Tyr and the Binding of Fenrir

Fenrir the wolf was one of the children of Loki. The gods brought him to Asgard to raise him where they could keep an eye on him, but he was so fierce that only one of them dared to go near him and give him his food. That was Tyr.

Every day the wolf grew bigger, and every prophecy the gods heard warned that he was fated to bring them ruin. So they decided to tie him up. They made a very strong chain called Leyding and brought it to the wolf. “Let us see how strong you are,” they said. “Try to break this.”

The wolf looked at the chain and did not think it would be too strong for him, so he let them put it on. The first time he kicked against it, the chain burst apart, and he was free of Leyding.

Then the gods made a second chain, half again as strong, and called it Dromi. “If even this can’t hold you,” they told the wolf, “you will be famous for your strength.” The wolf could see that this chain was very strong. But he could also feel that he had grown stronger since he broke Leyding, and he thought that anyone who wants to be famous has to take a risk now and then. So he let them put it on.

When the gods said they were ready, the wolf shook himself and kicked out, and he smashed the chain against the ground so hard that the broken pieces flew a long way. He was free of Dromi too. Anderson’s narrator explains the sayings “to get loose from Leyding” or “to smash out of Dromi” when something is very hard to do.

Now the gods began to fear that nothing would ever hold the wolf. So Odin, the All-Father, sent Skirnir, the messenger of the god Frey, down to some dwarfs in Svartalfheim, the dark underground land. There the dwarfs made a band called Gleipnir.

Gleipnir was made of six things: the sound of a cat’s footsteps, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish, and the spit of a bird. The narrator treats these impossible ingredients as a playful explanation for things supposed to be absent from the world; this is mythic reasoning, not an account of human bodies or animal biology. The band itself was smooth and soft, like a ribbon of silk, but you will soon hear how strong it was.

The gods thanked Skirnir for doing his errand so well. Then they went out to a lake called Amsvartnir, to a rocky island called Lyngvi, and they called the wolf to come with them. They showed him the silky band and told him to break it. “It is a bit stronger than it looks,” they said. They passed it from hand to hand and tugged at it, and it did not break. “But you could snap it easily,” they told him.

The wolf answered, “There is no glory for me in snapping a thread as thin as that. But if it was made with tricks and magic, then thin or not, it is not going on my legs.”

“You have burst big iron chains,” said the gods. “A thin silk band will be nothing to you. And if you can’t break it, you have nothing to fear from us. We will untie you straight away.”

“If you tie me so tight that I can’t get loose,” said the wolf, “you will sneak off, and it will be a long time before I get any help from you. I don’t want this band on me. But so that you can’t call me a coward, let one of you put a hand in my mouth, as a promise that this is done without a trick.”

The gods looked at one another. Both choices were bad, and no one would offer a hand. Then Tyr held out his right hand and laid it in the wolf’s mouth.

They tied the band around the wolf, and he began to kick against it. The harder he kicked, the stiffer it became, and the more he strained, the tighter it held. All the gods laughed, except Tyr. He lost his hand.

When the gods saw that the wolf was tied fast, they took the chain fixed to the band, which was called Gelgja, and pulled it through a huge rock called Gjoll, and they sank that rock deep into the earth. Then they took a great stone called Thviti and drove it even deeper, to hold everything in place like a peg. The wolf opened his jaws terribly wide, twisted with all his might and tried to bite them. So they jammed a sword into his mouth, with the hilt against his lower jaw and the point against the upper one. He howls horribly, and the drool that runs from his mouth makes a river called Van. There he will lie until Ragnarok, the end of the world.

Why didn’t the gods simply kill the wolf, if they expected so much harm from him? They held their sacred home in such respect that they would not stain it with his blood, even though the prophecies said that Fenrir would one day kill Odin. And so the wolf was bound, and Tyr, the bravest of the gods, paid for it with his right hand.

About this tale

The binding of Fenrir is told in the Prose Edda, written in Iceland around 1220 by Snorri Sturluson. In the part called “The Fooling of Gylfi,” a curious king asks three mysterious figures about the gods, and they answer him with stories like this one. It is retold here from the English translation by Rasmus B. Anderson, The Younger Edda (the linked edition is dated 1901).

Anderson spells the two chains “Lading” and “Drome.” Tyr’s name lives on in the English word Tuesday, which comes from “Tiw’s day.”

Read the original: Rasmus B. Anderson, trans., The Younger Edda (Project Gutenberg #18947)

Suggested for ages 9–12 with an adult: includes the loss of Tyr’s hand and a sword forced into Fenrir’s mouth. The gods break their promise of release.

The pledge proves the wolf’s suspicion

Fenrir asks for a hand because he already doubts the offer of release. The gods’ refusal to untie him confirms that doubt. Tyr accepts the physical cost, while the others laugh at their success. His courage and the deception can both be recognised; neither cancels the other.

The two broken chains teach the gods to replace visible force with a soft-looking bond. That reversal makes appearance unreliable for Fenrir just when he tries hardest to judge the risk.

Separate courage from fairness

Write the gods’ promise beside what they actually do after the ribbon holds. Then list the cost to Fenrir, Tyr and the other gods. Explain why calling Tyr brave does not require calling the bargain honest.

Talk about it

• Why did the wolf agree to try the first two chains?
• Why did the wolf ask for a hand in his mouth before he would wear Gleipnir?
• Was Tyr brave, or was the bargain unfair to the wolf? What do you think?

More stories like this

• Ragnarok: The Twilight of the Gods — the myth that tells what happens when Fenrir gets loose
• The Apples of Idun — another myth from Snorri’s Prose Edda
• The Death of Baldur — another Norse myth about the gods and a terrible loss