Summary
Sigyn is the wife of Loki in the Scandinavian myths, and one of the goddesses. Snorri names her in Loki's genealogy: his wife is Sigyn, and their son Nari or Narfi.
Her story begins where Loki's comes to an end. Loki had contrived the death of Baldr, then fled and hid in the shape of a fish; the gods caught him and carried him into a cave. They took his two sons, Váli and Narfi, turned Váli into a wolf, and he tore his brother apart; they bound Loki with his son's entrails over three stones, and the bonds turned to iron. Skaði hung a serpent above his face so that its venom would drip on him. Sigyn stands beside him and holds a bowl under the drops of venom. When the bowl is full she goes to empty it, and while she is away the venom drips on his face and he jerks so violently that the whole earth shakes; people call this an earthquake. So he stays until Ragnarök. Gylfaginning 50. Völuspá says that the seeress saw a captive lying there in the likeness of Loki, and that Sigyn sits there and is not glad about her husband.
The idea the story turns on is that the bowl delays the pain without preventing it. Sigyn does not loosen the bond or plead for mercy; she stands between the venom and the face, and each time she goes to empty her bowl the venom reaches him and the earth trembles. She does this beside a husband bound with the entrails of one of his sons, after another son had been turned into a wolf. She is the last of his household left with him, and what she can do is make the torment intermittent.
We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Sigyn has the genitive Sigynjar, as in Loki's poetic name "Sigyn's husband", so the ending appears only in the genitive and the stem is s, hard g and n. These are the letters of Arabic sajn in their order, since Arabic jīm was a hard g in old Semitic, as it is still pronounced in Egypt. In Lisān al-ʿArab sajn is imprisonment, sijn the prison, and sajīna a woman imprisoned. On this reading Sigyn is the woman of the prison, who lives in her husband's place of confinement without being confined herself, which is what the story makes her: the stories tell of no deed of hers except sitting in the cave where Loki is bound.
Linguistic Root
Sigyn and sajn
| Form | Use |
|---|---|
| Sigyn | nominative |
| Sigynjar | genitive, "Sigyn's husband" |
Lane, under s-j-n, gives sajanahu, "he imprisoned him", sijn, "a prison", and sajīn and masjūn, "imprisoned", said of a woman too as sajīna. From the same root comes sajana al-hamm, "he kept his anxiety hidden and did not reveal it"; sijjīn, a place beneath the seventh earth in some commentaries, and also "hard" and "lasting". One of its examples runs: "there is nothing more deserving of long restraint than a tongue".
The comparison keeps all three letters in order: s for s, jīm for hard g, n for n. In this project's sound table Arabic jīm answers hard g in Hebrew, Akkadian and Greek, and in the Juthoor laws jīm often becomes g in the recorded correspondences. It is the same correspondence by which Frigg is read as faraj.
Cleasby–Vigfusson has no entry for the name. Its first part is close to sig, "victory", which the dictionary says appears without its r in poetry and in personal names; the second part it does not explain.
Other readings in the essay
The essay puts sajana first, explaining it as the prison Sigyn chooses out of love, and mentions sijjīn with it. Then sakana, calm and steadfastness, which keeps s and n with k in place of jīm, and whose sense of staying in one place fits the story, since Sigyn never leaves her post. Then sajā, to grow still, which has no n. Then sayyid + gūn, lady of faithfulness, which divides the name differently from the way Norse grammar divides it.
Key Mythic Narratives
The prose ending of Lokasenna
After Loki insults the gods at Ægir's feast in Lokasenna, the prose ending tells of his binding: he hid as a salmon in the Fránangr falls, was caught, and was bound with the entrails of his son Váli, while his son Narfi became a wolf; Skaði hung up the serpent, and Sigyn sat holding the bowl. The story is the same in both places, with the two sons' names reversed. The page on Váli separates this Váli, son of Loki, from Váli, son of Odin.
Among the goddesses
Snorri counts Sigyn among the goddesses who sat at the gods' feast attended by Ægir, with Frigg, Freyja and Iðunn, wife of Bragi. Poets call Loki "Sigyn's husband".
Symbolic Reading
The Arabic essay reads Sigyn as the most faithful wife in Norse myth: she sits beside her bound husband holding the bowl, choosing to imprison herself with him out of love, and her faithfulness despite her husband's crime makes her the image of the loyal lady. The Norse rereading essay reads Loki's binding as an attempt to put off disaster that does not last, since the bond breaks at Ragnarök. In the text Sigyn's bowl is a smaller delay inside that delay: it holds back the venom while she holds it, then it is emptied and the venom gets through.
Cross-Cultural Parallels
Isis searched for the body of her husband Osiris until she found it, shaded it with her feathers and made breath for it with her wings. Sigyn holds her bowl over her husband's face to shield him from the venom. Both images show a woman standing over her husband's body to protect it; the difference is that Osiris is a wronged victim whom his wife brings back to life, while Loki is a punished offender whose wife can only delay his pain. Loki himself is compared with the bound Prometheus, whose liver the eagle eats, and in Prometheus's story no wife stands beside him.