Geri and Freki are Odin's two wolves: according to the Eddic poem Grímnismál (stanza 19) and Snorri's Gylfaginning, the All-Father gives them all the food on his table while he himself lives on wine alone. Both names mean roughly "the greedy one". That is almost all the myths tell us – yet those few lines sit inside a dense web of skaldic verse, battlefield imagery and warrior cult. Here is what is attested, what remains interpretation, and why the pair has nothing to do with Fenrir.
A king sits a stranger between two fires for eight nights. No food, no drink. Only the king's young son brings him a full horn, once. The prisoner drinks, the flames already licking at his cloak, and then he starts to talk: about the halls of the gods, about a boar cooked every evening, about two ravens – and about two wolves lying beside their master, eating whatever he hands them.
The prisoner is Odin. The poem is Grímnismál, "The Lay of Grímnir", part of the Poetic Edda. In the middle of this monologue by firelight stand four short lines about Geri and Freki. There is no other story about them in the sources. And yet they are among the best-known animals of Norse mythology. Let's look at why such a brief stanza carries so much weight.
The Poetic Edda is a collection of mythological and heroic poems preserved mainly in the Codex Regius, an Icelandic manuscript from the later 13th century. How old the individual poems are is disputed; many scholars consider Grímnismál a comparatively old wisdom poem rooted in pre-Christian tradition, but no firm date exists. Odin appears in it as Grímnir ("the masked one") and lists, one item after another, what exists in the world of the gods.
The wolf stanza sits exactly between the cook of Valhalla and the ravens. Henry Adams Bellows translated it in 1923:
Freki and Geri does Heerfather feed,
The far-famed fighter of old:
But on wine alone does the weapon-decked god,
Othin, forever live.Grímnismál 19, translated by Henry Adams Bellows (1923, public domain)
In Old Norse the stanza opens Gera ok Freka seðr gunntamiðr – "Geri and Freki the battle-accustomed one feeds". The punchline comes in the second half: en við vín eitt, "but on wine alone" Odin lives. The stanza before it describes how the cook Andhrímnir boils the boar Sæhrímnir in the cauldron Eldhrímnir, food for the Einherjar. The stanza after it names the ravens Huginn and Muninn. The poem builds a small order of the table: the dead warriors eat meat, the wolves get Odin's share, Odin himself drinks.
Snorri Sturluson, Icelandic chieftain and scholar, wrote his Prose Edda around 1220 as a handbook for poets. In Gylfaginning ("The Deluding of Gylfi") a king named Gylfi questions three mysterious figures about the gods. In the chapter on the food of Valhalla (chapter 38 in the usual numbering) Gylfi asks what Odin himself eats. In Arthur G. Brodeur's public-domain translation of 1916, the answer is that the food standing on his board Odin "gives to two wolves which he has, called Geri and Freki; but no food does he need; wine is both food and drink to him". Snorri then quotes the Grímnismál stanza as his proof.
Right after this come the ravens: they sit on Odin's shoulders, he sends them out at daybreak, and they return at the morning meal with news. That is why, Snorri says, men call him the Raven-God. Snorri deliberately places wolves and ravens side by side, as the poem already does. Note the division of labour. The ravens bring something: knowledge. The wolves take something: meat.
Snorri adds nothing beyond the poem – no adventures, no origin story, no role at Ragnarök. That is striking in an author who otherwise loves to fill gaps. If you read today that the wolves guarded Odin on his travels or were raised by him as cubs, you are reading modern embroidery.
Geri goes back to a Germanic adjective meaning "greedy", attested in several early languages; Old Norse has gerr, "greedy". Freki belongs with Old Norse frekr, "greedy, voracious, insatiable"; related words include Gothic faihufriks ("covetous", literally "money-greedy") and German frech, which once meant "greedy, bold" before it came to mean "cheeky". Both names are adjectives turned into nouns: "the greedy one" and "the ravenous one". John Lindow stresses exactly this in his handbook: the names describe a quality, not a personality.
Two names with nearly the same meaning – that is typical of animal pairs in Norse poetry. Thor's goats Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr have near-synonymous names too, and so do the ravens Huginn ("thought") and Muninn ("mind, memory"), whose meanings overlap. The pairing is a matter of rhythm and symmetry rather than two character studies.
Interestingly, freki is also an ordinary poetic word for "wolf". In the þulur, the Old Norse versified lists of synonyms that Snorri preserves in Skáldskaparmál, both Geri and Freki appear among the names for wolves. A poet could say "Geri" or "Freki" and simply mean "wolf". Whether the proper names grew out of these poetic words or the other way round can no longer be decided.
The real oddity of the stanza is not the wolf but the wine. In Viking-Age Scandinavia wine was an import, expensive and rare. People drank mostly ale and mead. At trading sites such as Birka, archaeologists have found sherds of Tating ware, elaborate jugs from the Frankish world that are often linked with wine drinking; serving wine showed wealth and connections. A god who lives on wine alone is the most refined host imaginable.
Scholars offer several readings, none of them proven:
And then there is the frame story of Grímnismál, rarely mentioned in this context. Odin sits starving and parched between the fires of King Geirröðr. The only one who helps him is the king's son Agnarr – with a horn full of drink. Offering a drink to a god who lives "on wine alone" is exactly the right hospitality. Whether the poet intended that irony we cannot know. It stands out, though, when you read the poem straight through.
Skaldic poetry is the intricate court poetry of the Viking Age, usually composed in praise of kings and jarls. Its main tool is the kenning: a pictorial circumlocution of at least two parts, such as "raven-food" for corpses or "sea of wounds" for blood. Geri and Freki turn up constantly here – not as characters but as building blocks.
In Skáldskaparmál Snorri collects examples from older poems. According to his quotations, Þórðr Kolbeinsson uses "Geri's ale" for blood, Einarr Skúlason "Geri's morsel" for the slain, and Þórðr Sjáreksson "Freki's meal" for corpses. In verses by Þjóðólfr of Hvinir and Egill Skallagrímsson, "Geri" simply stands for "wolf". The principle never changes: whoever wins a battle feeds the wolf. The warrior as wolf-feeder is one of the most common images of praise in skaldic poetry.
The link shows clearly in the Poetic Edda itself. In the First Lay of Helgi Hundingsbane, before a battle, "Vithrir's hounds" (Viðris grey) run hungrily across the island. Viðrir is a by-name of Odin, and Bellows notes in his translation that Odin's wolves Geri and Freki are meant. Whether the poet really had the pair in mind, or wolves in general as "Odin's hounds", is an open question. The historian of religion Bruce Lincoln sees passages like this as the source of the greedy names: the wolves are the animals that come after the battle.
The wolf also lurks in memorial poetry. In Eiríksmál, a 10th-century poem on Eric Bloodaxe, who fell in England, Odin explains why he gathers brave kings to himself: one can never know when the grey wolf will attack the seat of the gods. Here, though, the wolf of the end-time is meant, not Geri or Freki – more on that below.
The fact that Odin is surrounded by wolves and ravens has a clear poetic background. Old Norse and Old English poetry share a fixed motif that scholars, following Francis P. Magoun (1955), call the "beasts of battle": raven, eagle and wolf appear before or after a fight to feast on the dead. In the Old English poem on the Battle of Brunanburh (King Æthelstan's victory of 937) the dark raven, the eagle and the grey wolf remain after the fighting to share the corpses. Norse poems repeat the image countless times.
Seen this way, Odin's animal retinue makes sense. He is the god who takes the fallen to himself. Ravens and wolves are the animals that do the same on earth – with the body rather than the soul. Geri and Freki are no lapdogs; they are tamed scavengers of the battlefield.
How closely wolf and raven belong together can also be seen in nature, and this is one of the few places where biology helps the interpretation. Common ravens deliberately follow wolves to their kills, as field studies in Yellowstone National Park have shown. And wolves really do eat on a feast-or-famine basis: after days without prey they gorge on large amounts in a short time. "The greedy one" is a well-observed name. The biologist Bernd Heinrich has even suggested that Odin with his ravens and wolves reflects an ancient hunting partnership between humans, ravens and wolves. It is a stimulating idea, but a modern hypothesis, not something the sources say.
Talk about Odin's wolves and you almost always end up at his ravens. Our article on Hugin and Munin covers the birds in detail; here we just look at how the two pairs relate.
In Grímnismál the stanzas follow one another directly: wolves first (19), then ravens (20). Snorri keeps that order. Both pairs carry speaking, near-synonymous names, both are battlefield animals, both belong to Odin. And yet they do opposite jobs. The ravens fly out and come back; they connect Odin to the world and stand for thinking and remembering. The wolves stay in the hall; they eat and stand for hunger and combat. Put simply, the ravens are Odin's head and the wolves his belly – which he does not feed himself but passes on.
Now it gets tricky. Many websites show pictures "of Geri and Freki" on helmets or gold pendants. In reality there is no object on which the pair is depicted with certainty. There are, however, images that can be linked to Odin and wolves. Let's sort them by how solid they are.
The Torslunda plates. In 1870 four bronze dies from the Vendel period, roughly the 6th to 7th centuries, were found in Torslunda parish on Öland. They were used to press the thin foils that decorated princely helmets, and today they are in the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm. One die shows a dancing man in a horned helmet next to a warrior wearing a wolf skin with a wolf's head. A laser scan revealed that the dancer's eye had apparently been deliberately removed (Arrhenius & Freij 1992). That fits Odin. But the wolf-man is a warrior, not an animal from Valhalla. More in our article on the Torslunda plates.
Helmets from Vendel and Valsgärde. Helmet foils from the boat-grave cemeteries of Vendel and Valsgärde in Uppland show spear-carrying riders with two birds above them. These scenes are often read as Odin with his ravens. No wolves appear on them.
Sutton Hoo. In the ship burial at Sutton Hoo in eastern England, probably the grave of King Rædwald (died around 624), lay a purse lid of gold and garnet. It shows, twice, a man between two wolves, an old image type known as the "master of animals". Whether it means Odin, a hero, or a nod to the Wuffing dynasty ("wolf people") is open. On the helmet from the same grave, the gold foil behind the garnets of one eyebrow was left out; in 2014 Neil Price and Paul Mortimer suggested the wearer was deliberately evoking the one-eyed god. Exciting – but interpretation.
Bracteates. Gold bracteates are thin, single-sided gold pendants of the Migration Period (5th to 6th centuries). Many show a large male head above a four-legged animal, often with a bird; Karl Hauck and others read this as Odin healing a horse. A bracteate from Trollhättan shows a figure with a hand in a wolf's jaws, usually taken as Týr and Fenrir. An image type "Odin with two wolves" is not securely attested on bracteates.
The Böksta stone. On this runestone from Uppland (U 855, around 1050) a rider with a spear, accompanied by two dogs and two birds, hunts an animal, probably an elk, while a man on skis with a bow stands nearby. In 1983 Lars Silén proposed reading the rider as Odin with Geri, Freki, Huginn and Muninn, and the skier as Ullr. It may just as well be an ordinary hunt.
The Lejre figurine. The tiny silver figure from Lejre on Zealand (around 900, found in 2009) shows a seated figure on a throne with two birds and two animal heads. The excavators thought of Odin with ravens and wolves. The clothing, however, looks rather female, and some suggest Frigg or Freyja. See our article on the Lejre figurine.
If Geri and Freki are Odin's animals, the wolf-warriors are his men. Old Norse sources know the úlfheðnar, "wolf-skins" or "wolf-coats", warriors who fought in wolf pelts. In Haraldskvæði by the skald Þorbjörn hornklofi (around 900), the berserkers roar and the úlfheðnar howl at the battle of Hafrsfjord. Vatnsdæla saga describes King Harald's warriors called úlfheðnar, who wore wolf pelts instead of mail.
In Ynglinga saga Snorri ties such fighters explicitly to Odin: his men went into battle without mail, mad as dogs or wolves, biting their shields, strong as bears or bulls. That is where the term berserksgangr, the berserk fury, comes from. We cover this in depth in our articles on the berserkers and the úlfheðnar.
Michael Speidel has argued in several works for a widespread Germanic wolf-warrior cult under Odin's patronage, pointing to names such as Wulfhroc or Wolfgang and to images like the Torslunda plates. The thesis is influential but not undisputed; how organised such warrior groups were we simply do not know. What is certain is that wolf names were popular. Úlfr is among the most common men's names on Scandinavian runestones, and in Egils saga Egill's grandfather is called Kveldúlfr, "Evening Wolf", because he grew restless and dangerous at nightfall.
No source names Geri and Freki as the model for the wolf-warriors. But they are the mythic image of what those warriors wanted to be: greedy in battle, tamed only by the god.
Online, the wolves of Norse mythology tend to melt into a single grey creature. The sources keep them clearly apart.
Fenrir is a son of Loki and the giantess Angrboða. The gods bind him with the fetter Gleipnir, and Týr loses his hand in the process. At Ragnarök Fenrir breaks free and swallows Odin; Odin's son Víðarr avenges his father. Fenrir is Odin's enemy and killer, not his pet. There are other wolves too: Skǫll and Hati, who chase sun and moon, and the hound or wolf Garmr before Gnipahellir.
And here comes the twist. In Völuspá the refrain says the fetter will break and freki renna, "the wolf will run". Here freki is the ordinary poetic word for wolf – and the wolf is Fenrir. John Lindow has pointed out the irony: Odin feeds one Freki at his table, and another "freki" devours him at the end. The wordplay is attested; any intention behind it is not.
Picture stones, too, are about Fenrir, not Geri and Freki. On Thorwald's Cross at Andreas on the Isle of Man, a wolf bites the foot of a figure with a raven on his shoulder, and the Ledberg stone in Östergötland shows a similar scene. These carvings depict Odin's end, as explained in our article on Gosforth and Thorwald's Cross.
The name Geri shows up in one more surprising place. In the late Eddic-style poem Fjǫlsvinnsmál, two hounds, Gífr and Geri, guard the gate of the maiden Menglǫð. The name evidently suited any greedy guardian.
Scholars went looking for parallels early on. Jacob Grimm, in his Deutsche Mythologie, noted that wolf and raven were also sacred to Apollo. The Indologist Maurice Bloomfield compared the pair with the two dogs of the death god Yama in the Rigveda. Bruce Lincoln linked Geri linguistically with Garmr, the hell-hound. Such comparisons are instructive, but they do not prove a shared original. Two animals at a god's side is so obvious a motif that it may have arisen independently more than once.
In the end Geri and Freki say more about their master than about themselves. Odin is a god of contradictions: he gives an eye for wisdom, hangs nine nights on the tree, lies, seduces, grants victory and takes it back. His animals reflect that. Sleipnir carries him through the worlds, the ravens bring knowledge, the wolves embody hunger and death. In Valhalla they lie at the high seat, well fed, while the god himself does not eat.
No battle, no doom – just a ruler who gives and two animals who take. Perhaps that quiet is why this wolf pair is so popular today. People who have Geri and Freki engraved on slate usually mean loyalty and wildness held in check. That is a modern reading, but one that builds on the stanza instead of bending it. For the wolf as a whole, see our article on the wolf in the Norse world.
For courage. For remembrance. For legends that live on.
What do the names Geri and Freki mean? Both mean "the greedy one" or "the ravenous one". Geri belongs with Old Norse gerr, Freki with frekr ("greedy, voracious"), which is related to German frech.
Where are Geri and Freki mentioned in Norse mythology? The key passage is Grímnismál 19 in the Poetic Edda. Snorri repeats it in Gylfaginning, and the names also appear in skaldic kennings and in the wolf-name lists of Skáldskaparmál.
Why does Odin only drink wine? The sources only say that wine is both food and drink to him. It is read as a sign of lordly generosity, as a link to ecstasy, and as a hint at Odin as lord of the dead.
Are Geri and Freki the same as Fenrir? No. Fenrir is Loki's son and kills Odin at Ragnarök. Geri and Freki are Odin's own wolves in Valhalla. The only confusion is that "freki" is also used as a word for Fenrir in Völuspá.
Are there archaeological depictions of Odin's wolves? None that are certain. Torslunda, Sutton Hoo, the Böksta stone and the Lejre figurine are sometimes linked to them, always as interpretation.
What do Odin's wolves symbolise? In the sources, above all the battlefield: wolf and raven devour the fallen. Today they often stand for loyalty and tamed wildness – a modern but natural reading.
Odin · Valhalla · The Einherjar · The Fenris-wolf.
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