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Angrboða

Old NorseAngrboða

The giantess of the Iron Wood, mother of three monsters

Ice, Fire & Chaos · Giants & the Primordial
GiantBearingOmen

Who they are

A giantess dwelling in the Iron Wood, her name meaning "she who forebodes sorrow." She is Loki’s lover, and bore him three children fated to overturn the world: the wolf Fenrir, the world serpent Jörmungandr, and the underworld queen Hel. These three offspring are precisely the gods’ deadliest enemies at Ragnarök — the bloodline of one being all but wrote the script for the gods’ downfall.

Primary sourcesPoetic Edda, "Hyndluljóð"Snorri, Prose Edda

Key stories

Three Children of the End

The Children of Loki
The Children of Loki · Willy Pogány, 1920

Angrboða bore Loki three children: Fenrir who will swallow Odin, Jörmungandr who will die with Thor, and Hel who will hold the god of light Baldr. Learning the prophecy, the gods bound, cast into the sea, and banished the three children to the underworld — yet in the end could not turn fate, and at the end each returned to claim its due.

Relationships

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

The "mother of the end" figureBearing three world-overturning monsters, Angrboða as "mother of calamity" has been used again and again by modern fantasy to shape the character type of a "mother goddess who breeds the end."