When the gods seek to bind Fenrir with Gleipnir, the suspicious wolf demands a hand as security. Only Týr places his right hand in Fenrir’s mouth and loses it when the promise is broken.
The scene joins courage to a legally troubling breach of faith. Týr guarantees the agreement and pays for the community’s advantage. Modern shorthand such as “god of justice” smooths away this tension.
His name descends from an ancient Indo-European term for deity and survives in weekday names. Although Týr is linguistically very old, he occupies less space in surviving Norse myths than Óðinn or Þórr.
Place-names and the T-rune offer further traces but no complete cult system. Claims about fixed priesthoods or identical responsibilities everywhere exceed the evidence.