Tyr was an important Germanic and Norse god of war, similar to the god Mars worshiped by the ancient Romans. But we know very little about Tyr from the Viking Age as he was largely overshadowed by Odin, the principal Norse god of war and chief of the Aesir gods.
The evidence suggests that Tyr may have once been the most important god of war among the ancestors of the Vikings, and his position was usurped by Odin, who also took on many of his attributes and stories. As a result, only one famous story about Tyr survives in Norse mythology, that of the imprisonment of Fenrir. But many small details point to Tyr’s earlier significance.
Tyr: The Original God of War
When the Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson lists the twelve most important Norse gods enthroned in Asgard in his Skaldskaparmal, he includes Tyr. Elsewhere, in his Gylfaginning, Sturluson says that Tyr is a god of war who has great power over victory in battles.
Tyr’s name suggests that he was an important deity. It comes from the Proto-Germanic word tiwaz, which means “god,” and tyr which means the same in Old Norse. Therefore, Tyr is simply called “god,” though he may have had other names that have been lost over time.
But, despite his apparent importance, in the Viking Age, Tyr was overshadowed by Odin. As well as being the principal god of war, described as deciding the result of battles and choosing the bravest fallen warriors to live in Valhalla, Odin is the All-Father, the creator of mankind, and the progenitor of most of the Norse gods. He is the chief of the Aesir gods, the most important gods in Norse mythology.
However, there is evidence that Tyr may have been the original “god of war” in pre-Viking times and that as the Norse culture evolved over the centuries, this position was usurped by Odin. This could also explain why we know very little about Tyr because some of his attributes and stories could have been absorbed into Odin by the time they were written down.
When the Romans encountered the Germans in the first century CE, the Roman historian Tacitus compared their gods to the more familiar gods of Rome. In his Germania, Tacitus suggests that the Germans principally worshiped Mercury, even using human sacrifices. Historians have identified Mercury with Odin. Tacitus says that the Germans also worship a hero akin to Hercules, identified as Thor, and the Roman god of war Mars, which historians suggest must be Tyr.
An altar with a Latin inscription was set up along Hadrian’s Wall in the 3rd century CE. It is dedicated to the god Mars Thingsus and the goddesses Beda and Fimmilena, by the German Tuihantian citizens, who were serving on the wall. The epithet “Thingsus” suggests that this Mars was associated with the Thing, a governing council among the Germans. This suggests an early association between Tyr and the Thing, which could connect the god with leadership, justice, and order.
The female figures Beda and Fimmilena are believed to be proto-Valkyries due to the images of female warriors that appear on the sides of the altar. This is an interesting connection because the Valkyries (divine shieldmaidens) are described in the Viking Age as servants of Odin. But this evidence suggests that the warrior women may originally have been associated with Tyr and that this aspect was integrated into Odin by the Viking Age.
Tyr also appeared on gold bracteates from Germany dating to the pre-Viking period, adding further evidence that he was considered an important god of war, if not the principal god of war, at some point before the Viking Age. But by the time the Vikings started raiding across the British Isles, Tyr had been usurped as the chief Viking god of war by Odin.
Tyr and Fenrir
While there are many mentions of Tyr in the surviving source for Norse mythology, he is usually a supporting character mentioned in passing. For example, in one story, Tyr and Thor are described as going to visit the giant Hymir to borrow an enormous cauldron big enough to make mead for all the gods.
Hymir is described as Tyr’s father, making Tyr one of the many Norse gods with giant heritage, and Tyr is also described as meeting his 900-headed grandmother, who hates him. The pair hide as they wait for Hymir to return from hunting, but are quickly exposed. When Hymir sees that the mighty Thor is present, he orders three oxen killed and cooked for their dinner. Thor, known for his enormous appetite, eats two oxen on his own. Not wanting to kill any more of his precious animals to feed the god, Hymir invites Thor to go fishing with him the next day to catch their next meal, resulting in the famous story of Thor’s fishing trip. Tyr is not mentioned again.
The only surviving story in which Tyr is featured as a protagonist is that of the imprisonment of the mighty wolf Fenrir. The wolf Fenrir is one of the three children of the trickster giant Loki with the giantess Angrboda. Their other two children are the serpent Jormungandr and the giantess Hel. The gods decide that the children of such a monstrous union are too dangerous to be left unchecked. They cast Jormungandr into the seas surrounding Midgard, and they send Hel to be the ruler of the underworld Helheim.
Initially, the gods kept Fenrir as a kind of pet, but he was so vicious that of all the gods, only Tyr had the courage to give the wolf food. As Fenrir continued to grow in size and strength, the gods decided that he must be imprisoned. He was too strong for them to just chain up, so they decided to trick him. They made a set of strong chains and challenged the arrogant wolf to agree to be chained up and then break the chains as a show of his strength. Fenrir agreed to the challenge and broke the chains with ease. The gods then made a stronger set of chains and repeated the challenge, with the same result.
Knowing that they would need something stronger, the god went to the dwarves, the master craftsmen of the Norse cosmos, and asked them to make an unbreakable fetter. They made Gleipnir. This fetter looked like a ribbon, but because it was made from impossible things, it was impossible to break. The dwarves used the sound of a cat’s footfall, 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.
This time, when the gods called Fenrir to participate in the same challenge, he was suspicious when he saw the seemingly fragile chain. Suspecting a trick, he said that he would only agree to the challenge if one of the gods would put their hand in his mouth, as a guarantee that they would release him if he could not break the chain. Naturally, none of the gods wanted to, but Tyr volunteered.
Fenrir put on the chain as before and discovered he could not break it. When the gods did not free him and he realized that he had been tricked and trapped, he bit off Tyr’s hand at the wrist, known among the Vikings as the wolf joint. Almost all surviving depictions of Tyr show him with his hand in Fenrir’s mouth.
Fenrir howled in anger at this betrayal, and the gods wedged a sword in his mouth to stop the sound. This is how Fenrir is destined to stay until Ragnarök, when circumstances will allow Fenrir to break his chains and join his father and siblings in the great war against the gods, with the two sides destroying one another.
Tyr at Ragnarök
At some point after the imprisonment of Fenrir, Loki orchestrated the death of Balder, one of Odin’s sons. It is this act that ends the peaceful agreement between Loki and the Aesir that allows the trickster to live among the gods. This is why Loki was not invited to the gathering of the gods, for which they procured Hymir’s cauldron. But Loki turned up anyway and proceeded to insult all the gods in scenes recorded in the Lokasenna.
When it is Tyr’s turn to face Loki’s tongue, the trickster says that Tyr can no longer be the right hand of justice, because that hand has been torn off by his son Fenrir. Tyr responds that while he misses the hand, he is satisfied that it was sacrificed for a good cause. It is not long after this that Loki is imprisoned by the gods, also destined to break his chains at Ragnarök.
Ragnarök is the prophesied end of the world. The prophecy says that when that day comes, many gods and monsters will kill each other in battle, resulting in the destruction of the world. According to the prophecy, Tyr will fight to the death with Garm, the guard dog of Hel. Meanwhile, Odin will be devoured by Fenrir.
Considering the relationship between Fenrir and Tyr, it is interesting that it is Odin who will face the wolf at Ragnarök, while Tyr will fight Garm, an animal that is sometimes difficult to differentiate from Fenrir in the surviving sources. In the Voluspa, it is the howling of Garm that heralds the breaking of fetters and the arrival of Ragnarök, when surely it is Fenrir who howls and breaks his fetters.
This again suggests that the story was changed over time and that the lines between Tyr and Odin and between Fenrir and Garm have been blurred.
Tyr and the Runes
One final important characteristic of Tyr is that he is associated with the Tiwaz rune, the letter T in both the pre-Viking Elder Futhark alphabet and the Viking Younger Futhark alphabet.
In addition to being an alphabet, the Vikings believed that the runes were capable of working magic, and they often inscribed runes onto objects for that purpose. According to mythology, the runes were discovered by Odin, who hung himself from the world tree Yggdrasil for nine days and nights to learn their secrets and then shared them with mankind.
The Tiwaz rune was associated with victory, and Tiwaz runes stacked on top of one another often appear in inscriptions, seemingly to invoke success. In the Sigrdrifumal, the Valkyrie Sigrdrifa tells the hero Sigmund about the secrets of the victory runes, telling him to invoke Tyr’s rune and inscribe it on his weapons to ensure success.
Not only does this reiterate the connection between Tyr and war and victory, but the fact that one of the most important Viking runes was closely associated with Tyr and that there is no parallel for Odin, suggests that there may have been an association between Tyr and the runes, which was again transferred to Odin.
Culture, religion, and beliefs are not static, and they change and evolve over time. With no written records and limited archaeological evidence, it is difficult to trace the evolution of Germanic and Norse religions over the ages. However, the evidence does suggest that the relationship between Tyr and Odin, two gods of war, was complex and changed over time. But there is no question that by the Viking Age, Odin was the chief god of war.
