Gods Of Iceland: Týr, The Tough Guy

Superpowers: Combat, courage, not even blinking even if you remove his limbs.
Weaknesses: Sorry, did you say “weaknesses”?
Modern Analogue: Arnold Schwarzenegger beating up aliens in Predator.

Týr was the God of War and Justice. He made the baddest monsters quake in their boots and great white sharks wet themselves. (Or he would have, if great white sharks were endemic to this part of the world and if sharks urinated, which they don’t. But you get the picture.)

Týr is described variously as the son of Odin and the son of Hymir. As with modern politicians, Norse gods liked to sleep around a lot and it wasn’t always totally clear whose kid was whose. (Nor did anyone care, they were gods!) But whoever did father Týr certainly passed down a lot of hardcore-muscle-man-crazy-tough-guy genes, because that was Týr to a T. The T in this case standing for testosterone.

One time, the gods were having a bit of trouble with this wolf called Fenrir, who used to break every chain they tried to shackle him with. So, logically, the gods had some dwarves make a special magic ribbon to bind him up for good–but Fenrir was like, “No! You can only tie me up with this ribbon if one of you volunteers to put your hand in my mouth!” Because he was a smart wolf who knew how to bargain.

Unfortunately for Fenrir, Týr wasn’t scared of putting his hand into a wolf’s mouth–just like how he wasn’t in the least bit scared to be mashed into a pulp, or to have his eyes gouged out, and his elbows broken. But anyway, wolves aren’t exactly known for their honour code, so Týr’s hand was bitten clean off. Not that Týr cared. He had two!

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