Then Gangleri said, ‘Loki was the cause of many things. First he caused Baldr’s death, and then managed to have Baldr retained in Hel. But was no vengeance taken for this?’
High replied, ‘He was repaid in a way that he will long feel. With the gods as angry at him as might be expected, he ran away and hid on a mountain. There he built a house with four doors, so that he could look out from the house in all directions. During the day he often changed himself into a salmon and hid in a place called Franang’s Falls. He set his mind to discovering what sort of ploy the Æsir might devise to catch him in the waterfall. Sitting in the house, he took some linen yarn and looped it into a mesh in the way that nets have been made ever since. A fire was burning in front of him. Suddenly he saw that the Æsir were only a short distance away – Odin having discovered Loki’s whereabouts from Hlidskjalf. Loki jumped up and threw the net into the fire, as he dashed out to the river.
‘When the Æsir reached the house, the first to enter was Kvasir, the wisest of all. He looked into the fire, and when he saw the outline of the net in the ashes, he realized that it was a device for catching fish. He told the Æsir, and they set to work. They made a net for themselves, copying from Loki what they had seen in the ashes.
‘With the net ready, the Æsir went to the river and cast it into the waterfall. Thor held one end and all the Æsir held the other, and together they dragged the net. But Loki moved ahead of them and, diving deep, he placed himself between two boulders. As the Æsir pulled the net over him, they realized that something alive was there. They went back up to the waterfall and again cast the net. This time they weighed it down so heavily that nothing could slip under it. Again Loki stayed ahead of the net, but when he saw it was only a short distance to the sea, he jumped up over the top of the net and swam back up to the falls. The Æsir, now seeing where he was going, returned to the falls. They divided themselves between the two banks, while Thor waded in the middle of the river, and then they worked their way down towards the sea.
‘Loki realized that he had two options. He could leap out to the sea, which meant putting his life in danger, or he could once again jump over the net. He chose the latter, jumping as fast as he could over the net. Thor reached out and succeeded in grabbing him, but still the salmon slipped through his hands. Thor finally got a firm hold on it near its tail, and for this reason salmon are narrow towards the rear.
‘Loki was now captured, and with no thought of mercy he was taken to a cave. They [the Æsir] took three flat stones and, setting them on their edges, broke a hole through each of them. Then they caught Loki’s sons, Vali and Nari or Narfi. The Æsir changed Vali into a wolf, and he ripped apart his brother Narfi. Next the Æsir took his guts, and with them they bound Loki on to the top of the three stones – one under his shoulders, a second under his loins and the third under his knees. The fetters became iron.
‘Then Skadi took a poisonous snake and fastened it above Loki so that its poison drips on to his face. But Sigyn, his wife, placed herself beside him from where she holds a bowl to catch the drops of venom. When the bowl becomes full, she leaves to pour out the poison, and at that moment the poison drips on to Loki’s face. He convulses so violently that the whole earth shakes – it is what is known as an earthquake. He will lie bound there until Ragnarok.’