancient indifference and modern obsession makes Loki symbols worth understanding. He wasn’t a god people worshipped. He was a god people told stories about — and those stories produced some of the most recognizable imagery in the Norse world.

Loki was also Odin’s blood brother. In the poem Lokasenna (stanza 9), Loki invokes this oath when the gods try to throw him out of a feast. Blood brotherhood — fóstbrœðralag — was a real Viking-Age institution, binding as biological kinship. It’s the reason the gods tolerated a shapeshifting trickster figure among them for as long as they did.

The Snaptun Stone — Loki’s Only Known Face

In 1950, a small soapstone block turned up on a beach near Snaptun, Denmark. It was a hearth stone — a tuyère — placed in front of a blacksmith’s bellows to shield them from forge heat. Two holes let the bellows pump air through it.

Carved into the stone: a mustachioed face with stitched lips. That face is almost certainly Loki.

The sewn lips reference a specific story from the Prose Edda (Skáldskaparmál, chapter 35). Loki wagered his own head against the dwarf Brokk that Brokk’s brother couldn’t forge anything better than the treasures Loki had already commissioned — golden hair for Sif, the ship Skíðblaðnir, and the spear Gungnir. When the dwarves produced Mjölnir — Thor’s hammer — Loki lost.

He tried to wriggle out by arguing Brokk could take his head but not his neck. Nobody could settle where one ended and the other began. So Brokk sewed Loki’s lips shut with a leather thong called Vartari.

Every Loki Symbol and the Story Behind It

The Binding of Loki

After Loki engineered Baldur’s death — tricking the blind god Höðr into throwing a mistletoe dart — the gods captured him and chained him to three rocks. The bonds were made from the entrails of his own son Narfi, then turned to iron.

A venomous serpent was placed above his face. Loki’s wife Sigyn held a bowl to catch the dripping venom. When the bowl filled and she turned to empty it, venom struck his skin. His writhing in agony — the Norse believed — caused earthquakes.

This scene was carved onto the Gosforth Cross in Cumbria, England, around 940 CE. The cross stands over 4 meters tall — the tallest Viking cross in England — and it’s still standing in St. Mary’s churchyard today. On it, you can see Loki bound, the serpent above, and Sigyn beside him with her basin. It shares space with images of Thor, Heimdall, and Viðarr on the same stone — Norse and Christian imagery side by side.

Loki’s Knot (Snartemo V)

The Snartemo V — commonly called Loki’s Knot — was found on a 6th-century artifact in Norway. It’s a closed six-loop square knot. The tangled, intertwined design mirrors Loki’s reputation for entangling others in deceit.

Whether this knot directly represents Loki is debated among scholars. But the connection between knots and Loki runs deeper than one artifact. In later Icelandic, the common noun loki literally means “knot” or “tangle.” Across Scandinavia, spiders — master web-weavers — are called by variants of his name: Swedish lockespindlar (“Locke-spiders”), Faroese lokkanet (“Loki’s web”). That linguistic thread connects Loki to loops and tangles in ways that predate any single artifact.

The Loki Sigil — A Modern Symbol

Unlike every other symbol on this list, the Loki Sigil is not historical. It wasn’t carved on any Viking-Age artifact. It emerged from Rökkatru — a contemporary belief system honoring the Jötnar (giants) and other Norse figures typically cast as adversaries.

The sigil depicts a stylized flame, connecting Loki to fire. But there’s an important distinction: the old theory that Loki was a “fire god” (proposed by Jacob Grimm in 1835) has been largely dismissed by modern linguists. The similarity between Loki and logi (flame) is probably coincidental. Most scholars now trace the name to the Germanic root luk- — meaning loops, knots, and closed-off spaces.

Jörmungandr — The World Serpent

Loki’s son Jörmungandr was thrown into the ocean by Odin and grew large enough to encircle the entire world, biting his own tail. He doesn’t merely live in the sea — he constitutes the boundary between the ordered world and chaos. The serpent biting its tail also connects to the Ouroboros tradition found across many cultures.

When Jörmungandr releases his tail at Ragnarök, that boundary vanishes. He and Thor destroy each other in mutual combat — Thor strikes the killing blow but staggers nine steps and drops dead from the serpent’s venom. Two forces locked together, neither surviving the other.

Fenrir — The Wolf That Swallows Everything

Fenrir was so feared that the gods bound him with Gleipnir — a magical fetter forged by dwarves from six impossible things: the sound of a cat’s footstep, 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. Only the god Tyr was brave enough to place his hand in Fenrir’s mouth as a pledge — and lost it when the wolf realized the binding was real.

At Ragnarök, Fenrir breaks free and swallows Odin whole. Scholar John Lindow identified that the binding of Fenrir and the binding of Loki follow the same mythological pattern — the cosmos needs these figures restrained to function. Their release ends everything. If you’re drawn to wolf imagery in jewelry, pieces like the wolf head sterling silver bracelet carry echoes of Fenrir’s presence.

Kenaz and Hagalaz — The Runes Linked to Loki

No rune is officially “Loki’s rune,” but two are commonly associated with him. Kenaz — the torch rune — connects to his fire associations and represents knowledge, illumination, and destruction in equal measure. Hagalaz — the hail or disruption rune — mirrors his talent for creating chaos that reshapes the situation around him.

For a deeper look at how the entire Elder Futhark system works as wearable symbols, we’ve covered the full set in our Viking runes symbolism guide.

Three Facts Most Loki Articles Leave Out

1. Loki was never worshipped. Unlike Thor — whose hammer pendants are found across Scandinavia — or Odin — whose ravens appear on countless brooches — there’s no archaeological evidence of Loki devotion. No temples, no altars, no amulets, zero place names. Every artifact depicting him shows his punishment, never reverence. Scholar Gabriel Turville-Petre wrote in 1964 that “more ink has been spilled on Loki than on any other figure in Norse myth” — yet we still don’t know what he fundamentally was.

2. His name probably means “tangle.” The “fire god” theory (Grimm, 1835) is now considered folk etymology. Modern linguists connect Loki to the Germanic root luk-, relating to loops, knots, and tangles. The evidence: later Icelandic uses loki as a common noun meaning “knot.” He’s credited with inventing the fishing net — itself a system of loops. And across Scandinavia, spiders carry his name because they weave tangled webs.

3. He may have helped create humanity. In the poem Völuspá (stanza 18), three gods — Odin, Hœnir, and Lodur — created the first humans, Ask and Embla. Lodur gave them blood and healthy color. Some scholars, notably Ursula Dronke, identify Lodur as another name for Loki. Medieval Icelandic rímur poetry sometimes uses “Lodur” as a synonym for Loki. If they’re right, the trickster who eventually helps end the world also helped start it.

Loki at Ragnarök — Where Every Symbol Converges

Loki’s final act connects every symbol back together. When Ragnarök begins, the bonds made from his son’s entrails snap. He breaks free. He captains the ship Naglfar — which the Prose Edda describes as built entirely from the untrimmed fingernails and toenails of the dead. The texts actually warn against burying people with uncut nails, because every nail adds material to that ship.

Loki leads Hel’s forces and an army of giants against the gods. He fights Heimdall — the watchman of Asgard and his longtime enemy since their seal-form fight over Freyja’s necklace Brísingamen — and they kill each other. Jörmungandr dies locked in combat with Thor. Fenrir swallows Odin.

Serpent, wolf, bound god, chaos — the symbols aren’t separate stories. They’re chapters in one long arc that ends at Ragnarök.

Wearing Norse Mythology

Loki symbols appeal to people who identify with adaptability, creative thinking, and a certain comfort with not fitting neatly into categories. The serpent, the wolf, the tangled knot — these aren’t symbols of straightforward power like Thor’s hammer. They represent something more layered.

That energy shows up in pieces like the Cobra Snake Ring — coiled, alert, cast in solid .925 silver. Or the Anaconda sterling silver bracelet at 95 grams, where two snake heads meet at the clasp. Browse our dragon rings and Celtic rings for more designs rooted in mythology and Old World symbolism.

If you’re drawn to Norse mythology beyond the surface, the original Prose Edda and Poetic Edda are both available in English translation. The symbols mean more when you know the stories that created them.