The Bond and the Hand
They tried chains. The first was called Leyding, and it was thick as a man's arm and made of the hardest iron the dwarves could hammer. The gods went to Fenrir and proposed a game. "Test your strength," they said. "We want to see how strong you are." Fenrir looked at the chain, sniffed it, stretched, and it snapped like a rotten thread. Fenrir shook off the remnants and yawned. The gods applauded and went home feeling uneasy.
They forged a new chain, twice as strong. Drómi. It was so thick it took four gods to carry it. Fenrir regarded it, hesitated a moment, and let himself be bound. He wanted to be tested. He wanted to know what he could do. He tensed, kicked, and the chain burst into three pieces that flew through the air like shrapnel. One piece missed Bragi by a thumb's length, and Bragi was pale the rest of the day. Fenrir shook off the remnants and looked pleased. The gods did not feel pleased at all.
Odin sent word to the dwarves in Svartálfaheim, the ones who live deep beneath the mountains and know things no one above the earth understands. Make us a bond that cannot be broken, he said. Not by giants, not by gods, not by any force in the nine worlds. The dwarves charged, as they always do, and they forged Gleipnir. It took them a long time and they said little about how it was done.
Gleipnir looked like a silk ribbon. Thin, soft, almost nothing. It weighed less than a thought and felt like cobwebs between the fingers. But it was made from six impossible 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 spittle of a bird. That is why cats make no sound when they walk. That is why women have no beards. That is why mountains have no roots. The dwarves used it all up, and what does not exist cannot be broken.
The gods brought Gleipnir to the island of Lyngvi in the lake Ámsvartnir and called for Fenrir. Try this one, they said. Just a game, like before. See if you can break it. Fenrir looked at the thin band and his eyes narrowed. He was no fool. Among the offspring of giants he may have been the smartest, and that says something, because giants are seldom stupid, just impatient.
"That looks like nothing," he said. "If it is nothing I gain no honour from breaking it. And if it is sorcery, if you have forged it from things that do not exist and forces that cannot be seen, I will not let you wrap it around me without guarantees." He looked at them, one by one, and his gaze was steady. "One of you puts a hand in my mouth as a pledge. If I cannot break free, I bite it off."
The gods looked at each other. No one moved. Odin, who knew everything, who had seen the end of all things in Mímir's well, did not move. Thor, who was afraid of nothing living or dead, did not move. Freyr did not move. Heimdallr did not move. Everyone stood still and looked at the ground, and it was one of those moments that reveals what people are actually made of. Fenrir waited with open jaws and teeth white as freshly honed bone.
Tyr stepped forward. He said nothing. He simply walked up to Fenrir and placed his right hand into the wolf's mouth, deep in, past the teeth, into the wet heat, and he met the wolf's gaze and nodded. Fenrir's eyes were yellow and burned like torches, and Tyr's eyes were steady, and the two looked at each other and both knew exactly what was going to happen.
They bound Fenrir with Gleipnir. The band was wound around his legs, his body, his neck. The thin band that weighed less than air. The wolf tensed. He kicked. He twisted with a force that made the island shake and the water rise. The bond held. The harder he fought the deeper it cut, and the band never thinned and never broke, because you cannot break what does not exist.
Fenrir understood he had been tricked. It passed through his eyes like a fire going out, and his jaws closed.
Tyr's hand fell to the ground. The blood sprayed from the stump in an arc that spattered across the rock and ran down into the cracks. The gods cheered, all except Tyr, who stood with his stump and looked at the wolf, and the wolf looked back. Tyr had known. He had put his hand in knowing he would never get it back. It was not courage. It was not stupidity. It was the only right thing, and Tyr knew the difference between the three, and that was what made him Tyr.
Fenrir tried to speak, but the gods drove a sword through his mouth to keep the jaws open. The blade sat with the hilt in the lower jaw and the point in the palate, and Fenrir could neither bite nor close his mouth. The drool that ran from his jaws became a river named Ván, the river of hope, because the gods hoped the bond would hold until the end of time. It was hope built on impossible things, and it turned out to be exactly as reliable as that sounds.
Fenrir lay bound on Lyngvi and howled. The howl was not like an ordinary wolf's cry. It was deeper, older, and it carried a grief and a promise that froze the blood. It was heard in all the worlds. Humans in Midgard heard it and thought it was the storm. Giants in Jötunheim heard it and smiled, because they knew what it meant. Those who heard it pulled the covers tighter around themselves and looked toward the door.
Jörmungandr lay at the bottom of the sea, coiled around Midgard. Hel sat in her dark realm counting the dead. Fenrir was bound. Loki's children were under control, and the gods breathed out and raised their cups, and for a time things were quiet in Asgard. But safety makes gods careless, and one morning Thor reached for Mjolnir and grasped nothing.