Sköll

The Eddas introduce Sköll with brutal economy. In Grimnismál, Odin lists: Sköll is the name of the wolf that follows the bright-faced god to the shelter of the wood; and Hati, Hróðvitnir's son, runs before the bride of heaven. Snorri expands it in Gylfaginning: the wolves are two; the one that goes behind her is called Sköll, and he is the one Sól fears, for he will catch her in the end; the one that runs before is called Hati Hróðvitnisson, and he wants to seize the moon; and so it shall come to pass. Of the parentage, the texts say less than is usually repeated: only Hati carries a patronymic, son of Hróðvitnir, which is a name of Fenrir, and Sköll's paternity is extended to him by brotherhood. The mother does not even have a name: Snorri tells that east of Midgard, in the forest called Járnviðr, lives an old giantess who bears giants in wolf shape, and that from that line come these two; the mightiest of them all, he adds, is one Mánagarmr, who gorges on the flesh of the dead, will swallow the moon and will spatter the sky and all the air with blood. Identifying that crone of Ironwood with Angrboda, Fenrir's mate, is a conjecture of modern scholars, not the letter of the texts. Jacob Grimm, who went over the whole file in his Teutonic Mythology, suspected that about this entire family there were fuller legends that were never written down.

The chase is the world's clock. Sól does not stroll: she drives the chariot of the sun drawn by the horses Árvakr and Alsviðr, and before her hangs the shield Svalinn, without which, the Eddas say, the mountains and the seas would burn. And if the sun crosses the sky so fast it is, Snorri answers Gangleri's question, because she goes like one afraid: her pursuer seeks her closely, and she has no way out but flight. That is Sköll's exact trade: not to catch her yet. His daily run is the engine of the day, just as his brother's, running before the moon, marks the night. Every dawn is an escape and every dusk a truce, and what a shepherd saw on raising his eyes was a hunt in progress: the shining quarry, the shield between her and the jaws, and behind, unseen but certain, the wolf. Few mythologies have loaded so everyday a phenomenon with so much menace: the Norse world told the time by watching how much of a lead the sun had left.

The appointed hour comes with Ragnarök. Snorri tells it plainly: then the wolf will swallow the sun, and it will seem to men a great harm; the other wolf will seize the moon, and that too will be past remedy; the stars will vanish from the sky. But here the sources disagree, and the disagreement is famous. In Vafþrúðnismál it is Fenrir himself who carries off the light of the sky, while in Grimnismál the sun's pursuer is Sköll; Snorri shares out the parts, Sköll for the sun, Mánagarmr or Hati for the moon, Fenrir for his own battle against Odin, and Jacob Grimm, noting the discrepancy, saw in father and sons the same menace told at different scales. What no source disputes is the end of the end: when the world is reborn, says Vafþrúðnismál, Álfröðull, the Elf-Wheel that is the sun, will first have borne a daughter no less fair than herself, who will ride her mother's roads. Sköll's victory lasts exactly as long as the end of the world: he swallows one sun, and the new world dawns with another. He is the only hunter whose triumph comes with the outcome already written, and still he runs.