Fenrir

The gods fed him by hand while he was still small enough to be fed by hand. Meat passed to him out of their own confidence, and the wolf took it, and grew. He grew the way a flood grows, not steadily but in surges that left everyone who watched him a little more afraid than they had been the week before. One morning he was the size of a hunting dog. Not long after he stood taller than the warriors who brought his meals, and only one of them still had the nerve to walk up and hand over the meat.

Fenrir came from bad blood, and the gods knew it. He was the firstborn monster of Loki and the giantess Angrboða, brother to the world-serpent Jörmungandr and to Hel, who was fated to rule the dead. The Æsir had heard the prophecies. They knew these three were being raised in secret in the land of the giants, and they knew what each was meant to bring. Odin had the serpent flung into the sea that rings the world and the half-dark girl cast down into the mists. The wolf they chose to keep close, in Asgard, where they could watch him. That was the plan. It is the kind of plan that reads better before the wolf is the size of a longhouse.

Every day Týr carried the meat to him, and every day there was more meat and more wolf. The other gods began to keep their distance. They watched his shoulders fill the yard, watched his breath fog white in the cold and his yellow eyes track them across the grass, and somewhere in that watching the old affection curdled into dread. The prophecy named him a killer of gods. Looking at him now, it was easy to believe.

So they decided to chain him, and they were too clever to simply order it. They turned it into a contest of strength. They brought out a heavy fetter called Leyding, praised the wolf, and dared him to break free. He let them bind him, then flexed once and the iron burst. They came back with a second chain, Dromi, twice as strong, and flattered him again, and again he kicked and shook himself and the broken pieces flew so far the gods would tell the story for years. Fenrir was beginning to enjoy his reputation. That was exactly what they were counting on.

When honest iron failed, Odin sent down to the dwarves, who forged something that looked like nothing at all. Gleipnir was a smooth silken band, soft as a ribbon and light in the hand, and it was made of six things that do not exist: 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, and the spittle of a bird. The old answer to why none of those things can be found in the world is that they were all used up making the cord.

The wolf looked at the pretty little band and smelled the trap. There was no glory in snapping a ribbon, and there was real danger if the ribbon would not snap. He agreed to be bound on one condition: that one of the gods set a hand between his jaws as a pledge of good faith, to be forfeit if there was treachery in it. The gods looked at one another. Every one of them understood what was being asked, and every one of them stayed silent, until Týr, who had fed him since he was a pup, stepped forward and laid his right hand on the wolf’s tongue. They wound the cord around him. He strained against it, and the harder he fought the tighter it drew, and it would not give. The gods laughed. Týr did not laugh. The jaws came down, and the bravest of them walked away with a stump where his hand had been.

They were not gentle after that. They threaded a cord through the ribbon and drove it through a great slab of stone set deep in the earth, then hammered a second rock down on top for good measure. When Fenrir snapped and gaped at them, they jammed a sword upright in his mouth, the hilt braced against his lower jaw and the point against the upper, so that he could never close it again. From his propped-open mouth runs a river the old poems call Ván, fed by his endless slaver. He lies like that, on a bleak island in a black lake, jaws forced wide, and waits. He is patient. He has nothing to do but wait.

His patience ends at Ragnarök. When the fastenings of the world come loose, Fenrir comes loose with them, and he runs with his lower jaw scraping the ground and his upper jaw against the sky and fire spilling from his eyes and nostrils. He swallows Odin whole. The Allfather, who saw this coming and shaped his entire reign around delaying it, dies in the throat of the animal he raised in his own halls. Then Odin’s son Víðarr steps over the fallen and sets one foot on the wolf’s lower jaw, in a boot stitched from every leather scrap that every cobbler in every age ever trimmed away and discarded. He takes hold of the upper jaw with his hands and tears the great mouth apart.

What makes Fenrir terrible is plain and physical. He is stronger than any binding forged from iron, and he grows without any limit anyone has ever found, so that every cage built for him is already too small by the time it is closed. He is hunger at the end of things, the proof that some forces can be put off but never reasoned with and never quite killed in time.

His weakness is the same as his nature. He is proud, and pride is easy to bait. Twice he let himself be chained because he could not pass up a chance to show off, and the third time only his own suspicion saved him, and even that the gods turned against him by appealing to his sense of fair play. The thing that holds him is not strong. It is clever. He is kept down not by force but by a trick and a god’s missing hand, and he will lie still for exactly as long as the world does.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Fenrir in Norse mythology?

Fenrir is a monstrous wolf in Norse mythology, the firstborn child of the trickster god Loki and the giantess Angrboða. He is the brother of the world-serpent Jörmungandr and Hel, the ruler of the dead, and he is fated to kill the god Odin at Ragnarök, the end of the world.

Why did the gods bind Fenrir?

The gods bound Fenrir because prophecies warned that he would bring them great harm, and he was growing larger and stronger every day. After two ordinary iron chains failed to hold him, the dwarves forged a magical ribbon called Gleipnir, which finally bound the wolf until the end of the world.

How did Týr lose his hand?

Týr lost his right hand to Fenrir during the wolf’s binding. Suspecting a trap, Fenrir demanded that a god place a hand in his mouth as a pledge of good faith before he would let himself be tied with Gleipnir. Týr alone agreed, and when the wolf realized he could not break the magic cord, he bit the hand off.

What is Gleipnir made of?

Gleipnir is the magical ribbon that binds Fenrir, forged by the dwarves from 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, and the spittle of a bird. According to the myth, these things no longer exist in the world because they were all used up in making the cord.

What happens to Fenrir at Ragnarök?

At Ragnarök, Fenrir breaks free of his bonds and joins the destruction of the world, his jaws gaping from the earth to the sky. He swallows Odin, killing the chief of the gods, but is then slain by Odin’s son Víðarr, who tears the wolf’s jaws apart in vengeance.

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Loki, Jörmungandr, Tyr, Odin, Sköll, Garmr, Surtr, Thor, Heimdallr, Balder, Níðhöggr, Sleipnir, Valkyrie, Werewolf, Lycaon