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)
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.