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giant

Angrboða

The giantess in Jötunheim with whom Loki fathered Fenrir, the Midgard Serpent and Hel; the sources name her and say almost nothing else.

Lokis Gezücht
Lokis Gezücht, Emil Doepler (1905). Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Angrboða is the mother of Loki's three monstrous children: Fenrir, Jörmungandr and Hel. Snorri calls her "a certain giantess in Jötunheim," and that is all he says about her as a person Gylfaginning 34. The children were raised in Jötunheim until the gods, warned by prophecy, took them away. Snorri adds that the gods expected evil "first from the mother's blood, and yet worse from the father's," so her giant ancestry counted against the children.

The Poetic Edda mentions her once, in Hyndluljóð's catalogue of strange births: "The wolf did Loki with Angrbotha win" Hyndluljóð 42.

That is the whole of the evidence. The name itself, usually read as "grief-bidder," says much: it reads like a name chosen for the mother of the wolf that will kill Odin. Some modern readers connect her with the "giantess old in Ironwood" who bears the wolf-brood in Völuspá Völuspá 40, but the poem does not name that giantess.

In the sources

Quoted from the hosted translations; each line is checked against the text when the site is built. Select a reference to read it in context.

Angrboda was the name of a certain giantess in Jötunheim, with whom Loki gat three children: one was Fenris-Wolf, the second Jörmungandr—that is the Midgard Serpent,—the third is Hel.
Gylfaginning 34 Snorri names her as mother of Loki's three monstrous children.
The wolf did Loki with Angrbotha win
Hyndluljóð 42 The only mention of her in the Poetic Edda.

Where the sources disagree or fall silent

  • Some scholars identify her with the old giantess of the Ironwood who 'bore the brood of Fenrir' (Völuspá 40), but no source makes the connection.

In modern culture

Not from the medieval sources.

Modern novels and games often give Angrboða a full personality, as a witch of the Ironwood or as Loki's true love; these are inventions built on two lines of medieval text.

Myths with Angrboða

The binding of Fenrir The gods raise Loki's wolf-son Fenrir at home until they fear him, then trick him into a magic fetter made of impossible things. Týr puts his hand in the wolf's mouth as a pledge, and loses it.

Related

Loki The giant-born trickster counted among the Æsir: father of Fenrir, the Midgard Serpent and Hel, contriver of Baldr's death, bound until Ragnarök. Fenrir The giant wolf fathered by Loki on Angrboða, raised by the gods, bound with the fetter Gleipnir at the cost of Týr's hand, and fated to swallow Odin at Ragnarök. Jörmungandr Loki's serpent son, thrown by Odin into the ocean, where it grew to encircle the whole earth; Thor's great enemy, whom he hooks once and kills at Ragnarök. Hel Loki's daughter by Angrboða, half dark and half flesh-coloured, whom Odin cast down to rule the dead in Niflheim; she holds Baldr and sets the price of his return. Jötunheimr The land of the giants, at the edge of the world beyond rivers and sea, usually to the east of the gods and men. Thor goes there to fight, and gods go there to court and steal.