28 fenrir
grinding salt. He, too, would not let them rest, and so
they ground the mill until the sea filled with salt.
The story of Fenja and Menja is part of the
S kaldskaparmal by Snorri Sturluson. The Icelan-
dic historian and poet retold the G rottasong (The
Lay of Grotti) and then quoted the entire poem in his
work.
F enrir (F enris ) The wolf who was the offspring
of the trickster god Loki and the giantess Angrboda.
He was the brother of Hel (1) and of Jormungand,
the Midgard Serpent. Fenrir was so huge that when
he opened his mouth, his jaws stretched from Earth
to Heaven. He was eventually bound by the gods and
doomed to remain in chains until Ragnarok (the end
of the world), when he would kill the great god Odin.
Fenrir in turn would die at the hands of Vidar, one
of Odin’s sons.
Snorri Sturluson’s vivid version of this myth in
the P rose E dda is the only surviving source.
Fenrir and the Gods fenrir was so huge
and hairy that the Aesir, the gods of Asgard, were
frightened of him. Only Tyr was brave enough to
befriend the monster wolf and feed him. As Fenrir
grew bigger, the gods decided to protect themselves
and chain him. The first chain they tried was called
Laeding, the second, Dromi. Fenrir easily broke
these chains. Then the gods sent Skirnir, the servant
of the god Frey, to seek the help of the dwarfs, who
lived in the Earth.
The dwarfs fashioned a silken bond, called Glei-
pnir, from
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the sound of a cat’s paws
the hairs of a maiden’s beard
the roots of a mountain
the sinews of a bear
the breath of a fish
the spittle of a bird
Because none of these things seems to exist on Earth,
no person or thing could break this bond.
The gods persuaded Fenrir to go with them
to a lonely island, Lyngvi, in the middle of Lake
Amsvartnir. They asked Fenrir if he would allow
himself to be tied up once more and use his mighty
strength to break the bond. He agreed to be bound
if one of the gods would put a hand into Fenrir’s
mouth and guarantee that the wolf would be set
free. After no one else spoke up Tyr, the most fair-
minded of the gods, agreed to put his hand into
Fenrir’s mouth.
Once secured in Gleipner, Fenrir could not break
the bond. He clamped down on Tyr’s hand and bit
it off. The gods attached Gleipnir to a heavy chain,
Gelgja, and passed the chain through a hole into a
large rock named Gjoll (1). Then the gods thrust a
sword into the wolf’s mouth so it would remain wide
open. There Fenrir remained bound and gagged
until the fatal day of Ragnarok, when Fenrir got his
revenge and killed Odin.
Depiction of Fenrir the wolf from the 17th-century Icelandic manuscript AM 738 4to, in the care of the Árni
Magnússon Institute in Iceland