magic waverlowe, and the sword that will fight of itself if he is
bold who bears it." (_Skirnisför_.)

The connexion of both with the Midsummer fires, originally part of
an agricultural ritual, can hardly be doubted.

* * * * *

_Loki_, or Lopt, is a strange figure. He is admitted among the Aesir,
though not one of them by birth, and his whole relation to them
points to his being an older elemental God. He is in alliance with
them against the giants; he and Odin have sworn blood-brothership,
according to _Lokasenna_, and he helps Thor to recover his hammer
that Asgard may be defended against the giants. On the other hand,
while in present alliance with the Gods, he is chief agent in their
future destruction, and this they know. In Snorri, he is a mischievous
spirit of the fairy-tale kind, exercising his ingenuity alternately in
getting the Gods into difficulties, and in getting them out again. So
he betrays Idunn to the giants, and delivers her; he makes the bargain
by which Freyja is promised to the giant-builders of Valhalla,
and invents the trick by which they are cheated of their prize;
by killing the otter he endangers his own head, Odin's and Hoeni's,
and he obtains the gold which buys their atonement. Hence, in the
systematising of the Viking religion, the responsibility for Baldr's
death also was transferred to him. At the coming of the fire-giants
at Ragnarök, he is to steer the ship in which Muspell's sons sail
(_Völuspa_), further evidence of his identity as a fire-spirit. Like
his son the Wolf, he is chained by the Gods; the episode is related
in a prose-piece affixed to _Lokasenna_: