Geri and Freki: Odin's Wolves

Geri and Freki are Odin's two wolves in Norse mythology. Both names mean roughly "the greedy one" or "the ravenous one." Grímnismál 19 in the Poetic Edda says Odin gives them all the food from his table and lives on wine alone, a scene Snorri repeats in Gylfaginning 38.

Odin never travels light. Two ravens ride his shoulders, two wolves eat at his feet, and an eight-legged horse waits outside. The ravens get most of the attention. The wolves get a single stanza of poetry and one paragraph of prose, and that is the entire dossier. Here is what the sources actually say about Geri and Freki, what their names mean, why a war god keeps wolves at all, and how to keep them separate from Fenrir.

Who Are Geri and Freki?

Geri and Freki are the wolves that sit beside Odin's high seat and take food from his hand. They appear in exactly two places in the medieval sources: stanza 19 of the Eddic poem Grímnismál, and chapter 38 of Snorri Sturluson's Gylfaginning in the Prose Edda, which quotes that same stanza. Beyond those, the names surface only in poetic word-lists. That is all.

It is worth pausing on how small that is. The wolves have no parents, no birth story, no adventures, and no role at Ragnarök. The sources never describe their size or color, never let them speak, and never send them anywhere. They exist in a single image: the lord of Valhalla at his table, feeding his beasts.

They do have famous colleagues. The same chapter of Gylfaginning that introduces the wolves also introduces Odin's ravens, Huginn and Muninn, who fly out each morning and bring the world's news back to their master. Ravens for information, wolves at the table: Odin kept a very particular household.

What Do the Names Geri and Freki Mean?

Both names come from ordinary Old Norse adjectives for hunger. Geri is built on gerr, "greedy," and Freki on frekr, "greedy" or "gluttonous." Rudolf Simek's Dictionary of Northern Mythology glosses both names the same way: "the greedy one." Odin, in other words, named his wolves something like Greedy and Ravenous.

The pairing follows a pattern in Odin's household. Huginn and Muninn are "thought" and "mind"; Geri and Freki are two shades of the same hunger. They read less like individual characters and more like a doubled quality given animal form, which may be exactly how the poets meant them.

The names also lead a second life. The poetic word-lists attached to Skáldskaparmál count both geri and freki among the many terms a skald could use for any wolf at all. So when one of the names turns up in battle poetry, it is not always Odin's pair being described. Sometimes it is just a wolf.

What Does Grímnismál 19 Actually Say?

Grímnismál is a strange, tense poem. Odin, disguised under the name Grímnir, sits pinned between two fires in a king's hall and recites the layout of the mythological world. Stanza 19 is his one remark about the wolves. In Henry Adams Bellows' translation, which you can read in full at sacred-texts.com: "Freki and Geri does Heerfather feed, the far-famed fighter of old: but on wine alone does the weapon-decked god, Othin, forever live." The Old Norse puts Geri first; Bellows happens to reverse the order.

Heerfather is Herjaföðr, "father of armies," one of Odin's many names. The stanza makes two claims: Odin feeds the wolves, and he himself takes no food at all. Snorri unpacks it in Gylfaginning 38. Odin gives all the food set before him to Geri and Freki, because, in Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur's translation, "wine is both food and drink to him." It is the same scene we describe in our guide to the feast in Valhalla: the einherjar eat their fill of boiled boar, and the god at the head of the hall eats nothing.

What the detail means is open. A lord who feeds his followers and needs nothing himself is a compressed image of power. Some readers add that wine had to be imported into Scandinavia, which would make it an aristocratic marker on top. The poem itself explains nothing. It states the fact and moves on, which is very much Grímnismál's style.

Why Wolves? The Battlefield Connection

Wolf and raven belong together in Norse battle poetry. They are the carrion animals that follow armies, and skalds praised a successful warrior as one who fed the wolf and gladdened the raven, meaning he left enemies dead on the field. A god of war flanked by two wolves and two ravens is that whole poetic system gathered into one high seat. That much is a fair reading of how the animals work in the verse.

Some modern writers go further and make Geri and Freki the center of a wolf-warrior cult. The honest version is thinner. Warriors called úlfheðnar, "wolf-skins," do appear in the sources: the ninth-century praise poem Haraldskvæði counts them among Harald Fairhair's fighters at Hafrsfjord, and Ynglinga saga says Odin's own men raged "mad as dogs or wolves." But no medieval text connects those warriors to Geri and Freki by name. The wolves belong to Odin; whether any human warrior band belonged to the wolves is a modern guess, and we flag it as one.

Geri and Freki vs Fenrir

Norse myth is full of wolves, and mixing them up is easy. Geri and Freki are not Fenrir. Fenrir is a monster with a biography: son of Loki, raised among the gods, bound with the dwarf-forged ribbon Gleipnir after he outgrew every chain, and destined to break loose at Ragnarök and swallow Odin himself. Geri and Freki have no parentage, no binding, and no fate. They are companions, not a threat.

One word does blur the line. In Völuspá's recurring refrain about the end of the world, "the fetters will burst, and the wolf run free" in Bellows' rendering, the word behind "the wolf" is freki, and most readers take that wolf to be Fenrir. Same word, different animal. The texts never comment on the irony that Odin hand-feeds two wolves at his table while a third is fated to devour him, but it is hard to be a modern reader and not notice it.

The Other Wolves of the Norse World

Two more named wolves round out the family. Grímnismál 39 names Sköll and Hati, who chase the sun and the moon across the sky, and Snorri adds in Gylfaginning that the chase will one day end with both caught. Add Fenrir's brood and the wolves of the Ironwood, and the wolf becomes one of the most loaded animals in the whole mythology: pursuer, devourer, and companion all at once. Geri and Freki hold down the one friendly corner of that picture.

Odin's Wolves Today

The names never really left. Geri and Freki turn up today as characters in games and comics, as unit names and call signs, and constantly as names for pet dogs, which would probably have amused the poets. In tattoos and jewelry the pair carries a meaning Fenrir cannot: loyalty beside power rather than rage against it.

In our experience, that is exactly the distinction people reach for when they pick a paired-wolf design over a single snarling head. Two wolves at the side of the wise one reads as devotion with teeth, and that is a faithful summary of the only scene the sources ever gave them.

Keep exploring: meet the rest of the family in our guide to the Norse gods and goddesses, compare the wolves with the ravens Huginn and Muninn, or browse the wolf pendants and rings in our Viking jewelry collection.

Geri and Freki: Frequently Asked Questions

Who are Geri and Freki?

Geri and Freki are Odin's two wolves in Norse mythology. They sit beside him in Valhalla and eat the food from his table, since Odin himself lives on wine alone. They appear in Grímnismál 19 in the Poetic Edda and in chapter 38 of Snorri's Gylfaginning, and in no other story.

What do the names Geri and Freki mean?

Both names mean roughly the same thing. Geri comes from the Old Norse adjective gerr, "greedy," and Freki from frekr, "greedy" or "gluttonous." Rudolf Simek glosses both as "the greedy one." Skalds also used both words as ordinary poetic terms for any wolf, not just Odin's pair.

What do Geri and Freki eat?

Everything Odin is served. Grímnismál 19 says the Father of Armies feeds Geri and Freki while he himself lives forever on wine alone, and Gylfaginning 38 repeats it: Odin gives all the food on his table to his wolves, because wine is to him both food and drink.

Are Geri and Freki the same as Fenrir?

No. Fenrir is Loki's monstrous son, bound by the gods and fated to kill Odin at Ragnarök. Geri and Freki are Odin's loyal table companions, with no parentage, no binding, and no role in the end of the world. The only overlap is the word freki, which could describe any wolf.

Are Geri and Freki good or evil?

The sources never judge them. Unlike Fenrir or the sun-chasing wolves Sköll and Hati, Geri and Freki are given no destructive role at all. Their names mean "greedy," but the only thing they ever do in any text is eat what Odin hands them. If Norse myth has friendly wolves, it is these two.

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