The Sons of Fenrir Skoll and Hati
Sköll and Hati are the two wolves of Norse mythology that chase the sun and the moon. Sköll (“mockery” or “treachery”) runs behind Sól, the sun, and Hati (“hater”) runs ahead of her, hungry for Máni, the moon; at Ragnarök the wolves catch the lights they have chased. They are called the sons of Fenrir because one poem names Hati “the son of Hróðvitnir,” and Hróðvitnir, “famous wolf,” is widely taken to be another name for Fenrir. Their chase across the sky is one of the most striking images in Norse cosmology, and their part is small but decisive: when the sun and moon are swallowed, the end of the world has begun.
Norse mythology is perhaps one of the most colorful universes when it comes to the variety and number of characters and monstrous creatures. Gods of Aesir are the most famous “good guys,” but there are plenty of other important good or even neutral characters as well.
We shouldn’t forget the evil ones like the great wolf Fenrir and the wolves known as the sons of Fenrir, Hati and Sköll (Old Norse Hati Hróðvitnisson and Sköll), names usually translated from Old Norse as “Hater” and “Treachery” or “One Who Mocks.” Together with the other gods and giants, they make the Norse universe something people around the world still love to read about.
You should know that among the most famous Gods and giants, there are also numerous, mostly magical creatures within the Nordic Universe. Most of these creatures are depicted as many creatures and animals we have even today.
Sleipnir, for example, was Odin’s horse, but not a regular horse since Sleipnir had eight legs. A snake-shaped creature like Jörmungandr (Fenrir’s sibling) was one of them as well as Ratatoskr, the squirrel that runs up and down the world tree carrying spiteful words between the eagle at the top and Níðhöggr at the roots, along with many others.
The Norse mythology itself became so popular in recent decades that numerous blockbuster movies, TV shows, and various books have emerged. People always loved this kind of fantasy fiction genre, but is it all fiction?
What we can say is where the wolves come from on the page. Hati and Sköll are named in only a few medieval Icelandic texts, chiefly the poem Grímnismál in the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda that Snorri Sturluson wrote around 1220. Another poem, Völuspá, describes the wolf brood they belong to without naming them. In these texts they are wolves who hunt the sun and, in Snorri’s version, the moon. How far ordinary people in the Viking Age believed in them, the sources do not tell us.
The Giantess of The Iron Wood, Where Skoll And Hati Come From
Snorri places the Iron Wood (Old Norse Járnviðr) east of Midgard. Troll-women called the Ironwood-women (Old Norse Járnviðjur) live in that forest, and an old giantess there, Snorri says, “bears many giants for sons, and all in wolf shapes, and from there these wolves have come.” He does not name her. Many modern retellings identify her with Angrboða, a name that roughly translates to “she who brings sorrow” or “the grief-bringer,” the giantess who bore Fenrir to Loki. But Snorri places Angrboða in Jötunheimar and never connects the two.
The mightiest of that brood, Snorri goes on, is Mánagarmr, the “moon-hound.” He fills himself with the life of everyone who dies, swallows the moon and spatters the sky with blood, and then the sun loses its shine. Whether Mánagarmr is Hati under another name or a third wolf, Snorri does not say.
Snorri backs this up with Völuspá (stanzas 40 and 41), a poem of the Poetic Edda, not of the Prose Edda. There “the old one” sat in the east in the Iron Wood and raised Fenris kindir, Fenrir’s kin or offspring. One of them becomes the “snatcher of the moon” in troll’s shape; he feeds on the life of doomed men and reddens the gods’ dwellings with blood, and in the summers after, the sunshine turns black. The poem names no wolf here, but the phrase Fenris kindir is one of the two reasons this wolf brood is tied to Fenrir.
Are Skoll And Hati Really the Sons of Fenrir?
No source says in so many words that Fenrir fathered them. The other reason is a name. In Grímnismál (stanza 39) Hati is called Hróðvitnis sonr, “the son of Hróðvitnir,” and Snorri repeats it as Hati Hróðvitnisson. Hróðvitnir means “famous wolf.” In the poem Lokasenna (stanzas 38 and 39), Loki mocks the god Týr about the right hand that Fenrir tore off, and Týr answers that he lacks a hand, but Loki lacks Hróðrsvitnir, the wolf who lies in bonds until Ragnarök. That is why Hróðvitnir is usually read as another name for Fenrir, Loki’s son. Put that together with the Fenris kindir of Völuspá, and “the sons of Fenrir” is a fair reading. It is still a reading of a few lines: strictly, only Hati is called Hróðvitnir’s son, and Sköll is never given a father.
If Fenrir is their father, Loki is their grandfather, but no myth about that family survives. The stories you may have read online, in which the young pups try to free their bound father, are captured by Odin, kept in Asgard’s kennels and cast into the sky by magic, have no medieval source. Neither do the personalities they are often given, a quiet Sköll and a hot-tempered Hati who visit the earth when the sun and moon are on time. The Norse sources describe the wolves only by what they do: they chase.
The Chase of Sól and Máni
In chapter 11 of Gylfaginning, the part of the Prose Edda where Snorri tells the myths, a man named Mundilfari had two children so beautiful that he called his son Máni, “moon,” and his daughter Sól, “sun.” The gods were angered by his arrogance, took the brother and sister and set them in the sky. Sól drives the horses that pull the chariot of the sun, the light the gods had made from a spark that flew out of Muspelheim, and Máni steers the course of the moon and rules its waxing and waning.
So Sól and Máni are not chariots: they are the sun and the moon in person, driving the heavenly bodies across the sky. The sun’s horses are Árvakr and Alsviðr, “early-waker” and “all-swift,” and under their shoulders the gods set bellows to cool them, which some lore calls ísarnkol. Grímnismál adds that a shield called Svalinn, “the cooling one,” stands before the sun; if it fell away, the mountains and the sea would burn.
Then comes the chase. In chapter 12, the questioner remarks that the sun moves fast, almost as if she were afraid, and is told that she has good reason: the one who hunts her is close behind, and she has no way out but to run. “There are two wolves,” Snorri writes. The one that goes after her is Sköll, whom she fears, and he will catch her. The one that runs ahead of her is Hati Hróðvitnisson, who wants to catch the moon, “and so it shall be.”
Grímnismál (stanza 39), the poem Snorri drew on, is less tidy. It says Sköll follows “the bright-faced god” to the shelter of the wood, and that Hati, Hróðvitnir’s son, runs “before the bright bride of heaven.” The moon is not mentioned there at all. The neat version most people know, one wolf for the sun and one for the moon, comes from Snorri.
Source: Hati by Rod Wong, r/ImaginaryWorldEaters
Nothing in the sources says the gods tamed the wolves or set them in the sky, and nothing says Odin hoped to control Ragnarök through them. In the myths the chase is simply how the world works: the sun hurries across the sky because a wolf is at her heels, and from the start the reader knows how it will end.
The Prophecy of The Wolf Brothers
The end of the chase comes in chapter 51 of Gylfaginning, Snorri’s account of Ragnarök. After the great winter, the wolf swallows the sun, and people think it a great disaster. Then the other wolf takes the moon, and he too does great harm, and the stars vanish from the sky. Snorri does not repeat their names here, but after chapter 12 the reader knows that Sköll has the sun and Hati the moon. Next the whole earth shakes, all fetters and bonds break, and Fenrir runs loose. At the end of the battle, Surtr (Old Norse for “the black one”), the fire giant, flings fire over the earth and burns the whole world.
Not every source agrees on which wolf eats the sun. In Vafþrúðnismál (stanzas 46 and 47), Odin asks where a sun will come from to light the sky once Fenrir has destroyed this one, and the giant answers that before Fenrir takes her, the sun will bear a daughter, who will ride her mother’s paths when the gods have died. Snorri quotes the giant’s answer too (Gylfaginning, chapter 53), so the Prose Edda itself gives the sun to Sköll in one place and to Fenrir in another.
Their father Fenrir, if Fenrir is their father, comes to the battlefield known as Vígríðr (Óskópnir in another poem) alongside his brother Jörmungandr, the World Serpent, and there he swallows Odin. Sköll and Hati have a smaller part in the prophecy: they open it. The swallowing of the sun and the moon is the sign that the end has begun.
The Importance They Had in Norse Mythology
The Norse universe is vast, but what survives of it is fragmentary, and many figures appear in only a few lines. Sköll and Hati are among them. Even so, they carry one of the clearest ideas in the myths: the world is living on borrowed time. Fenrir is destined to kill Odin, and the wolves at the heels of the sun and moon belong to the same story.
In Snorri’s telling, the order of events matters. The wolves catch the prey they have chased since the sun and moon were set in the sky, and soon after, the earth shakes and Fenrir’s bonds break. Snorri does not say that one causes the other, but the swallowing of the lights comes just before Fenrir goes free and the great battle begins.
The Popularity of Hati and Skoll
Although they aren’t as famous as they should be, people around the world that are into Norse mythology find them intriguing. Norse mythology enthusiasts that enjoy discovering more details about this long-gone universe are fascinated by the wolves’ part in the ending of the Norse cosmos.
Like many old mythology creatures, they have their place in the Norse mythology universe, and for a good reason. They will always be remembered as the wolves whose catch opens Ragnarök, the battle in which Fenrir breaks free and the gods fall.
Calling them the sons of Fenrir, and so the grandsons of Loki, is a modern shorthand built on Hati’s name, Hróðvitnisson, and on the “Fenrir’s kin” of Völuspá. It is a fair reading, and it ties the two sky-wolves to the most famous wolf in the myths.
Wolf Symbols Now and Then
In the Norse myths the wolf is a figure of destruction, greed and death: Fenrir, the wolves of the sky and the moon-hound Mánagarmr all exist to devour. Many people today read the wolf differently, as a symbol of the life cycle: something new arriving, birth and growth as well as destruction. That reading is modern, not Norse, but it has a hook in the sources.
The myths do not end with destruction. In Völuspá the earth rises again out of the sea, green once more, and in Vafþrúðnismál the sun’s daughter rides her mother’s paths. Read that way, the wolves that swallow the old sun make room for a new one.
Some modern readers compare the two wolves to yin and yang, a pair that keeps the universe in balance. That idea comes from Chinese philosophy, not from any Norse text, but it shows how far the image of the chase has travelled.
The Modern Times
It is sometimes said that modern werewolf films were inspired by the wolves of the Iron Wood. There is no evidence for that: werewolf stories come from many European traditions, and the Iron Wood lies east of Midgard, not in it. The Norse sources do have shape-changers of their own, though. Snorri’s Iron Wood giantess bears giants “in wolf shapes,” and in chapter 8 of the Saga of the Volsungs, Sigmundr and Sinfjötli find wolf skins hanging in a forest house, put them on, cannot take them off, and howl like wolves.
Let’s Howl It Up
Along with Fenrir, they are the most famous wolves in Norse myth, and among the most dangerous creatures in it. Why do you think Fenrir was destined to swallow Odin, the highest of the gods? Was there anything that could’ve prevented this from happening?
Sköll and Hati FAQ
Who are Sköll and Hati in Norse mythology?
Sköll and Hati are the two wolves that chase the sun and the moon across the sky. Sköll runs behind the sun, and Hati runs ahead of her, wanting the moon. At Ragnarök they catch and swallow them, a sign that the end of the world has begun.
Are Sköll and Hati the sons of Fenrir?
Probably, but no source says so outright. Grímnismál calls Hati “the son of Hróðvitnir,” and Hróðvitnir, “famous wolf,” is usually taken as another name for Fenrir, as it is in Lokasenna. Völuspá also calls the wolf brood of the Iron Wood “Fenrir’s kin.” Sköll is never given a father.
What do the names Sköll and Hati mean?
The names are usually translated from Old Norse as “Treachery” or “One Who Mocks” (Sköll) and “Hater” or “One Who Hates” (Hati Hróðvitnisson).
What happens to Sköll and Hati at Ragnarök?
In Gylfaginning, part of Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, one wolf swallows the sun and the other takes the moon, and the stars vanish from the sky; Snorri’s earlier chapter tells us these are Sköll and Hati. Soon after, the earth shakes and Fenrir breaks free. The poem Vafþrúðnismál says instead that Fenrir himself takes the sun.
Who was the mother of Sköll and Hati?
Snorri says the wolves descend from an old giantess in the Iron Wood, east of Midgard, who bore many giants in wolf shape. He does not name her. Modern retellings often call her Angrboða, Fenrir’s mother, but no medieval source makes that link.
Keep exploring: the sourced reference entry for Sköll and Hati in our Library, more Norse mythology creatures, their father Fenrir and his sibling Jörmungandr, or shop our Viking rings.