The Norse gods bound Fenrir with a ribbon, and Týr paid with his hand
In Norse myth the gods raised a wolf pup they had been warned would one day kill Odin. As he grew alarmingly fast, they tried to chain him with iron twice and failed. The third fetter, made by dwarves, looked like a silk ribbon, and Fenrir agreed to wear it only if a god put a hand in his mouth.
Fenrir was one of three children the trickster Loki fathered with the giantess Angrboða; the others were the world serpent Jörmungandr and Hel. Prophecies warned the gods of disaster from all three. Odin threw the serpent into the ocean surrounding the lands and sent Hel to Niflheim, but the wolf was brought up among the gods, and only Týr dared approach him with food. The main account comes from the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century, while the older poems gathered in the Poetic Edda add scattered prophecies.
The first fetter, Leyding, snapped at one kick. The second, Dromi, twice as strong, burst into pieces that flew far away, and the story claims that breaking free of either became a saying for a hard-won achievement. Odin then sent Freyr's messenger Skírnir to dwarves, who wove Gleipnir from six mythical ingredients into something smooth as silk yet unbreakable. On the island of Lyngvi, Fenrir suspected trickery and demanded a pledge. Týr placed his right hand in the wolf's jaws; the harder Fenrir struggled, the tighter Gleipnir held, and he bit the hand off at the wrist.
The gods anchored the fetter deep underground beneath a stone slab and wedged a sword between the wolf's jaws. The drool running from his mouth became a river named Ván, meaning hope. Asked why they did not simply kill him, the narrator explains that the gods would not stain their sanctuary with his blood, even knowing he would cause Odin's death. In the poem Lokasenna, Loki later taunts Týr over the lost hand, and Týr retorts that Loki lost his famous son.
At Ragnarök every bond breaks. Fenrir's sons swallow the sun and moon, and he runs free with his upper jaw scraping the sky and fire streaming from his eyes and nostrils. He swallows Odin, until Odin's son Víðarr plants a foot in the wolf's lower jaw and tears his mouth apart.
Source: Fenrir
