Yggdrasil · Described Without a Place on the Map

Lyngvi and Ámsvartnir

An island in a lake where the gods took Fenrir to try the fetter Gleipnir, told in Gylfaginning.

Myth and literature · Quotation

In Blackwell’s translation

“...taking the wolf with them to the island called Lyngvi, in the Lake Amsvartnir, they showed him the cord, and expressed their wish that he would try to break it, assuring him at the same time that it was somewhat stronger than its thinness would warrant a person in supposing it to be.”

Myth and literature

What the sources say

In Gylfaginning the gods have the dwarfs make the fetter Gleipnir. They then take the wolf Fenrir to an island named Lyngvi, in a lake named Ámsvartnir, show him the cord and ask him to break it. He suspects a trick and agrees only if one of them puts a hand in his mouth as a pledge. Týr does, and loses his hand when the cord holds.

Anderson’s translation tells the same scene, going out onto the lake called Ámsvartnir to the rocky island called Lyngvi. Both translations follow Snorri’s account alone; no poem is cited for the place.

Myth and literature · Context

Names and background

Blackwell’s glossary reads Lyngvi as coming from a word for heather or ling, and Ámsvartnir as meaning grief, black, gloomy or swart. These are editors’ readings, and the story does not explain the names. The name Lyngvi is also borne by a man, a son of Hundingr, in the Sigurd poems; the sources do not link him to the island.

Historical evidence

Where the sources attest it

The island and the lake are named in Snorri’s Gylfaginning, in the passage on the binding of the wolf Fenrir. No poem in Thorpe’s Elder Edda was found to name them, and no archaeological or pictorial evidence for the places is known. The text gives no map.