Sköll & Hati

Sköll & Hati is an original Mythic Harmonies song about the two wolves associated with the sun, moon and Ragnarök in medieval Norse sources. The recording turns their pursuit into a 2:40 chase: a repeated chorus, running percussion and modern, stylized Norse-language verses move from the open sky toward cosmic darkness.

This page gives the complete performed text and English translation, then separates the song’s imagery from what Grímnismál, Völuspá and Snorri’s Gylfaginning actually say. The composition is modern. No medieval manuscript preserves this lyric, melody, arrangement or a historical song called Sköll & Hati.

Sköll & Hati at a Glance

• Artist: Mythic Harmonies.
• Official video: 2:40 on YouTube.
• Streaming title: Skoll and Hati, without diacritics, 2:39 on Spotify and Apple Music.
• Language: modern stylized Norse-language text with an artistic English translation.
• Central image: wolves pursuing the celestial lights as the world approaches Ragnarök.
• Historical status: contemporary music inspired by medieval sources, not a recovered Viking Age chant.

What Is the Sköll & Hati Song About?

The song compresses a scattered body of evidence into one continuous hunt. Its first verse places Skǫll behind the sun and Hati after the moon. Later verses add burning mountains, darkness, prophecy and the collapse of the world. The recurring refrain makes the two wolves act together even though the medieval witnesses do not present one neat, fully consistent biography of the pair.

The strongest musical idea is pursuit rather than explanation. Short lines and repeated names make the chorus easy to recognize; images of running, vanishing light and time growing short keep the scene in motion. This is why the track works as a sun-and-moon song without needing to pretend that its verses are an ancient ritual.

That focus keeps this page distinct from the site’s Fenrir study, which owns the broader wolf’s binding and death, and the sourced Ragnarök guide, which owns the full sequence of the world’s ending. Here the search intent is the Mythic Harmonies recording, its words and the specific source problem behind Sköll and Hati.

What the Medieval Sources Actually Say

Grímnismál 39 is the clearest poetic witness naming both wolves. It calls Sköll a wolf who follows a shining celestial figure and names Hati as Hróðvitnir’s son. The verse is compact and difficult enough that translations differ over parts of the celestial language. It does not provide childhood stories, colours, twin status or one complete family tree.

Snorri’s Gylfaginning, chapter 12, systematises the scene: Sköll pursues the sun, while Hati Hróðvitnisson seeks the moon. This is the familiar division used by the song. Snorri was writing in thirteenth-century Iceland, however, and his prose should be identified as a medieval synthesis rather than an eyewitness description of Viking Age belief.

Völuspá 40 describes an old woman in Járnviðr, the Iron Wood, raising or bearing Fenrir’s kin; one of them becomes a destroyer of the moon. The stanza does not name that wolf Sköll or Hati. Connecting every detail directly to both named wolves requires combining separate passages, exactly the kind of synthesis that later retellings often leave unmarked.

Are Sköll and Hati Fenrir’s Sons?

The safest answer is more precise than a simple yes. Grímnismál explicitly calls Hati the son of Hróðvitnir, a wolf-name commonly identified with Fenrir. The surviving stanza does not give Sköll the same patronymic. Völuspá speaks more generally of Fenrir’s kin in the Iron Wood without naming the pair.

It is therefore reasonable to explain the familiar tradition in which Hati—and often Sköll—belongs to Fenrir’s line, but not to claim that one early source plainly calls the two named wolves twins born to a known mother. “Fenrir’s sons” is useful shorthand for the song title and modern catalogue; the source discussion must preserve the uncertainty.

The names also deserve care. Hati can carry the sense of hater or enemy. Sköll has received several competing explanations. A recent study in the peer-reviewed Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore argues from Scandinavian sound-words for a noisy wolf; older popular translations such as “Treachery” should not be presented as settled fact.

Which Wolf Takes the Sun and Moon at Ragnarök?

Snorri’s orderly account assigns Sköll to the sun and Hati to the moon. The poetic record is less uniform. Vafþrúðnismál 46–47 says that Fenrir takes the old sun and that she bears a daughter before her death; the daughter follows her mother’s path after the gods fall. Völuspá instead speaks of an unnamed member of Fenrir’s kin as the moon’s destroyer.

The song chooses the best-known later arrangement and lets both lights vanish as the refrain returns. That is a legitimate creative decision, but the words “the gods’ own prophecy” do not refer to one manuscript sentence with the complete modern plot. Nor do the sources say that the sun and moon vanish forever: the post-Ragnarök daughter of the sun is an important part of the surviving tradition.

Wolves, Eclipses and the Limits of the Evidence

Modern summaries frequently say that Norse people explained every eclipse as Sköll or Hati biting a celestial body and made loud noise to frighten the wolf away. The cited Eddic passages do not record that ritual. They describe pursuit and cosmic swallowing, but not a crowd banging weapons or pots during an eclipse.

It is possible to compare the wolves with eclipses, sun dogs, moon dogs or other atmospheric events, and scholars continue to test those readings. Possibility is not the same as a documented pan-Scandinavian Viking practice. The previous page stated the noise custom as fact; this version names the gap instead of filling it.

How the Arrangement Creates the Chase

The 2:40 video moves quickly because the arrangement gives little time for release. Regular percussion suggests repeated footfall, while the chorus returns before the narrative can settle. The vocal line repeatedly strikes the two names, so listeners can recognise the subject even if they do not follow every Norse form.

Low sustained tones carry the threat beneath the running pulse, and the final reduction to “the wolves… the end” leaves the pursuit unresolved. These are descriptions of the recording’s effect, not claims about Viking instruments or a historical eclipse ceremony. For a related modern Ragnarök treatment centred on the bound wolf, continue with The Howl of Fenrir.

Sköll & Hati Lyrics and English Translation

These are the complete released words, reproduced as performed. The Norse-language text is a modern creative composition with non-standard or uncertain forms; it is not copied from Grímnismál or another manuscript. The English section is the release’s artistic translation rather than a line-by-line scholarly edition.

Old Norse:

Skǫll eltir sól á himni,
Hati hleypir mána sinni.
Vindr syngja, fjǫll brennr,
Endalǫg koma, heimrinn rennr.

Úlfar tveir í myrkri hlaup,
Sól ok máni, ævi kaup.
Þeirra spor, sem draumar djúp,
Spáir segja: heimr fellr snúpt.

Skǫll ok Hati, elta ljós,
Brjóta himin, rífa hrós.
Skǫll ok Hati, goða spá,
Í myrkri rísa, Ragnarǫk þá.

Raddir forna, syngja hátt,
Úlfar hlaupa, tími brátt.
Sólr hverfr, máni deyr,
Í dauðans loga, heimrinn fer.

Skǫll ok Hati, elta ljós,
Brjóta himin, rífa hrós.
Skǫll ok Hati, goða spá,
Í myrkri rísa, Ragnarǫk þá.

Sól í loga, myrkrið kemr,
Máni fellr, ljósit stemr.
Úlfar syngja, úlfar hróp,
Heimrinn brestr í síðsta hlaup.

Skǫll ok Hati, elta ljós,
Brjóta himin, rífa hrós.
Skǫll ok Hati, goða spá,
Í myrkri rísa, Ragnarǫk þá.

Úlfar… syngja… endalǫg.

English translation:

Sköll chases the sun across the sky,
Hati hunts the moon on his path.
The winds are singing, mountains burn,
The end times come, the world runs on.

Two wolves running through the dark,
Sun and moon, a lifetime’s price.
Their tracks lie deep as dreams,
The seers declare: the world falls swiftly.

Sköll and Hati, chasing light,
Breaking heavens, tearing bright.
Sköll and Hati, the gods’ own prophecy,
Rising in darkness, Ragnarök is come.

Ancient voices singing high,
The wolves are running, time grows short.
The sun vanishes, the moon dies,
In death’s own flame the world departs.

Sköll and Hati, chasing light,
Breaking heavens, tearing bright.
Sköll and Hati, the gods’ own prophecy,
Rising in darkness, Ragnarök is come.

The sun in flames, the darkness comes,
The moon is falling, the light is choked.
The wolves are singing, the wolves are crying,
The world breaks in the final run.

Sköll and Hati, chasing light,
Breaking heavens, tearing bright.
Sköll and Hati, the gods’ own prophecy,
Rising in darkness, Ragnarök is come.

The wolves… are singing… the end of all things.

Where to Stream Sköll & Hati

Watch the official YouTube video at 2:40. The exact Mythic Harmonies release appears as Skoll and Hati at 2:39 on Spotify and Apple Music. The title and artist match, and the one-second difference satisfies the catalogue verification rule.

For every available song text in one searchable place, open the Songbook of the North. For another creature at Ragnarök, hear Jǫrmungandr Rís.

Sources and Further Reading

The evidence is deliberately kept in separate witnesses: Snorri’s prose synthesis, three Eddic poems, a recent peer-reviewed discussion of Skǫll’s name and the University of Copenhagen’s language corpus. No single one contains the complete modern story told by the song.

• Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning, ed. Anthony Faulkes, Viking Society for Northern Research, especially chapters 11–12 and 51.
• Grímnismál 39, parallel text and literal translation, for the named wolves and Hati’s patronymic.
• Völuspá 40, text and translation, for Járnviðr, Fenrir’s kin and the moon-destroyer.
• Vafþrúðnismál 46–47, text and translation, for Fenrir, the sun and her successor.
• Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 2024, for a recent linguistic and atmospheric interpretation of Skǫll.
• ONP dictionary and corpus, University of Copenhagen, for checking medieval Norse forms without silently normalising the released text.