How Did Kratos Meet Faye?

Kratos met Faye in Midgard, some time after he left a ruined Greece behind, and the first thing they did was fight. They stopped, got to know each other and fell in love. That much the games confirm. The meeting itself has never been shown on screen. (God of War Ragnarök; God of War (2018))

Who each of them was#

Kratos reached the Norse lands carrying the worst of his life with him. He had killed Zeus and most of the Greek gods, and Greece lay in ruins behind him. The games never show the trip north; the page on how Kratos ended up in Midgard covers what is known. What matters here is that he came to Midgard wanting to be left alone and to live as a man. (God of War III; God of War (2018))

Faye was far more than she let her family see. Her real name was Laufey, and she was a giant of Jötunheim, remembered across the Nine Realms as Laufey the Just for standing up for the weak against Odin and the Aesir. She had stayed in Midgard as the last guardian of the giants there. Ragnarök reveals she once fought Thor to a standstill in Vanaheim. Kratos only learns most of this after she dies. (God of War (2018); God of War Ragnarök)

The first meeting#

The games show the meeting only in passing. In God of War Ragnarök, Kratos dreams of Faye three times. In the second dream, just after Atreus is born, the two of them take their baby down a river by boat, and they pass the place where they first met and fought. (God of War Ragnarök)

That's the core of it. Two warriors met as strangers, came to blows, and stopped. They got to know one another and, in time, fell in love. The dream doesn't show who started the fight or how long it lasted. (God of War Ragnarök)

A life in the Wildwoods#

Kratos and Faye built a house together in the Wildwoods. He told her who he had been, and he wrapped the Blades of Chaos in cloth and hid them under the floorboards rather than throw them away. Faye knew he was a god and knew his history, and she agreed to keep it from their son. (God of War (2018); God of War Ragnarök)

She had a son and wanted to name him Loki. Kratos talked her into Atreus, the name of a Spartan soldier he had once served with, and the reason Atreus has two names is covered in why is Atreus called Loki. Faye did most of the raising: she taught Atreus to hunt, to read and to understand the gods and creatures of the Nine Realms, and she made his bow. (God of War (2018); God of War Ragnarök)

What Faye knew#

Giants could see the future, and Faye had seen her own. Before she died she asked for her ashes to be scattered from the highest peak in the Nine Realms, which turned out to be in her homeland, Jötunheim. She had also marked the trees for her pyre so that cutting them would break the protection around their home. In Jötunheim, Kratos and Atreus find a mural that shows their whole trip, painted before it happened. (God of War (2018))

That raises a question the games don't answer: did Faye already know about Kratos before they met? Some players read the mural as proof that she sought him out. The game never says so, and Ragnarök shows she later destroyed part of the prophecy so her husband and son could choose their own path. Our reading is that whatever she foresaw, the marriage was real, and the dreams in Ragnarök are written as a love story, not a plan. (God of War (2018); God of War Ragnarök)

What she meant to him#

Kratos rarely says it out loud, but the games make it plain. In Valhalla he tells Mimir that for years after leaving Greece he couldn't stop thinking of his daughter Calliope, and that the feeling only eased after he met Faye. In the last Ragnarök dream, Faye tells him that grief is what love becomes, and asks him to keep his heart open to the world. (God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla; God of War Ragnarök)

Faye's story isn't finished. Santa Monica Studio's first look at God of War Laufey describes her as a legendary warrior whose mark on the Nine Realms was made long before she met Kratos. The game follows her after her funeral, so it may not show their first meeting at all. For both of Kratos's marriages, see Kratos's wives. (First look at God of War Laufey)