The Myth of Fenrir

Fenrir is the most infamous of the many wolves in Norse mythology. He’s the son of the god Loki and the giantess Angrboða, which makes him the brother of the serpent Jormungand and the underworld goddess Hel. At Ragnarok, he broke free from his chains and ran throughout the world with his lower jaw against the ground and his upper jaw in the sky, devouring everything in his path.He even killed the god Odin before finally being put to death by one of Odin’s avenging sons. There’s good reason to think that many of the other wolves mentioned in Old Norse literature are actually Fenrir going under different names. One Old Norse poem states that he swallows the sun during Ragnarok, a feat which is elsewhere reserved for another wolf named Sköll (“Mockery”). In another source, we find the wolf who consumes the moon called by the name of “Moon-garmr” (Mánagarmr). Thus, the moon-eating wolf, who is elsewhere called Háti (“Hatred”) would seem to be another extension of Fenrir. It appears that it was ultimately Fenrir who, in addition to killing Odin and destroying much of the world, ate the sun and the moon during Ragnarok. In another telling, Skoll and Hati are the sons of Fenrir. When attempting to free their father, Odin put the two wolves into the sky as a way to make the chariots run on time, as it were. Skoll was bespelled to chase Sunna's chariot as a dog herds sheep, keeping it to its path, and Hati was similarly charged with herding Mani's dog-cart.

For this painting, I was influenced by one of my favourite Norse myths. I attempted to be less precise with this painting, for I realised, even though I called my previous large scale paintings abstract (which they are) they were still quite neat. So for this piece I decided to be a bit more loose with the brush and not go over the outlines at the end. To get a better range of colours, I also decided to paint the background with my hand, so the colours would blend more.