Every time I hear the kenning for Loki “Burden of Sigyn’s arms,” it brings to mind Michelangelo’s pietá, not the one in Rome but the one in the Uffizi in Florence which shows Mary, Joseph, and the Magdalene holding a Christ made doubly heavy by the burden of a dead body and by the burden of grief. Here Michelangelo caught something essential about the nature of grief: it has a terrible weight. Shakespeare said in King John, where he has a queen sit down on the floor next to the throne having lost a son (and Sigyn is a queen) “for my grief is so great that none but the huge firm earth can bear it.” That to me, is Sigyn. She bears the unbearable. There’s no glamour in Her ordeal.