Sigyn

In a pantheon filled with warriors, kings, and schemers, Sigyn is something else entirely—a goddess of fidelity, grief, and endurance. She is the wife of Loki, which is no small burden in any telling, and her story is not loud or filled with thunder. It is quiet and unyielding, shaped by her love and her silence. When Loki is finally punished for his part in the death of Baldr—for his betrayals and cruelties—he is bound beneath the earth, a serpent placed above his head to drip venom onto his face for eternity. And Sigyn is there beside him. She does not flee, does not rage. She kneels, holding a bowl to catch the venom, so it does not burn him.

She stays. Day after day, century after century. When the bowl fills, she must rise to empty it, and the drops that fall in the meantime make Loki twist and scream, shaking the earth—earthquakes, the old stories say. But always, she returns. Sigyn is not passive. She is strong in a way that defies sagas. Her power is not in conquest or command but in constancy. She is the hand that does not tremble. The love that does not abandon. In a world that reveres battle and boasts, Sigyn is a quiet defiance, a counter-spell against cruelty.

Visual Description:

Sigyn is depicted as delicate and resolute, with long chestnut hair braided tightly down her back and eyes the pale blue of distant ice. Her face is calm, almost serene, even as shadows move around her. She wears a gown of muted gold and soft grey, the hem stained from kneeling on stone. Her arms are always lifted, cradling a wide bronze bowl—worn and dented from centuries of service. Around her waist is a cord of silver, from which hang tiny charms: a leaf, a serpent, a droplet of amber.

In artwork, she is often shown crouched beside a writhing Loki, her figure bathed in faint light, while all else is dark and damp and trembling. Sometimes her fingers are blistered. Sometimes her back is bowed. But her expression remains unchanged—tender, steadfast, sorrowful. She is not vengeance. She is not redemption. She is what remains when the world ends and you stay anyway.