Tyr
Tyr was the Norse god of battle and, Lex suggests, of law and oaths, best known for laying his right hand in the wolf Fenrir’s jaws so that the gods could bind it. The lost hand is his mark in the myths; Lex names the sword as his attribute.
Meaning
Tyr, said teer in English (Dictionary.com), is one of the Æsir and a son of Odin. Lex calls him the god of war and probably of law: the god who keeps to the rules and protects agreements, assemblies and the swearing of oaths. Snorri’s Prose Edda says he is “most daring, and best in stoutness of heart”, with much authority over victory in battle, so that a man who surpasses others and does not waver is called “Tyr-valiant” and the wisest “Tyr-prudent”. He acts in only one myth, the binding of the wolf Fenrir, and Lex calls him a background figure in Viking Age mythology. His name comes from the same Indo-European root as Latin deus, “god”, and Lex holds that he is in all likelihood the old Indo-European sky god whom the Greeks called Zeus and the Romans Jupiter. The Eddas that tell his story were written by Christian writers at the start of the Middle Ages, the National Museum of Denmark says. Heathens honour him today: The Troth includes Tyr in its list of the gods Heathens worship.
Origin and history
Tyr’s story is older than the Viking Age. The National Museum of Denmark says the Nordic gods were worshipped in the Iron Age, at least 300 years before the Vikings, and that certain gold bracteates show the war god Týr with his hand in the mouth of the wolf Fenrir. Place names in Denmark and southern Sweden carry his name, Store norske leksikon says, as witness to his popularity before Christianity. Lex names Tissø, Tibirke and Tisvilde in Denmark as places that point to a cult of Tyr. Tisvilde, recorded in 1286 as Tiswillæ, joins the god’s name to væld, “spring”; for the lake Tissø, recorded in 1452, Lex allows either the god’s name or the common word tī, “(heathen) god”. The Romans took Tyr for their war god Mars, Lex adds, so Mars’s day became Tyr’s day: Tuesday.
The hand in the wolf’s jaws
In Snorri’s telling the gods raise the wolf Fenrir, Loki’s son, at home, and “Tyr alone dared go to him to give him meat”. When prophecies say the wolf will be their destruction, they try to bind him. He breaks two fetters, and the dwarfs make a third, Gleipnir, from “the noise a cat makes in foot-fall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a rock, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish, and the spittle of a bird”. Suspecting a trick, the wolf agrees to be bound only if one of the gods will “lay his hand in my mouth, for a pledge that this is done in good faith”. None of them would part with his hand, “until Tyr stretched out his right hand and laid it in the Wolf’s mouth”. The band held, and the wolf bit the hand off. Snorri tells the story as “one token of his daring”. In the Eddic poem Lokasenna Loki throws it back at him, “Fain would I tell how Fenrir once Thy right hand rent from thee”, and Tyr answers that the wolf has the worse of it, bound until the end: “Ill fares the wolf who shall ever await In fetters the fall of the gods.” At Ragnarök Tyr fights Garm, the hound that guards the way to the underworld, and each kills the other.
Victory runes and the sword
In the Eddic poem Sigrdrifumol the list of runes begins with “winning-runes”, to be written on the sword-hilt, “and twice shalt thou call on Tyr”. Henry Adams Bellows, translating it in 1923, calls Tyr “the sword-god” and notes that tyr was also the name of a rune that became T: the T-rune of the Elder Futhark. Lex likewise gives the sword as Tyr’s attribute.
Tyr in Heathenry today
Tuesday is the plainest trace of Tyr in daily life, and in Iceland Ásatrúarfélagið publishes a calendar for its members with the old weekday names that many Icelanders prefer, among them týsdagur, Tyr’s day. The Troth warns Heathens off the habit of popular books that give each god one department, its first example being “Tyr is the God of War”: the gods and goddesses, it says, “cannot be reduced to a corporate org chart”.
Read next
- Next in Norse gods and their symbolsHeimdallHeimdall was the watchman of the Norse gods, who guards the rainbow bridge Bifröst against the giants. His symbol is his horn, Gjallarhorn, which he blows to call the gods to their last battle at Ragnarök.
- The same shape in Andean and Inca symbolsInti Raymi (festival of the sun)The Inca festival of the sun, held at the June solstice in Cusco. Banned under Spanish rule, it was revived in 1944 and is staged every 24 June at the Coricancha, the main square and Sacsayhuamán.
See also
Odin, Frigg, Thor, Baldr, Bragi, Idun.
Sources
- Ty (Store norske leksikon), Ellen Næss, Store norske leksikon, Ty
- Tyr (Lex), Claus Jensen; Finn Stefánsson, Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon, Tyr, i nordisk mytologi
- Tisvilde (Lex), Niels Ulrik Hansen, Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon, Tisvilde, etymology
- Tissø (Lex), Hans Kuhlman, Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon, Tissø, etymology
- The old religion, National Museum of Denmark
- The Prose Edda (Brodeur translation), Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (trans.), 1916, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Internet Archive), Gylfaginning, chapters XXV, XXXIV and LI
- The Poetic Edda (Bellows translation), Henry Adams Bellows (trans.), 1923, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Project Gutenberg), Sigrdrifumol, stanza 6 and note; Lokasenna, stanzas 38–39
- Vor siður, Ásatrúarfélagið
- Gods, The Troth, Who is the Norse God of Biscuits?
- Tyr (Dictionary.com), Dictionary.com
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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