When the sun is devoured, when fire and flood have taken the world – then not all is over. Two humans survive Ragnarök, hidden in the wood of the world-tree: Lif and Lifthrasir. From them the earth is peopled anew.
The names carry the message already: Líf means ‘life’, Lífþrasir something like ‘the one who strives for life’ or ‘life-strength’. They are the human seed of the new world.
While outside the world perishes, Lif and Lifthrasir hide in Hoddmimir's holt – the ‘wood of Hoard-Mimir’, most often read as the world-tree Yggdrasil itself. They feed on the morning dew and outlast the ending. As the earth rises green and new from the sea, they step forth, and from them descends a new race of humankind. Above them shines a new sun – the daughter of the old one, which the wolf devoured.
“In Hoddmimir's wood shall hide themselves / Lif and Lifthrasir then; / the morning dews for meat shall they have, / such food shall men then find.”Vafþrúðnismál 45, translation after Henry Adams Bellows (public domain)
Líf and Lífþrasir are in Norse mythology the two humans who survive the world's end Ragnarök. While fire and flood devour the world, they find refuge and become the ancestors of a new human race.
According to the Vafþrúðnismál the two hide in Hoddmimir's wood – probably the world tree itself. There they survive the doom, nourished by the morning dew. The tree that bears the world becomes the place of rescue.
Their very names are a promise: "Líf" means "life", "Lífþrasir" roughly "the one striving for life" or "life-force". In them lies the confidence that after the greatest end stands a new beginning.
From Líf and Lífþrasir the new humanity is to come forth, populating the renewed, greening world after Ragnarök. Thus the Norse worldview ends not in despair but in hope – the cycle begins anew.
Ragnarök · What comes after Ragnarök? · Yggdrasil · Ask & Embla · The Nine Worlds.
Vafþrúðnismál, Völuspá (Poetic Edda), English public domain: Henry Adams Bellows (1923). Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning. Scholarship: Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology; John Lindow, Norse Mythology.
All The Nine Worlds articles →
At the centre of the nine worlds lies Midgard – the ‘middle enclosure’, the fenced homestead of humankind. Not a …
Read more →In the south of the world-order blazes Muspelheim – the world of fire. Embers, sparks and flames, so hot that only its …
Read more →Far in the north of the world-order, in icy remoteness, lies Niflheim – the ‘mist-home’. Here reign cold, frost and …
Read more →Deep beneath the earth, in the half-dark of shafts and forges, lies Svartalfheim – the world of the black elves, as the …
Read more →