Víðarr: Silence, a Shoe, and Survival

Völuspá 54. Then comes the great victor-sire’s son, Vidar, to fight with the deadly beast. He with his hands will make his sword pierce to the heart of the giant’s son: then avenges he his father.

Gylfaginning The wolf swallows Odin, but at that instant Vidar advances, and setting his foot on the monster’s lower jaw, seizes the other with his hand, and thus tears and rends him till he dies.

Grímnismál 17. O’ergrown with branches and high grass is Vidar’s spacious Landvîdi.

Gylfaginning introduces Víðarr as the silent god, with a very thick shoe, almost as strong as Thor, and a great help to the gods in hard tasks. Its Ragnarök account has him strike after the wolf swallows Odin: he plants a foot on the lower jaw, grips the upper jaw with his hand and tears the mouth apart. The shoe is made from the leather scraps men have cut from their own shoes, which is why people are told to throw such scraps away.

Snorri then quotes Völuspá, where Víðarr drives a sword to the heart instead. Vafþrúðnismál has a third form, in which he cleaves the cold jaws of the wolf. These are separate versions, and Snorri quoting the poem is not a second witness. Afterwards Víðarr and Váli live on among the renewed gods on the plain of Ida, where Ásgarðr stood. Grímnismál gives him a home, Landviði.

This entry does not offer a reading of the name. The epithet “the Silent” comes from Gylfaginning, which gives no reason for it. Skáldskaparmál names the giantess Gríðr as his mother, the one who told Thor the truth about Geirrøðr, and Völuspá calls him the “great victor-sire’s son”, which points to Odin.

The accounts of his fight with the wolf Fenrir differ between Snorri’s prose and the poems, as set out above, and the sources give no explanation of the difference. Víðarr is paired with Váli in the renewed world, in both Vafþrúðnismál and Gylfaginning. His home, Landviði, has its own entry on this site.