Tyr

This article is about Tyr, the god. Tyr is also the abbreviation for the amino acid tyrosine.

Tyr (ON Tır), whose name simply means "god", is the god of warfare and battle in Norse mythology, portrayed as a one-armed man. He was a son of either Odin or Hymir. He also seems to have been called Saxnot (A-S Seaxneat), the 'war-god' and son of Wotan/Odin, who was the ancestor of the Saxons.

Table of contents

1 Other names
2 Mythology of Tyr
3 See also
4 External links

Other names

Ti (Old Swedish)
Tiw or Tiu (Old English)
Tîwaz (Old German)
Ty (Old Norwegian)
Ziu

Tuesday is named for Tyr (in Old English, Tiw or Tiu) in both English and in the Scandinavian languages. The Swedish forest Tiveden may also be named after Tyr.

Mythology of Tyr

Scholars believe that he was the original chief god, the Germanic equivalent of the Indo-European gods Zeus in Greek mythology, and Dyaus Pitar in Hinduism, who was later overtaken in popularity and therefore in authority by Odin.

He was known for his courage: at one stage the gods decided to shackle the wolf Fenrir, but the beast broke every chain they put upon him. Eventually they had the dwarfs make them a magical ribbon (Gleipnir) from such items as a woman's beard and a mountain's roots. But Fenrir sensed the gods' deceit and refused to be bound with it unless one of them put his hand in the wolf's mouth. This, we are told, is how Fenrir was bound until the day of Ragnarok and how Tyr lost his hand.

During Ragnarok, Tyr is destined to kill and be killed by Garm, the guard dog of Helheim.

The Fountain of Tyr was a trick used by berserkerss in which they would cut off a hand and use the blood from the spurting artery to blind an opponent.

External links

Tyr in Germanic Religion