A powerful figure of few words
Snorri introduces Víðarr as silent, extraordinarily strong, and equipped with a thick shoe. The gods rely on him in serious difficulties. Grímnismál names his dwelling as Viði, characterized by grass and woodland, and associates him with the future vengeance for his father. His prominence is therefore directed toward an event still to come.
Another prose story identifies his mother as Gríðr, the giant woman who warns Thor about Geirröðr and lends him protective equipment. This relationship places a helpful giant mother within the family of a god who will defend and avenge Odin. It is another reason not to treat divine and giant kinship as a clean division between good and evil.
Sources: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing); The Poetic Edda (1923 translation) · Gylfaginning, chapter VIII, §29; Skáldskaparmál, “Thor’s Journey to Geirrod’s,” in Anderson; Grímnismál 17
Two forms of vengeance
When the wolf kills Odin at Ragnarök, Víðarr answers the death. Völuspá describes him driving a sword into the creature’s heart. Snorri’s account instead makes the special shoe decisive: Víðarr braces a foot against the lower jaw, seizes the upper jaw, and tears the wolf apart. The prose also explains the accumulation of material for that shoe.
These details produce genuinely different actions. An illustration of a sword thrust cannot stand without explanation for the jaw-tearing account, and the shoe should not be inserted into the poem’s verse simply to harmonize the witnesses. The shared relationship is vengeance for Odin; its bodily execution varies.
Sources: The Poetic Edda (1923 translation); The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Völuspá 54; Gylfaginning, chapter XVI, §56 in Anderson
Life beyond the act of revenge
Vafþrúðnismál names Víðarr and Váli among those who remain after the destructive fires, alongside Thor’s sons who inherit his hammer. Snorri likewise includes Víðarr in the renewed world. His narrative function thus extends beyond killing the killer: he helps establish continuity after the older generation’s losses.
The texts do not tell a detailed sequence of his later rule or describe a new cult founded around him. Their future scenes are selective glimpses. Víðarr’s silence, strength, vengeance, and survival form a powerful cluster of attributes, but filling the gaps with a complete imagined biography would make the surviving evidence appear more extensive than it is.
Sources: The Poetic Edda (1923 translation); The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Vafþrúðnismál 50–51; Gylfaginning, chapter XVII, §58 in Anderson
- Period / witness
- Medieval Old Norse literature; the Poetic Edda survives chiefly in thirteenth-century copies, and Snorri’s Edda was composed around the 1220s. Mythic events have no historical date.
- Recording context
- Preserved through medieval Icelandic writing and later copies, in a Christian literary culture. Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda dates to c.1270. These recording circumstances do not locate the origin of an oral story.
A recording location is not necessarily a story’s origin. Dates of texts, copies, and translations answer different questions.
Explore time & place →Read the sources
These references support the explanation above. Rights and edition notes are recorded individually.
The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) ↗
Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241); translated by Rasmus B. Anderson (1846–1936) · 1901 printing of Anderson’s translation (copyright 1879); medieval work composed in Iceland around the 1220s
Edition & rights noteThe Poetic Edda (1923 translation) ↗
Anonymous Old Norse poets; translated by Henry Adams Bellows (1885–1939) · 1923 translation; medieval poems preserved principally in manuscripts of the thirteenth century
Edition & rights note