Geri and Freki

Summary

Geri and Freki are the two wolves of Odin in the myths of the Scandinavian north. Odin feeds them from his table in Valhalla, the hall of the slain warriors, and eats nothing himself, for wine is both food and drink to him. Grímnismál has him say: "Geri and Freki the battle-hardened, glorious Father of Hosts feeds; but on wine alone the weapon-glorious Odin ever lives." Grímnismál 19; Gylfaginning 38.

Snorri tells of them in his description of Valhalla. Gangleri asked: all the men who have fallen in battle since the world began have come to Odin in Valhalla; what does he give them to eat? Hárr said: the host in Valhalla is never so great that the flesh of the boar Sæhrímnir does not suffice them; it is boiled every day and whole again by evening, cooked by Andhrímnir in the kettle Eldhrímnir. Gangleri asked: does Odin have the same fare as the warriors? Hárr said: the food on his table he gives to two wolves he owns, called Geri and Freki, and he needs no food himself, for wine is both his drink and his meat. Then he tells of the ravens Huginn and Muninn, who sit on his shoulders and tell into his ears all they see and hear.

In skaldic verse the wolf, the raven and the eagle are the beasts of battle that feed on the slain. A poet quoted in Skáldskaparmál says: "he reddened with gore the whiskers of Járnsaxa's swarthy-faced steed; the eagle tore Geri's bait", where the giantess's steed is the wolf and Geri's bait is the slain, so that in this verse geri is a name for any wolf.

The idea the story turns on is that the god of battle takes only drink for himself and gives his food to the beasts of battle. Around Odin are two pairs: two ravens who bring him news, from whom he takes knowledge, and two wolves who take meat from him. The wolf that eats the slain on the field eats in Valhalla from the hand of the god who gathers the slain, so its hunger is part of Odin's household. The Norse rereading essay gives the meaning of the two names as "greed and gluttony" and reads them as the constant hunger that goes with people in a land short of food.

We read the names in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the essay explains their meaning but does not read their letters. The final i of Geri and Freki is the nominative ending of a weak masculine noun, which becomes a in the accusative, as in the Grímnismál line Gera ok Freka; that leaves ger- and frek-. The first is Arabic ghariya: gh becomes g in the European languages, r is r, and the final weak letter drops. Lane gives ghariya bihi as "he became attached to it, or fond of it; was eagerly desirous of it; he adhered, clung, or clave, to it .. without his being incited thereto by another", and aghraytu al-kalba bi-ṣ-ṣayd, "I incited the dog to, or against, the object of the chase". On this reading Geri is the one gharī with a thing, who clings to it with eager desire, which is the sense of the Norse adjective gerr, "greedy", itself. The second is harder, and we read it as faghara: faghara fāhu, "he opened his mouth", and one says "he is wide in the opening of the mouth". F is f; gh answers g, and old g becomes k in Germanic by Grimm's law; and r moves before gh by metathesis. On this reading the wolf is "the gaping one", which describes the wolf Völuspá calls freki when his fetter bursts, Fenrir, who opens his jaws from earth to sky.

Linguistic Root

Geri and ghariya, Freki and faghara

Cleasby–Vigfusson explain Geri as "ravener", from the adjective gerr, "greedy; gluttonous", say that freki is poetic for a wolf, and gloss the adjective frekr as "greedy", then "voracious, hungry", as in the saying "one may expect a snatch from a hungry wolf", then "exorbitant, harsh", so that a rough whetstone is called frekr. Orel sets the first adjective beside Old High German giri, "greedy", and links it with Sanskrit háryati, "to yearn for, to like"; he derives the second from Germanic *frekaz, which also gives Gothic faihu-friks, "covetous", and Old English freca, "bold man, warrior".

Lane, under gh-r-w: ghariya bihi, he became attached to it, eagerly desirous of it, clave to it, without being incited by another; aghrāhu bihi, he made him attached to it, and he incited him to it, as in "I incited the dog against the game"; ghariya fulān, such a one persisted in his anger; ghirāʾ, glue, the root's first sense of clinging. Under f-gh-r: faghara fāhu, he opened his mouth; infaghara, the mouth opened; "he is wide in the opening of the mouth"; fāghir, a small creature that always keeps its mouth open.

For Geri the correspondence is easy: gh becomes g or drops in the European languages, as the Juthoor laws record, r is steady, and the weak final letter drops in transmission, as it dropped from hudā in Höðr. Freki needs two steps: r and gh change places, and gh passes through old g to Germanic k, as Latin genus is English kin.

Another reading of Freki

Freki can also be read as faraqa, with its letters in order: f is f, r is r, and q becomes k. Lane gives firq and farīqa as one, two or three sheep or goats that become separate from the flock, shut off from the rest by a hill or a stretch of sand, and stray in the night from the main body, and afraqa, he lost a portion of his sheep. That is the sheep the wolf takes. What joins this word to the dictionary's language for the wolf's deeds is its opening f-r, which also begins afrā adh-dhiʾbu baṭna sh-shāt, "the wolf rent the belly of the sheep", and farasa adh-dhiʾbu sh-shāt, "the wolf seized the sheep and broke its neck". But faraqa carries none of the greed in the Norse adjective, while faghara carries it and needs the metathesis, so the reading of Freki stays open.

Key Mythic Narratives

Freki, the wolf let loose

The refrain of Völuspá says four times: Garmr howls before Gnipahellir, the fetter will burst and the freki run free. The wolf whose fetter bursts is Fenrir, bound with Gleipnir, so in this line freki is a word for the wolf as such, as the dictionary says.

Geri as a guard

In Fjölsvinnsmál two hounds guard the gate of Menglöð's hall; the visitor asks their names and is told that one is Gífr and the other Geri. So the name is given to a fierce guard as well as to a devouring wolf.

The giantess's steed

In the verse with "Geri's bait" the wolf is called "the steed of Járnsaxa", the giantess who bore Thor his son Magni, because giantesses in the stories ride wolves: the giantess Hyrrokkin came to Baldr's pyre riding a wolf with a viper for reins.

Symbolic Reading

The Norse rereading essay reads Odin's ravens as "an intelligence network" that flies out every day and comes back with news, and reads his wolves, Geri and Freki, as greed and gluttony, that is, constant hunger: the need for food in a scarce environment, the wolf being the lasting hunger that goes with people in the North. The text has something to set against that hunger: Odin, who owns Valhalla and its boar that is never used up, does not eat, and gives his food to the wolves, so in his house hunger is fed rather than driven away.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Yama, the first to die and king of the dead in the Rigveda, has two four-eyed dogs who guard the road and watch over people, and the singer asks them to deliver the dead man to the Fathers; see Yama. In Iran two dogs guard the Chinvat Bridge that the soul crosses after death. Odin, who gathers the slain in his hall, has two wolves. The three meet in a lord of the dead attended by two of the dog's kind, and part in what the animals do: Yama's dogs and the bridge's dogs guard the road to the dead, while Odin's wolves eat at his table.

The word freki itself describes the wolf that runs free at Ragnarök and swallows Odin, so the wolf that eats from Odin's hand in Valhalla and the wolf that eats Odin at the end of time are called by the same word.