The Wolves That Chase the Sky

Two wolves run the sky, and in the telling that pursuit is the reason anything up there moves at all. Sköll runs behind Sól, who drives the sun-chariot and is herself already fleeing; Hati runs ahead of her, after the moon. Neither ever catches anything — until the day everything else comes apart, and then both do. Whose wolves they are depends on who is telling it. Grímnismál calls Hati the son of Hróðvitnir, a name usually read as Fenrir; Snorri instead makes the sky-wolves the brood of a giantess in Ironwood. Either way they are his kind, and they inherit the only thing he ever really had: the certainty of arriving.