The Snaptun Stone is one of the few depictions of Loki, the Norse Trickster God. Found on the Western border between Norway and Sweden, the stone was carved sometime around 1000 CE, and shows Loki with his lips stitched together.
This is almost certainly a reference to a story in chapter 25 of the Prose Edda. In the story Loki makes a bet with Brok, a dwarf, and agrees that should he lose Brok can have his head. Sure enough, he does lose, and Brok and the dwarves come to claim what was promised. Cordial as ever, Loki said he had no qualms about giving up his own head, but added that the dwarves could have no part of his neck. At which point everyone discussed which part of the head was the head, which part was the neck, and which parts were somewhere in between. No one could come to an agreement that was to everyoneâs liking, so Brok allowed Loki to keep his head (and neck). But as punishment for escaping payment through tricky wordplay, he stitched Lokiâs lips together.
For any fans of rhetorical devices out there, this story spawned the continuum fallacy called âLokiâs Wagerâ â the unreasonable insistence that if a concept cannot be defined it cannot be discussed. The fallacy can be countered by establishing a reasonable working definition of the concept in question.










