The Great Wolf Fated to Devour Odin
Fenrir is the great wolf born to Loki and the giantess Angrboda. Prophecy warned of the ruin he would bring, yet the gods chose to raise the cub among themselves, and only Tyr dared to feed him. As he grew day by day, they forged two iron chains, Laeding and Dromi, and he snapped both like rotten cord. So the gods turned to the dwarfs, who made the ribbon Gleipnir, smooth as silk, from 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.
Fenrir grew suspicious and demanded that a god lay a hand in his mouth as a pledge before he would be bound. Tyr offered his right hand. The ribbon only tightened as the wolf struggled; the gods laughed, and Tyr lost the hand. They staked the ribbon to a boulder on an island and propped the wolf's jaws open with a sword; his slaver runs as the river called Van, 'expectation'. At Ragnarok he tears free and advances with his upper jaw against the sky and his lower against the earth, and swallows Odin whole. Odin's son Vidar then steps on the lower jaw and rends the wolf apart.
The wolves Skoll and Hati, who hunt the sun and moon, are in some sources counted among his brood.
