They made a strong fetter, which was named Leyding, and they went in a gang to the wolf in the woods, and spoke to him pleasantly and said they had brought this plaything for him, to show off his power. They would bind him in it, for fun, and he would break out, and show them the power of his sinews and nerves. The wolf’s hackles rose: he looked at them with cold, calculating eyes, the pupils narrowed to pinshots. He could do that, he said, rolling his wiry muscles under his glistening hair. But why should he? They had been betting, they said, facing the beast at the edge of the clearing, from where he could vanish into the dark wood, or spring tooth and claw upon the gods – they had been betting on how long the breakout would take him. Heimdall, the herald, who guarded the high gate of Asgard, could hear the grass grow on the earth, and the wool springing from the hide of sheep. He could hear the wolf’s blood pounding and pumping, he could hear his pelt expanding. ‘Play with us’, he said to the beast, who took a calculating look at Leyding and lay down on the forest floor and held out his great clawed pads. So they took the fetter, and bound his feet, trussed them together, bound his jaw, avoiding the smell of his hot meaty breath, and left him like an ox made ready for roasting. He made a strangled sound, and shook his head from side to side, and coughed in his constricted throat, and coughed again, and shook himself, swelling all his joints, and the fetter cracked and buckled and fell to the earth. The wolf stood on his feet and glowered at the gods and made a sound between howl and purr, which they knew was laughter. He looked at them, almost expecting further play, but they fell back and returned to Asgard.
They told their smiths they must do better. They made a new chain, with double links, cleverly fused together. Its name was Dromi. They took this to the wolf, who put his head on one side, measuring its strength. He said it was very strong. He said also that he himself had increased in size since he shattered Leyding. He would be a famous beast, said the gods, if he could deal with such an intricate piece of smithcraft. He stood and thought, and told them that this chain was indeed stronger. But then, he himself was also stronger. So he allowed them to truss him again. And then he shook himself violently, twisted and strained, kicked with his feet and broke the fetter into fragments which flew this way and that. And he smiled at the gods, his tongue lolling out, and snickered. And went on growing; Heimdall could hear him.
The gods sent Skirnir, a young messenger, down to the dwarves, who lived deep down in the home of the dark-elves. And the dwarves made a supple skein from unthings. There were six, woven together: 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. The thing was light as air and smooth as silk, a long, delicate ribbon. This they took to the wolf, to whom they said with cunning that this band was tougher than it looked. They tore at it with their own hands, one after the other, and it was unmarked. The wolf was suspicious. He wanted to decline, and feared they would mock him. He told them that he suspected them of bad faith. Of trickery. He would play this game if one of them placed his hand in between his jaws, as a gage of honesty, of their bond of good faith. Then Tyr put his hand on the hot head of the beast, as he would with a nervous hound, and then put his hand quietly into Fenris’s mouth. And the gods wound their floating ribbon round and round flanks and thighs, pads and claws, neck and rump. And the beast shook himself, and twisted himself, and the fetter clung and tightened. This was inevitable. And it was inevitable that he should snap his teeth together, slicing through flesh, skin and bone. And the gods watched the wolf gnash and swallow, and they bound Tyr’s bleeding stump. The wolf glared, and said that if a god’s hand can be eaten, it will be possible, in the time of the wolf, to kill the gods. The gods’ answer to this was to take the cord which was part of Gleipnir – the name of this rope was Gelgia – and thread it through a great stone slab, which also has a name, Giöll. And this they drove into the earth, and attached to another great rock, Thviti. The wolf howled horribly, and gnashed his teeth. So the laughing gods took a great sword and thrust it into his mouth. The hilt is lodged against his lower gums; the point in the upper ones. The great beast writhes in pain, and amongst his howling a river springs from his open jaws. Its name is Hope.
Hope for what?
The gods knew, Odin knew, that the time of the wolf would come. The wolf would join his kin at the end of things. Terrors were foreseen, like the loosing of the wolf, or hound, Garm, which was the watchdog at the gate of Hel’s underground kingdom. This beast was related to the two wolves who raced perpetually through the firmament in the skull of Ymir, following the chariots of the sun and moon. The thin child, reading about the solid world that was made when Ymir was dismembered, had seen an engraving of day and night, sun and moon, in racing chariots with fine horses. They went so relentlessly fast, the thin child saw and understood, because they lived in perpetual fear. Behind the sun, behind the moon, were wolves stretched out in full gallop, their hackles bristling, their tongues lolling, untiring, as wolves are in pursuit, waiting for their prey to falter or stumble. Where these terrible creatures had come from, the thin child did not know. The legends said they were the progeny of the dour giantess in Ironwood, kin of the Fenris-Wolf. In the thin child’s mind, there must have been a time when the sun and the moon, created by the gods, moved at their own sweet will, meandering maybe, pausing maybe, extending a lovely day, or a lovely summer, maybe, or a dark dreamless night. In one ancient tale the wolves had names. Skoll pursued the sun, and Hati Hrodvitnisson galloped on, intent on catching the moon. The movement of light and dark, the order of day and night and the seasons, was thus, the thin child understood, a product of fright, of the wolves in the mind. Order came from bonds and threatening teeth and claws. The thin child in wartime read, grimly, the prophecy of yet another mighty wolf to come, Moongarm, who would fill himself with the lifeblood of everyone that dies, would swallow the heavenly bodies and spatter the heaven and all the skies with blood. And this would disturb and derange the heat and light of the sun, and give rise to violent winds, which would rage everywhere and destroy forests, and human habitations, and fields and plains. Coasts would be lashed and crumbling, and the stable order of things would shiver.
Jörmungandr
1. The Shallows
The flung snake fell through the firmament in shifting shapes. With her spine locked she was a javelin, swift and smooth, her mane of flesh-fronds streaming back from her sharp skull, her fangs glinting. But she also fell in loops and coils, like a curling whip, like a light ribbon on the eddies of the air. She was angry to have been ripped from her kin. She was a sensuous beast: the rush of air pleased her: she snuffed up the scent of pine forests, heathland, hot desert, the salt of the sea. She saw its restless wrinkles, cream-crested, steel-blue, and met its skin like a diver, head first and the strong tail following smoothly. Down she went, through this new element, down to the sandy floor, stirring up eddies of grains, sliding smoothly between rocky outcrops. She was a land-beast, reared in the Iron Wood; she had played in dark green shadow, coiling in dust. She began to learn saltwater, feeling a new lightness in her muscles, floating lazily to the surface, like silver, like an elver, where the light caught her wet skin. At first she stayed in the shallows, breathing shore air through her blood-red nostrils, making her way through rock pools, sliding along the tidelines, snapping up crabs, limpets and oysters, cracking open razor-fish with her sharp fangs, flicking out the succulent flesh with her forked tongue. She took pleasure in detecting disguise. She noticed the scuttle of hermit crabs, crouching in abandoned shells.