The Binding

After Baldr's death — which the myths lay at Loki's door — the Æsir stopped laughing. They are described catching him, binding him with the entrails of his own son, and fixing a serpent above his face to drip venom into his eyes. His wife Sigyn sits beside him with a bowl to catch it; when she turns away to empty it the venom falls, and Loki convulses, and the earth shakes. Norse tradition explained earthquakes this way. It is not a story about evil. It is a story about a marriage, and it is where his story rests.