Fenrir (mythology)

God or goddess information

• Country or culture: Norse
• Mother: Angrboða
• Father: Loki
• Siblings: Jörmungandr; Hel
• Children: Sköll; Hati Hróðvitnisson

In Norse mythology, Fenrir was a wolf of supernatural size and strength. In the Scandinavian texts that describe him, he is also referred to as "Fenris Wolf" or "Fame Wolf" (from the Old Norse words "Fenrisúlfr" and "Hróðvitnir," respectively), although Fenrir is the name by which the creature primarily goes. Fenrir's place in the mythic system is central. His father was Loki, the mischievous shape-shifting, trick-playing god; his mother, Angrboða, was a fearsome giant. Fenrir was responsible for slaying Odin, chief among the Norse gods, thereby threatening to bring about the end of the world. Ultimately he was destroyed by Odin's son in the events of Ragnarök—the Norse apocalypse preceding the birth of a new order. Fenrir appears in three literary works that date from the thirteenth century but recall the Norse beliefs of earlier times: the Poetic Edda, an anonymous verse anthology, and the Prose Edda and Heimskringla, both compiled by the Icelandic mythologist and chronicler Snorri Sturluson. Fenrir could speak with the gods, and he possessed intelligence and cunning. Nowhere is the primeval terror of wolves, frequently encountered in North European folklore, more memorably exemplified: Fenrir dramatically represents the power of nature at its most awe-inspiring.

In Mythology

The records of Fenrir's mythical deeds are united by the belief that his birth, the threat he would pose, and his ultimate destiny, were foretold in advance. The basic prophesy occurs in two of the poems making up the Poetic Edda. There, a soothsayer warned Odin that one day, come the events of Ragnarök, he would be devoured by Fenrir. Odin's death would then be avenged by his son Víðarr, at whose hands the wolf-monster would be destroyed.

This outline is elaborated in three of the books of the Prose Edda. In the first, the narrator, High, speaks of the wolf's birth in Jötunheimr (Home of the Giants), as the son of Loki and Angrboða, subsequently parents to two other offspring—Jörmungandr the snake, and the female giant Hel. Fenrir grew rapidly, and the gods feared that the warnings of his danger to them would prove true. They chose not to slay Fenrir, however, and actually brought him to their home in Asgard and nurtured him, out of reverence for sacred predictions and stories. Nonetheless, Fenrir's prodigious size and energy could, eventually, be no longer overlooked, and the gods hatched a plan to trick and restrain him. Three chains were manufactured, and successively used to test Fenrir's strength. He snapped the first two with ease. The third was a ribbon woven from six magical ingredients. On seeing this, Fenrir addressed his would-be captors, stating that he mistrusted their motives and refusing to be tied unless he was offered a pledge of their goodwill. In response, the god Týr placed his right hand in Fenrir's mouth—and it was immediately bitten off. The gods now bound the struggling Fenrir tighter, securing the ribbon to a stone slab, and burying the slab beneath a boulder. When they thrust a sword between his jaws to wedge it open, his saliva flowed out to form the river Ván (meaning "hope" in Old Norse). Here, the storyteller shifts to the future tense to continue the tale. At the time of Ragnarök, all chains will be broken, and Fenrir will therefore be free. With his brother, Jörmungandr, he will launch a cataclysmic assault on the gods. Fenrir will swallow Odin whole, only to be killed in turn by Odin's son Víðarr, who will rip his slavering jaws apart. In later books of the Prose Edda, Fenrir is referred to more fleetingly and indirectly. Odin is identified as "wolf's enemy," Víðarr as Fenrir's "slayer," A concluding poem in one of the Heimskringla sagas describes how King Haakon I of Norway is carried to Asgard; there, a prophecy foretells that a ruler as great as he will govern in the place of the defeated Fenrir after the wolf's chains have shattered.

These narratives collectively identify Fenrir as a creature whose superhuman power, agency, and authority were sufficient to threaten the gods themselves and the order they represented. Although this order could be restored only at the expense of Fenrir's life, his might and the respect which he commanded lived on in the mythic poems and stories inspired by that life.

Origins & Cults

Norse mythology, which relates the interwoven belief systems of the early Scandinavians—at a period roughly coinciding with the Viking Age, the eighth to eleventh centuries CE—was pantheistic. It supposed, that is, that a pantheon of multiple gods, each with particular attributes, personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. The interrelations of these gods with nature are at the heart of many Norse myths. Fenrir is a perfect illustration of this uneasy relationship. Initially the object of nurturing affection, he evolved into a mortal foe. As such, the accounts of his life and death, particularly the episodes recounting the "binding of the wolf" and the final battle at Ragnarök, settled deep into the Norse psyche. Pictorial representations of Odin, Týr, Loki, and other deities often show them in relation to Fenrir. Such scenes are also understood to be carved on the eleventh-century Ledberg Stone in Sweden, and the importance of Fenrir meant that he was also depicted wherever the Norsemen travelled. The Gosforth Cross in England (eleventh century), and Thorwald's Cross on the Isle of Man, between England and Ireland (tenth–eleventh century) are major examples.

Fenrir remains the most vivid representation of the historic awe felt for wolves among Scandinavian, Germanic, and Celtic cultures. Irrational as many of their fears were, the forested communities of early Northern Europe held wolves in the kind of dread that could only find expression in legends and tales. Enduring stories of werewolves, and even children's fairy tales, such as "Little Red Riding Hood," are the distant remnants of such fears. Among them all, the ancient myth of Fenrir proved the most compelling.

Bibliography

Beresford, Matthew. The White Devil: The Werewolf in European Culture. Reaktion Books, 2013.

Dougherty, Martin J. Norse Myths: Viking Legends of Heroes and Gods. Amber Books, 2016.

Larrington, Carolyne. The Poetic Edda. 2nd ed., Oxford UP, 2014.

Lecouteux, Claude. Encyclopedia of Norse and Germanic Folklore, Mythology, and Magic. Translated by Jon. E. Graham, new ed., Inner Traditions, 2016.

Simek, Rudolf. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Translated by Angela Hall, new ed., D. S. Brewer, 2008.

Somerville, Angus A., and R. Andrew McDonald. The Vikings and Their Age. U of Toronto P, 2013.