Angrboda was the fearsome giantess of Norse myth who, with Loki, gave birth to the three monsters fated to bring about the doom of the gods — the great wolf Fenrir, the world-serpent Jörmungandr, and Hel, queen of the dead. Her very name means “she who brings grief,” and through her monstrous children she is, in a sense, the mother of Ragnarök itself.
The Bringer of Grief
Angrboda (Old Norse Angrboða, “the one who brings grief” or “sorrow-bringer”) was a giantess (jötunn) of the giants' land, Jotunheim, sometimes called the “hag of the Iron Wood” (Járnviðr) — a dark forest where she was said to dwell and to mother a brood of monstrous wolves. She was the lover or consort of the trickster Loki, and their union produced the most dangerous offspring in all of Norse myth.
The Mother of Monsters
By Loki, Angrboda bore three terrible children, each fated to play a part in the destruction of the gods. The first was Fenrir, the monstrous wolf who would grow so vast and dangerous that the gods had to bind him, and who is fated to break free at Ragnarök and devour Odin himself. The second was Jörmungandr, the world-serpent, who grew so huge that he encircles the entire world beneath the sea, biting his own tail, and who is fated to kill Thor at the end of days. The third was Hel, the half-living, half-corpse goddess whom Odin cast down to rule the realm of the dead. Through these three children — wolf, serpent and death-queen — Angrboda became the ancestress of the very forces destined to destroy the gods and the world.
The Doom Bred in the Iron Wood
When the gods learned, through prophecy, that Loki's children by Angrboda were fated to bring them great harm, they took action against the brood: they cast Jörmungandr into the sea, threw Hel down into the underworld, and bound Fenrir in unbreakable fetters. But the doom could only be delayed, not undone — for it was foretold that all three would be loosed at Ragnarök to fulfil their destinies. Angrboda's children were the seeds of the end, sown in the Iron Wood and growing inexorably toward the day of the gods' downfall.
The Ancestress of the End
Angrboda endures as the mother of monsters in Norse myth — the giantess whose union with Loki produced the wolf, the serpent and the queen of the dead, the three great enemies fated to bring about Ragnarök. She embodies the Norse sense that the forces of chaos and destruction were bred from within, born of the trickster-god and the grief-bringing giantess, growing in the dark wood until the day they would be loosed. In her name — “she who brings grief” — is written the sorrow her children would one day bring upon the world.
From the union of the trickster and the giantess of the Iron Wood came the wolf, the serpent and the queen of the dead — three children, and in them the doom of all the gods.