Byggvir and Beyla: Freyr’s Household Speaks

45. Byggvir. Byggvir I am named, and am thought alert, by all gods and men; therefore am I joyful here, that all the sons of Hropt drink beer together.

46. Loki. Be silent, Byggvir! Thou couldst never dole out food to men, when, lying in thy truckle bed, thou wast not to be found, while men were fighting.

55. Beyla. The fells all tremble: I think Hlorridi is from home journeying. He will bid be quiet him who here insults all gods and men.

56. Loki. Be silent, Beyla! Thou art Byggvir’s wife, and with much evil mingled: never came a greater monster among the Æsir’s sons.

The prose before Lokasenna lists who was at Ægir’s feast and names “Frey’s attendants, Byggvir and Beyla”. That is the only statement of their role. Everything else comes from the verses, where Loki is hurling insults at the gods.

Byggvir speaks in stanza 43: were he of noble birth like Freyr, he would crush Loki limb by limb. Loki replies that he sees a little thing wagging its tail and snapping, one that belongs at Freyr’s ears and clattering under the mills (stanza 44). In stanza 45 Byggvir gives his name and says he is thought alert by gods and men. Loki answers with an accusation of absence when men were fighting.

Beyla speaks once. She says the fells tremble, that she thinks Thor is journeying from home, and that he will silence the insulter. Loki calls her Byggvir’s wife and a great deal worse, and Thor comes in. What the poem says about their character comes from Loki’s mouth and is abuse, not a neutral report. Nothing in it places them in Vanaheimr.

The prose lists them among the guests with Sif, Bragi, Idunn, Týr, Njörðr, Skaði, Freyr, Freyja and Víðarr, and as Freyr’s attendants. Byggvir’s wish to be as noble as “Ingun’s Frey” in stanza 43 is the poem’s only direct link between him and Freyr besides the prose.

Because Loki insults every guest in turn, what he says of Byggvir and Beyla, such as the husband-and-wife claim and the taunt about absence from the fighting, cannot be taken as fact about them. No meaning for either name is given in the sources quoted here, so none is offered. Loki’s fate after the feast is told in the entry on Sigyn.