Sigyn was the faithful wife of Loki — the Norse goddess of devotion and loyalty, who stayed at her treacherous husband's side even in his terrible punishment, holding a bowl above his face to catch the venom that drips upon him until the end of the world. In a pantheon full of grand and violent deeds, her quiet, endless act of love is among the most moving images in all of Norse myth.
The Faithful Wife
Sigyn (Old Norse Sigyn, perhaps “victory-girlfriend”) was an Aesir goddess and the wife of the trickster Loki, by whom she bore sons, including Narfi and Nari (or Vali). Through all of Loki's mischief, scheming and growing wickedness, Sigyn remained loyal to him — a figure of steadfast devotion married to the most faithless being in the cosmos. She is the very personification of fidelity and constancy, her loyalty all the more striking for the unworthiness of its object.
The Binding of Loki
Sigyn's great moment came in the grimmest of the Norse myths. After Loki had engineered the death of Baldr and heaped mockery on the gods, the Aesir hunted him down and took their terrible revenge. They seized Loki's two sons; they transformed one into a wolf, who tore the other apart; and with the entrails of the slain son they bound Loki fast to three sharp rocks in a deep cave. Then the goddess Skadi fixed a venomous serpent above him, so that its poison would drip down forever onto Loki's face, searing him in endless agony — a torment to last until Ragnarök.
The Bowl of Venom
And here Sigyn performed the act for which she is forever remembered. Rather than abandon her bound and tormented husband, she took her place beside him in the cave and held up a bowl over his face, catching the serpent's dripping venom before it could fall upon him. So long as she holds the bowl, Loki is spared the burning poison. But the bowl fills, and when it is full she must turn away to empty it — and in those moments the venom falls upon Loki's face, and he writhes in such agony that the whole earth shakes, and men below call it an earthquake. Then Sigyn returns and raises the bowl again, and the brief mercy resumes. This is her eternal vigil: catching the poison, emptying the bowl, returning, again and again, through all the ages until the world ends.
The Image of Devotion
Sigyn endures as one of the most poignant figures in Norse myth — the faithful wife who would not leave her doomed and guilty husband, who chose to share his punishment and ease his suffering when she might have walked away. She embodies an ideal of loyalty and self-sacrificing love taken to its absolute limit: devotion that persists not because its object deserves it, but simply because it is given. In the dark cave, holding her bowl against the dripping venom for all eternity, she is love that does not abandon, even at the end of the world.
The most faithless being in the cosmos has the most faithful of wives — who stands in the dark holding a bowl above his tormented face, and will go on holding it until the world itself ends.