Who Is Laufey in Norse Mythology? The Myth Behind God of War
In Norse mythology, Laufey is the mother of Loki — and almost nothing else about her survives. She appears in the medieval sources only in passing: a name, a nickname, and one of the strangest naming choices in the entire mythology. Yet on February 16, 2027, she becomes the title character of a PlayStation blockbuster, God of War: Laufey, announced at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2026. If you’ve just searched “who is Laufey?” after the trailer — here is what the actual Norse sources say, what the game invents, and why Marvel fans have her backwards.
Laufey in the old sources: Loki’s mother, in a single line
Snorri Sturluson’s 13th-century Prose Edda introduces the trickster god with a brisk genealogy: Loki is the son of the giant Fárbauti, and his mother is Laufey, also called Nál. That is close to everything the medieval texts give us. She has no recorded deeds, no dialogue, no myth of her own — one of the most consequential mothers in the mythology, reduced to a name in a list.
The nickname helps a little. A late saga tradition (Sörla þáttr) explains that she was called Nál — “Needle” — because she was slender and delicate. Her husband Fárbauti’s name, by contrast, is usually read as something like “dangerous striker” — a violent, jolting force. Keep that contrast in mind; it matters for the best theory about what Laufey originally represented.
Why “Loki Laufeyjarson”? The matronymic mystery
Here is the genuinely strange part. Norse culture named children after their fathers — Leif Erikson is “Erik’s son”. By that rule, Loki should be remembered as Loki Fárbautason. He isn’t. In the Poetic Edda‘s Þrymskviða — the poem where Loki hunts for Thor’s stolen hammer Mjölnir — he is repeatedly called “Laufeyjar sonr”: Laufey’s son. A matronymic, in a fiercely patronymic world.
Scholars have offered several explanations, none certain:
- Status. Laufey may have outranked her giant husband. Intriguingly, her name appears among the goddesses in the þulur (the Edda’s name-lists) — meaning Loki may be a god on his mother’s side and a giant only on his father’s, the reverse of what most people assume.
- Distance from the father. Calling Loki “Laufey’s son” quietly cuts the giant Fárbauti out of the picture — perhaps deliberately, for a god the Æsir never fully trusted.
- Simple meter. The most boring theory: “Laufeyjar sonr” simply fits the poetic line better than “Fárbautasonar”. Medieval poets were practical people.
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What does the name Laufey actually mean?
The name is usually parsed as lauf (“leaf, foliage”) + -ey (“island”) — “island of leaves”, or simply “the leafy one”. Put the family together and a striking picture emerges, one 19th-century scholars loved: Fárbauti the “dangerous striker” is the lightning bolt; Laufey is the dry foliage it strikes; and Loki is what’s born from that union — wildfire. It’s a tidy nature-myth reading of why the trickster is so fascinating and so destructive, though modern scholars treat it as an elegant guess rather than settled fact.
Whatever its origin, the name never died. Laufey remains a living Icelandic women’s name to this day — one the singer Laufey Lín Jónsdóttir has recently carried onto global pop charts, adding yet another layer to the search results.
Laufey in God of War: who is Faye?
In Santa Monica Studio’s Norse saga, Laufey is Faye — Kratos’s second wife and the mother of Atreus. The 2018 game begins at her funeral pyre, and its final twist reveals both of her secrets: she was Laufey the Just, a Giant of Jötunheim, and her son’s true Jötunn name is Loki. The mother-of-Loki relationship comes straight from the Edda; nearly everything else — the marriage to a Greek god, the Leviathan Axe she leaves behind, her quiet orchestration of the whole plot — is the studio’s invention, built on the blank page the sources left.
God of War: Laufey, dated February 16, 2027 on PS5 at San Diego Comic-Con 2026, makes her playable for the first time, with Deborah Ann Woll (True Blood, Daredevil) returning from Ragnarök to give Faye her voice and motion capture. Sony also confirmed a new Kratos-led sequel is in development — so the family business is far from finished.
Marvel got Laufey backwards
If you know the name from the MCU, prepare for whiplash: in Marvel’s Thor (2011), Laufey is Loki’s father — the icy Frost Giant king slain in his own throne room. The comics flipped the mythological Laufey’s sex and swallowed Fárbauti’s role whole. The game is, for once, the more faithful adaptation:
| Norse mythology | Marvel | God of War | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who is Laufey? | Loki’s mother, possibly a goddess | Loki’s father, Frost Giant king | Loki’s (Atreus’s) mother, a Giant |
| Spouse | Fárbauti, a jötunn | Fárbauti (mother, barely shown) | Kratos |
| Known for | A name, a nickname, a mystery | Dying by Loki’s hand | Setting the whole saga in motion |
The blank page that became a legend
Laufey survived a thousand years on the strength of five words — “Laufey or Nál is his mother” — and a son who couldn’t stop making history. That emptiness is exactly why she works as a modern protagonist: the sources left room for anyone to imagine who the woman behind Loki really was. Before the game arrives, get fluent in her world with our guides to the Nine Realms of Norse cosmology and Norse symbols and their meanings — the map and the language of Laufey’s universe.