Týr

Tacitus, writing in 98 CE, identified the chief Germanic war god with the Roman Mars. The name behind the identification was *Tīwaz, which became Old Norse Týr. The linguistic root is the same as Sanskrit Dyaus, Greek Zeus, and Latin Jupiter: the Proto-Indo-European sky father *Dyēus. Týr may have been the original supreme god of the Germanic peoples before Odin displaced him.

The Binding of Fenrir

The wolf Fenrir grew so large that the gods feared him. They tried twice to bind him with chains. He broke both. The dwarves forged Gleipnir, a ribbon made from six impossible things: the sound of a cat’s footstep, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish, and the spittle of a bird. The ribbon was thin and soft. Fenrir suspected treachery and refused to be bound unless a god placed a hand in his mouth as a pledge of good faith.

Týr put his right hand in the wolf’s mouth. The gods bound Fenrir with Gleipnir. The ribbon held. The wolf bit down. Týr lost his hand.

What the Hand Means

Týr is the god of oaths and law. He placed his hand in Fenrir’s mouth knowing the chain would hold and the wolf would take the hand. He guaranteed an oath he knew would be broken, because the binding was necessary. The cosmos needed time. Týr paid for that time with his sword hand. At Ragnarök, the chain will break, and the cost will come due.

Tuesday

The English word Tuesday derives from Old English Tīwesdæg, “Týr’s day,” a calque of the Latin Martis dies (Mars’s day). The same substitution gives German Dienstag (from Thingsus, an epithet of Tīwaz connected to the thing, the Germanic legal assembly). The god of law gave his name to the day of the week devoted to justice.

Sources

Bibliography. The same list is held in the article’s frontmatter for the citation tools that read it programmatically.

• Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda / Gylfaginning (c. 1220): the binding of Fenrir
• Tacitus, Germania 9 (98 CE): identifies Germanic ‘Mars’ as a chief deity (*Tīwaz)
• Hymiskviða (Poetic Edda): Týr accompanies Thor to the giant Hymir