Sköll and Hati: The Wolves That Chase the Sun and Moon

Two wolves cross the Norse sky. Sköll runs behind the sun, Hati behind the moon, and at Ragnarök each catches what it has chased since the beginning of the world. That's the version most retellings give you — and it really is in the sources. But open the Poetic Edda and the picture wobbles: one poem hands the sun-swallowing to Fenrir himself, and translators have disagreed over a single Old Norse word for a century. Below is the stanza-by-stanza record — including the parts that argue with each other.

What the Sources Actually Say

The wolves' clearest appearance is Grímnismál, stanza 39, where a disguised Odin lists the workings of the cosmos. In Henry Adams Bellows' 1936 translation:

"Skoll is the wolf that to Ironwood / Follows the glittering god, / And the son of Hrothvitnir, Hati, awaits / The burning bride of heaven."— Grímnismál 39, Poetic Edda, tr. Bellows (1936)

The "glittering god" is Sól, the sun — female in Norse myth, driving her chariot ahead of the wolf. Snorri's Prose Edda fills in the mechanics: in Gylfaginning, the wolf running behind the sun is Sköll, and the one leaping ahead of her after the moon is Hati Hróðvitnisson. She hurries, Snorri says in Brodeur's translation, because the one behind her will eventually take her.

Where do sky-hunting wolves come from? Völuspá points east, to a forest of giants — the same brood our guide to the named wolves of Norse myth traces back to Fenrir:

"The giantess old in Ironwood sat, / In the east, and bore the brood of Fenrir; / Among these one in monster's guise / Was soon to steal the sun from the sky."— Völuspá 40, Poetic Edda, tr. Bellows (1936)

Note what Bellows did there: "steal the sun." The Old Norse says the monster becomes tungls tjúgari — snatcher of the tungl, a word that means "heavenly body" and, in later usage, specifically the moon. Carolyne Larrington's Oxford translation reads the same line as the snatcher of the moon. One stanza, two celestial victims, depending on who's translating. That ambiguity is not a modern internet muddle — it's baked into the manuscript tradition itself.

Who Swallows the Sun — Sköll or Fenrir?

Ask Snorri and the answer is clean: at Ragnarök, "a wolf named Sköll" swallows the sun and another wolf takes the moon, the stars vanish, and then Fenrir breaks loose for his own separate fight. Ask the older poem Vafþrúðnismál, though, and the sun-swallower has a different name:

"A daughter bright Alfrothul bears / Ere Fenrir snatches her forth; / Her mother's paths shall the maiden tread / When the gods to death have gone."— Vafþrúðnismál 47, Poetic Edda, tr. Bellows (1936)

Fenrir snatches the sun — and she has already borne a daughter who will ride her mother's path through the sky of the next world. Bellows flagged the clash himself in his 1936 footnote, calling it a confusion between Fenrir and Sköll. Modern scholars go further: Andy Orchard has suggested the sky-wolves may all originally have been Fenrir under different names, with Snorri — a careful systematizer writing two centuries after conversion — sorting one wolf into several. Snorri even adds a third moon-threat, Mánagarmr the "Moon-Hound," fattened on the flesh of the dead, who will swallow the moon and spatter the sky with blood. How Mánagarmr relates to Hati, he never explains. The serpent coiled around the same doomsday has the tidier story — as our deep-dive on Jörmungandr shows, sources argue about wolves far more than they argue about the World Serpent.

What Their Names Mean

Even the names resist a single answer. Andy Orchard renders Sköll as "Treachery"; Rudolf Simek's dictionary prefers "Mockery," tying it to an Old Norse root for barking and scolding — a wolf named for the sound of its own pursuit. Hati is more transparent: "He Who Hates," the enemy, from the Old Norse verb hata. His patronymic Hróðvitnisson makes him the son of Hróðvitnir, "the Mighty Wolf" — a name most translators since Bellows have read as Fenrir, though Snorri never spells the equation out. A wolf named Mockery, a wolf named Hate, both bred from the line of the wolf who ends the world: whoever composed these stanzas was not naming pets.

What Did Sköll and Hati Look Like?

The sources don't say. Not the fur color, not the size, not one physical detail — across Grímnismál, Völuspá, Vafþrúðnismál, and both Gylfaginning chapters, the wolves only chase, leap, and swallow. The popular pairing of one black wolf and one white wolf is modern illustration, borrowed from the sun-and-moon symmetry rather than from any text. Archaeology is just as quiet: no runestone or carving names either wolf. The famous wolf-devouring scenes on the Ledberg and Tullstorp stones are read by scholars as Fenrir swallowing Odin — and even that is interpretation, since neither stone carries a wolf's name in its runes. Every "Sköll and Hati" design you've ever seen is modern interpretive art built on an authentically old story.

Sköll and Hati Tattoos

That blank canvas is exactly why the pair works so well as a tattoo. The standard composition sets two wolves circling a sun and moon — often in a yin-yang rotation, one light and one dark — which reads as balance, persistence, and time running out, all at once. It's honest ink as long as you know what's old and what's new: the chase itself is attested Viking-age myth; the circular two-wolf layout, the color coding, and any runic captions are modern design choices. If you want the full map of which Norse motifs are period-attested and which are later inventions, our guide to real Viking tattoo symbols draws those lines symbol by symbol. Forearm and calf suit the circular layout; shoulder blades take the two wolves facing each other across the spine.

The Wolves in Games and Pop Culture

Plenty of people first met these wolves in God of War Ragnarök (2022), where Sköll and Hati appear in the "Creatures of Prophecy" story quest in Vanaheim — the moon has been stolen, and the quest ends with Hati howling it back into the sky rather than with a kill. Marvel comics run the pair as shapeshifting wolf gods who attacked Asgard in Thor's youth. Both versions invent freely — the games and comics give the wolves the personalities and appearances the Eddas never did, which is the same gap modern artists have been filling for a century.

Wearing the Chase

As jewelry symbolism, Sköll and Hati carry something the lone-wolf cliché doesn't: patience with a guaranteed ending. The chase always finishes; the question is only when. That's why the pair suits pieces you wear daily rather than statement one-offs. A Fenrir wolf Mjölnir pendant puts the father of the sky-wolves on the hammer meant to stop him — the whole family argument in one piece of silver. On the hand, a tribal flame wolf ring keeps the pursuit abstract, while a wolf head link bracelet multiplies the pack around your wrist. The rest of the pack — bears, ravens, serpents included — lives in the animal rings collection.

One last thought. The Norse explanation for sunset was not that the sun falls — it's that she runs. Day exists because something hungry is behind it. If you've ever worked better with a deadline at your back, you already understand Sköll and Hati better than most retellings do. And they aren't the only pair patrolling that sky — Odin's ravens cross it every morning, watching everything the wolves chase.