Laufey was the mother of Loki in Norse myth — a being also called Nál (“Needle”), whose name means “leafy” or “full of leaves,” and who, in the most beautiful interpretation, represents the dry foliage that bursts into flame when struck by the lightning of her consort Farbauti. Remarkably, Loki was most often named after his mother — Loki Laufeyjarson — a rare honour in the patriarchal naming of the Norse.
The Mother of Loki
Laufey (Old Norse Laufey, “leafy island” or “full of leaves”), also known as Nál (“Needle,” perhaps as in pine-needles or because she was slender), was the mother of the trickster Loki by the giant Farbauti. Her precise nature is uncertain — she is sometimes counted among the goddesses (ásynjur), sometimes among the giant-kind — but it is as Loki's mother that she is remembered, and remarkably, it was after her, not his giant father, that Loki was usually named: he is called Loki Laufeyjarson, “Loki, son of Laufey,” a matronymic that stands out in the patrilineal world of Norse naming and may hint at her special importance or at something unusual about Loki's parentage.
The Leaves and the Flame
Laufey's name has invited the same elegant nature-myth interpretation as that of her consort. If Farbauti (“cruel-striker”) is the lightning, then Laufey — “leafy,” with her by-name Nál, “needle” (pine-needles) — is the dry foliage and trees, the tinder of the forest. And their child Loki, so bound up with fire, is the flame that springs to life when the lightning strikes the dry leaves. In this reading, Laufey is the leafy tinder from which fire is born, the dry forest waiting for the spark, the mother whose substance becomes the flame that is her son. It is a vision of the trickster's birth as a natural mystery: fire kindled from the meeting of lightning and leaves.
The Slender Needle
Her by-name Nál, “Needle,” was explained in the sources by saying she was slender and delicate, like a needle — a small, fine being. This detail, alongside her leafy name, paints Laufey as a slight, perhaps gentle figure, the mother of the most volatile of all the beings of myth. The contrast between the slender, leafy mother and her chaotic, fiery son is itself suggestive: from something delicate and dry came the spark that would, in the end, help burn down the world.
The Leafy Mother of Fire
Laufey endures as the mother of Loki and, in interpretation, as the dry foliage that becomes flame — a figure known almost entirely through her son, yet given unusual prominence by his matronymic name. She embodies the tender side of the nature-myth woven into Loki's parentage: where Farbauti is the violent striking lightning, Laufey is the leafy tinder, and between them they kindle the flame. In naming the trickster after his leafy mother, the Norse left a small mystery: why this most dangerous of beings was, of all the gods, the son named for his mother.
The leafy tinder struck by her lightning-consort, she gave her name to the flame that was her son — Loki Laufeyjarson, the trickster called, uniquely, after his mother.