No being do the gods of the North fear like Fenrir, the wolf. They rear him themselves, they bind him by cunning – and one of them pays for it with his hand. At the end of the world Fenrir breaks loose and devours Odin himself. It is the story of guilt, sacrifice and a fate even the gods cannot escape.
Fenrir (also Fenrisúlfr, ‘Fenris-wolf’) is one of the three monstrous children of Loki and the giantess Angrboða – sibling of the Midgard Serpent Jörmungandr and the death-goddess Hel. A prophecy warns the gods early: these three will one day bring them ruin. The gods act – and in doing so seal their own fate.
Instead of killing Fenrir, the Æsir take the young wolf to Asgard and rear him. Yet no one dares go near him – only Tyr, the god of law and courage, feeds him. Fenrir grows, and he grows uncannily fast. Soon it is clear: this beast will become too big, too strong, too dangerous. The gods resolve to bind him.
Twice they try mighty iron chains, Lœðingr and Drómi. Disguised as a game and a test of strength they lay them on the wolf – and both times Fenrir bursts them with ease, even with pride. Now the gods must resort to cunning. They send to the dwarves, the best smiths of the nine worlds, and these fashion from six impossible things a band: from the sound of a cat’s footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, the breath of a fish, the spittle of a bird and the sinews of a bear. Because all this was used up in the making, these things no longer exist. The band is called Gleipnir – soft as silk, thin as a ribbon, and unbreakable.
Fenrir is suspicious. So thin a band, yet meant to hold him? He senses the trick. He will be bound only on one condition: one of the gods must lay a hand in his jaws as a pledge. All hesitate – only Tyr steps forward and lays his right hand between the wolf’s teeth. The gods bind Fenrir with Gleipnir; he strains, but the more he pulls, the tighter the band holds. When the wolf realises he is betrayed, he bites down – and Tyr loses his hand. Since then he is ‘the one-handed’. It is the most striking sacrifice-tale of the Edda: a god knowingly gives his weapon-hand so the world may have peace. More in our Tyr portrait.
Fenrir is anchored deep underground to the rock; a sword is wedged between his jaws to hold his maw open. From his slaver flows the river Ván (‘expectation’). There he lies and waits – until the end of the world.
At Ragnarök earthquakes burst every fetter, and Fenrir comes free. With jaws that reach from earth to sky he storms across the field of the last battle. Against him rides Odin himself – and the Allfather falls: Fenrir devours the highest of the gods. But vengeance follows at once. Odin’s silent son Vidar sets his mighty shoe in the wolf’s lower jaw and tears its maw apart. So Fenrir ends – but only after taking the father of the gods.
“Now Garm howls loud before Gnipahellir, / the fetters will burst, and the wolf run free; / … the mighty one comes, and the wolf shall fall.”Völuspá, translation after Henry Adams Bellows (public domain)
Tyr – the god who gave his hand · Loki · Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent · Ragnarök · The Norse pantheon · The nine worlds.
Poetic Edda (Codex Regius): Völuspá, Vafþrúðnismál, Lokasenna. Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda / Gylfaginning (ch. 34, 51), c. 1220. English public-domain translation: Henry Adams Bellows, The Poetic Edda (1923). Scholarship: Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology; John Lindow, Norse Mythology (2001). Evidence and interpretation are kept apart.