Fránangr

"Gleaming water." The waterfall where Loki hid himself in the guise of a salmon after he verbally abused the gods in Ægir's hall, or, according to Snorri Sturluson in Gylfaginning, to escape the wrath of the gods for his part in Baldr's death. He built a house nearby from which he could look in all directions. Often throughout the day he would change himself into a salmon and hid in the falls, pondering what manner of wile the gods would devise to take him. But when he sat in the house, he took twine of linen and knitted meshes as a net is made since. Then he saw that the Æsir were close upon him, for Odin had seen from Hliðskjálf were he was. Loki cast the net he was working on into the fire and leaped out into the river, changing into a salmon.

When the Æsir had come to the house, he went in first who was wisest of all, who is called Kvasir; and when he saw in the fire the white ash where the net had burned, then he perceived that that thing must be a device for catching fish, and told it to the Æsir. Straightway they took hold, and made themselves a net after the pattern of the one which they perceived, by the burnt-out ashes, that Loki had made. When the net was ready, then the Æsir went to the river and cast the net into the fall; Thor held one end of the net, and all of the Æsir held the other, and they drew the net. But Loki darted ahead and lay down between two stones; they drew the net over him, and perceived that something living was in front of it.

A second time they went up to the fall and cast out the net, having bound it to something so heavy that nothing should be able to pass under it. Then Loki swam ahead of the net; but when he saw that it was but a short distance to the sea, then he jumped up over the net-rope and ran into the fall. Now the Æsir saw where he went, and went up again to the fall and divided the company into two parts, but Thor waded along in mid-stream; and so they went out toward the sea.

Now Loki saw a choice of two courses: it was a mortal peril to dash out into the sea; but this was the second — to leap over the net again. And so he did: be leaped as swiftly as he could over the net-cord. Thor clutched at him and got hold of him, and he slipped in Thor's hand, so that the hand stopped at the tail; and for this reason the salmon has a tapering back.

After his capture Loki was bound by the Æsir and shall remain bound until the time of Ragnarök.

References

Sources

  • Gylfaginning, 50.
  • Lokasenna, colophon.