Yggdrasil · Cold and the Dead

Gnipahellir

The cave before which the hound Garm bays, named in Völuspá and Gylfaginning.

Myth and literature · Quotation

In Thorpe’s translation

48. Trembles Yggdrasil’s ash yet standing; groans that aged tree, and the jötun is loosed. Loud bays Garm before the Gnupa-cave, his bonds he rends asunder; and the wolf runs.

Myth and literature

What the sources say

Völuspá places the cave at the start of Ragnarök. As Yggdrasill shakes, the hound Garm bays before it, tears apart his bonds, and the wolf runs free. The stanza says nothing more about the cave.

Snorri tells the same moment in Gylfaginning. On that day the dog Garm, who had been chained in the Gnipa cave, breaks loose; he is the most fearful monster of all, and he and Týr kill each other. Snorri adds the fight with Týr, which the stanza does not mention.

Myth and literature · Context

Names and background

The translations spell the name differently: Thorpe has “Gnupa-cave”, Blackwell and Anderson “Gnipa cave”. The sources do not explain it. Blackwell’s glossary explains Garm’s name as “voracious”, which is an editor’s reading.

Whether the chained Garm is the same creature as other hounds in the poems is not settled by these texts, and this site makes no claim about it.

Historical evidence

Where the sources attest it

The cave is named in Völuspá (stanza 48 in Thorpe’s numbering; other editions number the stanzas differently) and in Snorri’s Gylfaginning, in the account of the last battle. No archaeological or pictorial evidence for the cave is known; it comes from the texts alone.