Fenrir: The Norse Wolf Who Took Tyr's Hand and Swallowed Odin

Fenrir is the monstrous wolf of Norse mythology, a son of Loki and the giantess Angrboda. The gods raised him among themselves, then bound him with a magic ribbon called Gleipnir, and the god Tyr lost his right hand doing it. Fenrir stays chained until Ragnarök. Then he breaks loose, swallows Odin, and dies at the hands of Odin's son Vidar. Snorri Sturluson's Edda, written around 1220, tells the story at length. Parts of it also survive in the older poems he drew on, and two tenth-century stone crosses are read as showing scenes from it.

Snorri usually calls him Fenrisúlfr, the Fenris wolf. The poems use other names for him, and they give some of his deeds to other wolves.

Which wolves appear in Norse mythology?

Besides Fenrir, the sources name several wolves and one monstrous hound, and they do not always agree on which one does what. The table lists what each text says about each of them.

Chapter numbers follow Brodeur's translation of Gylfaginning; stanza numbers follow Bellows's translation of the poems. Snorri sometimes made little effort to smooth out disagreements like these. His editor, Anthony Faulkes, notes in the Viking Society edition that Snorri lets the sun be caught by Skoll in one chapter and by Fenrir in a poem he quotes near the end of the same book.

Who are Fenrir's parents?

In Gylfaginning, chapter 34, Snorri names Loki as the father and Angrboda, a giantess of Jotunheim, as the mother. The same union produced Jormungandr, the Midgard Serpent, and Hel. When prophecy warned the gods that great misfortune would come from these three, Odin had them brought to him. He threw the serpent into the sea and sent Hel to Niflheim to receive those who die of sickness or old age. The wolf the gods kept and raised at home, and only Tyr dared to go near him with food.

The poems use other names. In Völuspá, stanza 54, the stanza on his death, Fenrir is the son of Hveðrungr, which Faulkes reads as apparently a name for Loki; Bellows translates the phrase simply as "the giant's son." In Lokasenna, Tyr calls the wolf Hróðrsvitnir. Bellows glosses it as "the mighty wolf," and Faulkes notes that it looks like a name for Fenrir.

How did the gods bind Fenrir?

By appealing to his wish to be famous for his strength. The wolf grew every day, and every prophecy said he would be the gods' destruction. So they made a very strong fetter called Laeding and invited him to test his strength on it. The first time he lashed out, it broke. The second fetter, Dromi, was much stronger. Fenrir shook himself, dashed it against the ground, and the pieces flew far. Snorri says this is the source of two sayings for anything very hard: to get loose from Laeding, and to dash out of Dromi.

Odin then sent Skirnir, the messenger of the god Freyr, to dwarves in the land of the black elves. They made Gleipnir out of six things:

• the sound of a cat's footfall
• the beard of a woman
• the roots of a rock
• the sinews of a bear
• the breath of a fish
• the spittle of a bird

Snorri's narrator offers proof with a straight face: you have surely noticed that women have no beards, that a cat makes no sound when it jumps, and that rocks have no roots. The finished fetter was as soft and smooth as a silk ribbon.

Why did Fenrir bite off Tyr's hand?

Because the gods lied to him. They took Fenrir to the island of Lyngvi in the lake Amsvartnir, showed him the ribbon, and dared him to break it. He saw the problem at once: snapping a band that thin would bring him no glory, he said, and if it had been made with cunning, it would never go on his legs. The gods replied that a wolf who had burst great iron fetters could surely break a silk band, and promised to let him go if he could not. He agreed on one condition, that one of them put a hand in his mouth as a pledge of good faith.

Nobody moved until Tyr held out his right hand. The ribbon held, and the harder Fenrir pulled, the tighter it grew. In Brodeur's translation: "Then all laughed except Týr: he lost his hand."

Snorri also tells it briefly in his portrait of Tyr, chapter 25. The hand came off at the joint now called úlfliðr, the wolf-joint, which Faulkes's glossary defines as the wrist. Tyr, Snorri adds, is one-handed and is not called a reconciler of men.

Loki throws the episode in Tyr's face in Lokasenna, stanzas 38 and 39. Tyr answers that he may lack a hand, but Loki lacks his wolf, and that the wolf will wait in fetters until the gods fall. The Store norske leksikon entry on Fenrir, by Ellen Næss of the University of Oslo, points to what makes the betrayal worse: Tyr had fed the wolf since he came to Asgard and was the god closest to him.

Where is Fenrir chained?

The gods ran a chain called Gelgja from the fetter through a great slab named Gjoll and sank the slab deep into the earth. Then they drove a stone called Thviti still deeper and used it as the pin. When Fenrir snapped at them, they wedged a sword into his mouth, with the hilt against his lower jaw and the point against the upper. He howls, and the slaver running from his mouth becomes a river called Van. He lies there until Ragnarök.

Gangleri, the questioner in Gylfaginning, asks why they did not simply kill him. The answer is that the gods held their sanctuary so sacred that they would not stain it with the wolf's blood, even though the prophecies said he would be the slayer of Odin.

What happens to Fenrir at Ragnarök?

In Gylfaginning, chapter 51, the earth shakes so hard that every fetter and bond breaks, and Fenrir gets loose. He advances with his mouth open, the lower jaw against the earth and the upper against the sky, and Snorri adds that he would open it wider if there were room. Fire blazes from his eyes and nostrils. Odin rides out against him in a gold helmet, with his spear Gungnir. Thor cannot help, because he is fighting the Midgard Serpent. The wolf swallows Odin.

Vidar avenges his father. Snorri says he sets one foot on the wolf's lower jaw, grips the upper jaw with one hand, and tears the mouth apart. That foot wears a shoe whose material has been gathered through all of time: the scraps of leather people cut from their shoes at the toe and heel. Vafþrúðnismál, stanza 53, also has Vidar tear the jaws apart. Völuspá, stanza 54, has him thrust a sword into the wolf's heart instead. Snorri quotes that sword stanza in the same chapter, a few lines after his own account of the shoe.

Yggdrasil trembles in that same chapter; its story is in Yggdrasil: The World Tree, Its Meaning, and the Nine Worlds.

Are Skoll and Hati Fenrir's children?

Hati probably is, if Hróðvitnir is Fenrir. For Skoll, the case rests on one translator's reading. In Gylfaginning, chapter 12, two wolves are the reason the sun hurries across the sky. Skoll runs behind her and will catch her. Hati, called Hróðvitnisson, runs ahead and will seize the moon. Both descend from an old giantess in a forest called Ironwood, east of Midgard, who bears many sons in the shape of wolves.

The family link rests on two phrases. Grímnismál, stanza 39, calls Hati the son of Hróðvitnir, close to the name Tyr uses for Fenrir in Lokasenna. Völuspá, stanza 40, says the giantess in Ironwood bore Fenris kindir, Fenrir's kin. Bellows translates that as "the brood of Fenrir" and reads Skoll and Hati as the children of the giantess and Fenrir. Brodeur renders the same words as "Fenrir's brethren."

The sources also disagree about which wolf catches the sun. In Vafþrúðnismál, stanzas 46 and 47, it is Fenrir who catches the sun, not Skoll. Bellows sees a confusion between the two wolves. Faulkes treats it as one more version of the story that Snorri quoted without reconciling, and he notes that Snorri's Managarm, the moon-swallower, appears in no other source.

Is Garm the same as Fenrir?

Faulkes thinks Garm may be another name for Fenrir in Völuspá, whose refrain says that Garm howls loud before Gnipahellir, the fetter will burst, and the wolf will run free. Snorri plainly treats them as two creatures. In Snorri's Ragnarök, Garm is a separate hound, "the greatest monster," who fights Tyr until each kills the other, so in his version the beast that kills Tyr is not the one that took his hand.

Are Geri and Freki related to Fenrir?

Snorri and Grímnismál present them only as Odin's animals, with no family tie to Fenrir. Grímnismál, stanza 19, says Odin feeds Geri and Freki while he himself lives on wine alone. Snorri repeats it in Gylfaginning, chapter 38: Odin gives the food on his table to his two wolves, because wine is food and drink to him. Brodeur glosses the names as "Ravener" and "Glutton." Bellows gives "The Ravenous" and "The Greedy."

The word freki turns up once more, for a different wolf. Faulkes's glossary marks it as a specifically poetic word for wolf. In a Völuspá stanza that Snorri quotes (stanza 51 in Bellows), the host sails to Ragnarök with Loki at the helm, and the monstrous brood comes með freka, "with the wolf." Faulkes identifies that wolf as Fenrir. So Odin feeds two wolves at his own table and is swallowed by a third at Ragnarök.

The same chapter seats his ravens on his shoulders; they have their own article, Odin's Ravens: What the Eddas Say About Huginn and Muninn.

Where can you see Fenrir in Viking art?

On two stone crosses, both older than Snorri's book. Thorwald's Cross, from Andreas on the Isle of Man, dates to around AD 950. Manx National Heritage describes one face as Odin being devoured by the wolf at Ragnarök, and the other as Christian imagery: a figure with a book and a cross, a fish, and a defeated serpent. A runic inscription down one side names the man who raised it, Thorwald.

The Gosforth Cross in Cumbria, England, is an early tenth-century Anglo-Scandinavian high cross, 4.42 meters tall. Historic England's listing describes a figure holding a spear at a beast's jaw and identifies him as Vidar avenging the death of Odin. The same cross shows Loki bound, with Sigyn kneeling beside him, and Heimdall with his horn. Heimdall's part in the end of the world is in Heimdall: Nine Mothers, Gjallarhorn, and the Watch at Bifröst.

Both crosses were carved more than two centuries before Snorri wrote his Edda, which the Store norske leksikon dates to about 1220. They are also older than the Codex Regius, the manuscript that preserves most of the Eddic poems, which was written in Iceland in the second half of the 1200s, according to the same encyclopedia. The names given to the carved figures are the identifications of Manx National Heritage and Historic England. The Store norske leksikon entry on Fenrir calls the myth well known among the Norse and points to the Gosforth scene, carved in a part of England with a large Norse population.

From the archive

The wolf appears in Fenrir: Chained Wolf, Tyr: Hand in the Jaws, and Fenrir: Sword and Eclipse. These are contemporary designs drawing on the mythology. More Norse designs are in Folklore.

For the gods themselves, read Norse Gods: Who They Were, and Who Wrote Them Down.

Sources

• Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, 1916, chapters 12, 25, 29, 34, 38, 51, and 53. The wolves of the sun and moon, Tyr's hand, Vidar's shoe, the binding, Geri and Freki, Ragnarök, and the sun's daughter.
• Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning, edited by Anthony Faulkes, second edition, Viking Society for Northern Research, 2005. Old Norse text of Völuspá 40 as Snorri quotes it; introduction on Snorri's unreconciled variants; note to 14/14 to 17 on Skoll, Hati, Managarm, and Fenrir; index entries for Fenrir, Garmr, Hróðvitnir, Hveðrungr, and Freki; glossary entries for úlfliðr, freki, and fíflmegir.
• Völuspá, translated by Henry Adams Bellows, 1923, stanzas 40, 44, 51, 53, and 54, with commentary.
• Lokasenna, translated by Henry Adams Bellows, 1923, stanzas 38 and 39, with commentary.
• Vafþrúðnismál, translated by Henry Adams Bellows, 1923, stanzas 46, 47, and 53, with commentary.
• Grímnismál, translated by Henry Adams Bellows, 1923, stanzas 19 and 39, with commentary.
• Ellen Næss, "Fenrisulven", Store norske leksikon. The binding as betrayal, and the Gosforth Cross.
• Store norske leksikon, "Snorres Edda" (Børge Nordbø) and "Den eldre Edda". Dates of Snorri's book and of the Codex Regius.
• Manx National Heritage, "Vikings Live comes to the Isle of Man", 17 March 2014. Thorwald's Cross, its date, carvings, and inscription.
• Historic England, "High cross in St Mary's churchyard, Gosforth", list entry 1012643. Date, height, and the identification of the carved scenes.