Fenrir: The Monstrous Wolf of Norse Mythology
Explore Fenrir, the monstrous wolf of Norse mythology: his binding by the gods, his role in Ragnarok, and his relationship to Skoll, Hati, and other wolves.
Fenrir (Old Norse Fenrisúlfr, “Fenrir’s wolf,” or Fenrir simply, often translated “fen-wolf” or “marsh-wolf”) is the most fearsome of the wolves in Norse mythology, the monstrous son of Loki and the giantess Angrboða, and the destined killer of Odin at Ragnarok. According to the Gylfaginning, the gods of Asgard, recognizing the threat posed by the children of Loki and Angrboða, took the three siblings and sent them to the appropriate realms: the World Serpent was cast into the encircling sea, Hel was cast into the underworld, and Fenrir was bound on the island of Lyngvi in the lake Ámsvartnir, where he remained until the end of the world.
This page is an encyclopedic account of Fenrir: his origin, his growth, his binding by the gods, his relationship to the other wolves of the Norse cosmos, and his role in the Norse eschatology of Ragnarok.
The Birth of Fenrir
According to the Gylfaginning, Fenrir was the second of three children of Loki and the giantess Angrboða, the other two being the World Serpent and the goddess of the underworld, Hel. The gods of Asgard, recognizing the threat posed by the three siblings, took them and sent them to the appropriate realms. The World Serpent was cast into the encircling sea; Hel was cast into the underworld, where she was given authority over the dead in nine worlds; and Fenrir was taken to Asgard, where the gods hoped to keep him under their control.
The image of the three monstrous children of Loki and Angrboða — the serpent, the wolf, and the underworld-goddess — is one of the structural images of Norse mythology. The three are the great threats of the world order, and the three are the children of the trickster-god and the giantess of “she who offers sorrow.” The genealogy is significant: the children of the ancient and the trickster are the great threats, and the gods must take preventive action to contain them.
The Growth of Fenrir
According to the Gylfaginning, only Týr was brave enough to approach Fenrir and feed him, and the wolf grew so fast that the gods became alarmed. They decided to bind him, and they constructed a chain called Læðingr, which they offered to the wolf as a test of his strength. The wolf easily broke the chain, and the gods made a second chain, twice as strong, called Drómi. The wolf broke this one as well, and the gods realized that ordinary means would not contain him.
The growth of Fenrir is described in the Gylfaginning as being so rapid that the gods were alarmed, and the image of the wolf growing larger and stronger as the gods watch is a striking one. The growth is not just physical; it is prophetic — the wolf grows as the doom of the gods approaches, and the gods’ attempts to bind him are a kind of race against the wolf’s growth. The image of the wolf as a being who grows is one of the most fundamental in the Norse mythology of the wolf.
The Binding of Fenrir
Realizing that ordinary means would not contain Fenrir, the gods sent to the dwarves of Svartalfheim for a special chain. The dwarves forged a cord called Gleipnir, made of six impossible things:
- the sound of a cat’s footfall
- the beard of a woman
- the roots of a mountain
- the sinews of a bear
- the breath of a fish
- the spittle of a bird
The dwarves forged Gleipnir from these six things, and the chain was smooth and soft like a silken ribbon, but stronger than any iron chain. The gods brought Gleipnir to Fenrir and offered it to him as a test, but the wolf, suspicious of the chain, refused to be bound unless one of the gods would place a hand in his mouth as a pledge of good faith. Only Týr was willing, and he placed his right hand in the wolf’s mouth. The wolf was bound, and as he struggled and the chain held, he bit off Týr’s hand at the wrist. Týr was one-handed thereafter, and the loss of his hand is a permanent mark of the cost of the binding of Fenrir.
The binding of Fenrir is one of the great acts of the Norse gods, and it is the structural counterpart of the slaying of the World Serpent at the end. In both cases, a great threat is contained (or defeated) by the gods, but at a cost — Týr loses his hand, Thor will lose his life. The Norse gods are not all-powerful; they pay a price for the maintenance of the world order, and the price is marked in their bodies as well as in their lives.
The Image of the Six Impossible Things
The six impossible things used to forge Gleipnir are a remarkable piece of Old Norse mythopoetic invention. Each is impossible in itself, and the six together are doubly impossible — the chain is not just strong, it is made of things that do not exist in the real world. The image of the chain being forged from the sound of a cat’s footfall (a thing that cannot be heard), the beard of a woman (a thing that does not grow), the roots of a mountain (a thing that is not alive), the sinews of a bear (a thing that is not the bear’s sinews but is in the bear), the breath of a fish (a thing that is in the water), and the spittle of a bird (a thing that is in the air) is a complex image of impossible things that, in their impossibility, form a chain stronger than any iron.
The image is also a catalogue of the elements: earth (the mountain’s roots), water (the fish’s breath), air (the bird’s spittle), fire (the cat’s footfall, perhaps a reference to a cat-spirit), wood (the woman’s beard, a paradoxical growth), and the bear’s sinews (which is the animal). The six impossible things are the building blocks of the cosmos, and the chain of them is the cosmos itself in the form of a binding. The wolf is bound by the substance of the world itself.
The Wolves of the Norse Cosmos
Fenrir is not the only wolf in the Norse cosmos. The principal wolves are:
- Fenrir — the monstrous son of Loki and Angrboða, bound by the gods, destined to kill Odin at Ragnarok
- Sköll (“mockery”) — the wolf who chases the sun
- Hati Hróðvitnisson (“he who hates,” son of Hróðvitnir) — the wolf who chases the moon
- Geri and Freki — the two wolves of Odin, who sit at his feet in Valhalla
- Garmr — the hound who guards the gates of Helheim and who breaks free at Ragnarok
- The unnamed wolves of the Ironwood — the descendants of Fenrir, who are said to be numerous and terrible
The wolves of the Norse cosmos are not all the same. Sköll and Hati pursue the sun and moon, and at Ragnarok they will swallow their prey. Geri and Freki are the loyal companions of Odin in Valhalla. Garmr is the underworld hound, the guardian of the gates of Hel. Fenrir is the most fearsome of them all, the destined killer of Odin.
The image of the wolf of the ironwood is one of the more obscure in the Völuspá. The Völuspá describes “the Ironwood” as a place where the giantess Angrboða (or, in some readings, Fenrir himself) dwells with the descendants of Fenrir, who are said to be numerous and terrible. The image of the ironwood as a place of wolf-descendants is a striking one, and it is the basis for the modern conception of Fenrir as the progenitor of a great race of wolves.
Fenrir at Ragnarok
The doom of Fenrir is bound up with the doom of Odin at Ragnarok. The Völuspá describes the breaking of Fenrir’s bonds and his advance on the field of Vígríðr:
“From the east comes a ship, with the giants in it, and Loki is at the helm; the wolf comes, and the dragon flies, and the world is consumed.”
The wolf breaks his bonds and runs free, with his lower jaw on the earth and his upper jaw against the sky, and he opens his terrible mouth. The two encounter each other on the field of Vígríðr: Fenrir and Odin, the wolf and the Allfather, the monster and the chief of the gods. They destroy each other. Odin is swallowed by the wolf, and Fenrir is killed by Odin’s son Vidar, who steps into the wolf’s mouth with a great shoe (made from the leather-strips that have been gathered through the ages by those who wished to help the Allfather in his hour of need) and tears the wolf’s jaws apart.
The death of Fenrir at the hands of Vidar is one of the mythic justice moments of the Norse eschatology. The wolf has killed the Allfather, but the Allfather’s son avenges him. The image of Vidar stepping into the wolf’s mouth and tearing the jaws apart is a structural counterpart of Thor’s stepping into the World Serpent’s mouth and killing it, and the two events form a kind of paired act of vengeance.
The Cost of the Binding
The image of Týr placing his hand in Fenrir’s mouth as a pledge is one of the most powerful in the Eddas. The cost of the binding is the god’s own body, and the god is willing to pay it. The image is a structural image of the cost of the world order: the gods maintain the cosmos at the cost of their own bodies, and the mark of the cost is the one-handedness of Týr. Týr is the god of war and law, and his loss of a hand is the loss of a part of his power, a permanent mark of the vulnerability of the god and the world he maintains.
The image of Týr’s hand in the wolf’s mouth is also a paradox: the hand is in the mouth of the wolf as a pledge, and the wolf, having been bound, bites it off. The pledge is violated, but the binding holds. The wolf’s faithfulness to its pledge (to bite the hand if the gods cheated) is a kind of negative faithfulness — the wolf is faithful to its promise, and the gods are forced to pay the cost. The image is one of the most complex in Old Norse literature, and it has been the subject of considerable scholarly debate.
Fenrir in the Eddas and Sagas
The principal sources for Fenrir are the Gylfaginning of the Prose Edda (which contains the most systematic account), the Völuspá of the Poetic Edda (which contains the prophecies of Fenrir’s role at Ragnarok), the Hávamál (which contains a stanza on the binding of the wolf), and the Vafþrúðnismál (which contains a stanza on the origin of Fenrir from Loki and Angrboða). The Húsdrápa of Úlfr Uggason (10th century) and the Þórsdrápa of Eilífr Goðrúnarson (10th century) also contain references to Fenrir, and the Völsunga saga and the Hervarar saga contain allusions to the great wolf in the heroic tradition.
The runestones of the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages also contain references to the wolf. The most famous is the Rök Stone in Sweden, which contains a reference to a “warrior” who was killed by a wolf, perhaps a reference to Odin’s death at Fenrir’s jaws. The Stora Ramsjö stone in Sweden and several Danish runestones also contain wolf-related imagery.
Fenrir in the Comparative Tradition
Fenrir has been extensively compared to the wolves of other Indo-European traditions. The Fenrir of the Norse tradition, the Cerberus of the Greek tradition, the Garmr of the Norse underworld, the wolves of the Iranian tradition, and the wolves of the Celtic tradition are all members of a family of wolf-figures who guard the boundaries of the underworld and who threaten the world order.
The Norse Fenrir is distinctive in being bound by the gods (rather than being a guard dog of the underworld), and in being the destined killer of the chief god (rather than a mere guardian of the underworld). The Norse image of the wolf as a being who is bound by the gods is unusual, and it suggests a particular Norse conception of the relationship between the gods and the great threats: the gods are not able to kill the great threats, they can only bind them, and the binding is only temporary.
The Wolf in the Heroic Tradition
The wolf is a recurring figure in the heroic poetry and the sagas of the Old Norse tradition. The hero is often persecuted by a wolf or a wolf-like being, and the resolution is the slaying of the wolf. The most famous example is the figure of the wargs (vargr, outlaws) of the sagas, who are sometimes described in wolf-like terms. The wargs of the Gísla saga and the Grettis saga are men who have been declared outside the law, and their description often includes wolf-like characteristics: bloodthirstiness, ferocity, and a kind of pack mentality. The outlaw is the social wolf, the figure who is outside the social order and who lives as a wolf in the forest.
The berserkers and the úlfhéðnar (wolf-skinned warriors) of the Norse world are also wolf-figures. The berserker is the bear-skinned warrior who enters a state of berserkergang (berserker-fury) and who fights with superhuman strength. The úlfhéðnar is the wolf-skinned warrior who is bound to the wolf in a different way: he wears the wolf’s skin, he is named with wolf-names (the famous Úlfhéðnar of the Hervarar saga include the Angantýr brothers, who are “wargs of the sea”), and he fights with the wolf’s ferocity. The berserker and the úlfhéðnar are figures of the warrior who has gone too far into the animal, and the wolf is the central image of the wild.
The image of the warg as a figure of the wolf is also important. The Norse vargr (warg, outlaw) is cognate with the Old English wearg (outlaw, wolf), the Old High German warg (outlaw), and the modern English “werewolf” (which is literally “man-wolf”). The figure of the werewolf is distinctively Norse (and Germanic), and the vargr is its principal Norse form. The Gísla saga’s Gísli Súrsson is the most famous warg of the Icelandic sagas; the Grettis saga’s Grettir Ásmundarson is another; and the Hrólfs saga kraka’s Hrólfr is yet another. The warg is the figure of the wolf in human form, the outlaw who has gone outside the law and who lives as a wolf in the forest.
The Taming of the Wolf and the Cult of the Warrior
The image of the wolf being tamed is a recurring one in the Norse cult of the warrior. The berserker is in some sense the taming of the wolf’s ferocity into the form of the warrior, and the cult of Odin (the god of the warriors) is in some sense the cult of the wolf-god, the god who gives his followers the gift of the wolf’s ferocity. The warriors who fall in battle and are taken to Valhalla are the wolf-warriors of the cult of Odin, and the welcome in Valhalla is the eternalization of the warrior’s wolf-ferocity.
The image of the wolf as a positive figure of the warrior is balanced by the image of the wolf as a negative figure of the threat to the world order. Fenrir is the wolf at the outside of the world, the wolf who is bound but not killed, the wolf who will break free at the end. The cult of the wolf in the Norse world is, in this sense, a cult of the tension between the two images: the wolf as the ally of the warrior and the wolf as the threat to the world.
The Children of Loki and Angrboða in Detail
The three children of Loki and Angrboða form a trinity of great threats to the world order:
- The World Serpent, cast into the encircling sea
- Fenrir, bound on the island of Lyngvi
- Hel, cast into the underworld
The three are the structural threats: the sea (the outside of the world), the bound (the underdog of the world), and the underworld (the below of the world). The gods contain them by placement (the sea), by binding (the bound), and by authority (the goddess of the underworld is given authority over the dead in nine worlds). The three are the preventive acts of the gods, and they form the basis for the world order.
The three are also symmetric in a striking way. Each is the master of a particular domain: the serpent is the master of the sea, the wolf is the master of the bound places, the goddess is the master of the underworld. Each is a child of the trickster and the giantess, and each is a threat to the world order. The three are the great negative figures of the Norse cosmos, the structural counterparts of the positive figures of the gods.