Inkborne Tales
Norse · 1 min 27 s · animated short
Fenrir: The Wolf the Gods Feared
The gods raise the wolf Fenrir, then try to bind him with chains and finally a ribbon made of impossible things. A Norse myth in under ninety seconds.
The telling
The gods of Asgard were afraid of a wolf. So afraid, they bound him with a chain made of things that don't exist.
His name was Fenrir, son of the trickster Loki. The gods raised him themselves, to keep him close. Only Týr was brave enough to feed him.
But Fenrir grew. And grew. And every prophecy said the same thing: one day, this wolf would kill Odin.
So the gods made a chain, and called it a game. Fenrir snapped it. They forged a second, twice as strong. He shattered that one too.
Then Odin sent word to the dwarves. They made a ribbon, soft as silk, 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 spit of a bird.
Fenrir looked at the ribbon and smelled a trick. "I'll wear it," he said, "if one of you puts a hand in my mouth."
The gods looked at each other. Only Týr stepped forward.
The ribbon held. Fenrir pulled, and pulled, and could not break free. Furious, he bit off Týr's hand.
He lies bound to this day, and will stay bound until Ragnarök, the end of the world.
Based on
Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda, Gylfaginning ch. 34, translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (1916, public domain). We follow Snorri's telling.
How we made it
Condensed to under ninety seconds, so some episodes and details are left out. The illustrations are generated with AI and animated in our studio; the narration is synthesised.