Fenrir

Odin saw what he would become. He brought him to Asgard anyway.

Fenrir is the son of Loki and the giantess Angrboða — the mother of monsters. He was born in the Iron Wood alongside Jörmungandr the World Serpent and Hel the ruler of the dead. The Norns prophesied that Loki's children would bring catastrophe to the gods. The Aesir believed the prophecy. They acted on it by separating the children — throwing Jörmungandr into the ocean, sending Hel into the underworld, and bringing Fenrir to Asgard itself to keep him under divine supervision.

This decision made perfect mythological sense and was also catastrophically wrong. Fenrir grew. He kept growing. Only Týr among the gods was willing to feed him. And with every feeding, the wolf doubled in size. The gods who brought him home eventually had to bind him. What they could not accept was what the prophecy told them: you cannot contain what you have made inevitable.

They broke two iron chains. The third was made from things that don't exist.

The gods forged two iron chains to bind Fenrir. He broke both without effort. The stronger the iron, the harder he pulled. The chain snapped. He was free. So Odin sent a messenger to Svartalfheim, the underground realm of the dwarves, and commissioned something that iron could never be — a binding made from six impossible ingredients.

The result was Gleipnir — smooth as a silken ribbon, light enough to hold in one hand, impossible to break. The strongest things in the world are made from what doesn't exist.

Fenrir demanded a hand in his mouth. Only one god reached in.

Fenrir was not a fool. When the gods brought Gleipnir to the island of Lyngvi in the lake Ámsvartnir and asked him to test this soft ribbon against his strength, he knew something was wrong. The gods laughed too easily. The ribbon was too small. Fenrir agreed on one condition: one god must place his hand in his mouth as a pledge that no treachery was intended.

Every god refused. Then Týr — the one-handed god of oaths and law — looked at the wolf, and reached his right hand into Fenrir's jaws. The chain was bound. Fenrir pulled and pulled. Gleipnir held. He bit down. Týr lost his hand. The gods had lied. The most just god in Asgard paid the price of their deception with his sword hand, because someone had to, and only he was willing.

Fenrir screamed. He was bound on the island with a sword propped through his jaws, holding them open. He screamed at the sky. He will scream until Ragnarök. Then the chain breaks.

His upper jaw scrapes the sky. His lower jaw drags the earth.

The Prose Edda describes Fenrir at Ragnarök in terms that break any scale of reference: his mouth opens so wide that his upper jaw reaches to the sky and his lower jaw presses along the earth. Fire blazes from his eyes and nostrils. He runs across the field and swallows everything before him.

And then Odin — the Allfather, the most powerful being in the Nine Worlds, the god who hung on Yggdrasil for nine nights, who sacrificed an eye for wisdom, who spent an age preparing for this exact moment — faces Fenrir directly. Fenrir swallows him whole. Odin is gone. The king of gods, devoured without ceremony.