Ragnarök – the Norse End of the World

Mythology

Norse mythology is the only great tradition in which the gods themselves are doomed – and in which they know it. Ragnarök, the ‘fate of the powers’, is their end: Fimbulwinter, the wolf set loose, the last battle, the world-fire. And yet the great poem does not end in darkness.

Ragnarök (Old Norse ragna rǫk, ‘doom/fate of the powers’; popularly ragnarøkkr, ‘twilight of the gods’) is the climax and the end of the Norse myths. Unlike in many religions, the gods here are not eternal. They too have a predetermined end – and they march into a battle they know they will not win. This attitude, to face the inevitable head on, is the core of the whole Norse world of thought.

The long prelude: Baldr’s death

The end really begins in the midst of the gods’ golden age – with a murder. Baldr, the brightest and best of the Æsir, is killed through Loki’s cunning: the blind Höðr, guided by Loki, throws a sprig of mistletoe, the one thing in the world that had not sworn to spare Baldr. With Baldr’s death the light goes out in Asgard, and the gods bind Loki to three stones in punishment, a venom-serpent above his face. His writhing under the drops makes the earthquakes. So he lies – until he breaks free at Ragnarök. Baldr’s death is the first crack; all else follows from it.

The omens

The downfall is preceded by the Fimbulwinter (‘the mighty winter’): three winters in a row with no summer between them. Moral order collapses – ‘brother slays brother for greed’, says the Völuspá; it is an axe-age, sword-age, wind-age, wolf-age before the world falls.

“Brothers shall fight and fell each other, / and sisters’ sons shall kinship stain; / hard is it on earth, with mighty whoredom; / axe-time, sword-time, shields are sundered, / wind-time, wolf-time, ere the world falls.”Völuspá 45, translation after Henry Adams Bellows (public domain)

The wolves Sköll and Hati, who have chased sun and moon since the beginning, finally catch their prey: the sun is swallowed, the moon torn apart, the stars go out. Earthquakes burst every fetter. And the end is heralded, says the Edda, threefold by a cock’s crow: in Valhalla the golden cock Gullinkambi wakes the fallen warriors, in the dark wood crows the red Fjalar, and deep in the world of the dead a third, soot-red cock. Three worlds, three calls, one doom.

The powers break loose

Now the bound monsters break free – all of them children of Loki. The wolf Fenrir, so long fed and feared, bursts the magic fetter Gleipnir; his gaping jaws reach from earth to sky. The Midgard Serpent Jörmungandr writhes onto land and spews venom; the sea floods over its banks. And Loki himself comes free and sets himself at the head of the powers of chaos.

Across the churning sea comes the most dreadful of all ships: Naglfar, built entirely from the finger- and toenails of the dead. At its helm stands the giant Hrym (in another version Loki himself), aboard it the hosts of frost giants. From the south breaks Surt, the fire giant, with the sons of Muspell and a sword brighter than the sun; beneath their charge the rainbow bridge Bifröst shatters. The hound of hell Garm howls before the Gnipa cave. And the watchman Heimdall lifts the Gjallarhorn to his lips and blows for the last time – the call that gathers the gods to battle.

“Now Garm howls loud before Gnipahellir, / the fetters will burst, and the wolf run free.”Völuspá (refrain), translation after Henry Adams Bellows (public domain)

Laser-engraved ‘Loki’s Brood’ slate plaque – Fenrir, Hel and the Midgard Serpent – by Glanz & Gravur — From our workshop: the laser-engraved **‘Loki’s Brood’ slate plaque** – Fenrir, Hel and the Midgard Serpent, the three children who shake the world at Ragnarök. View in the shop →

The last battle on Vígríðr

On the field of Vígríðr, a hundred leagues in every direction, the armies meet: the Æsir and the fallen Einherjar from Valhalla against giants, monsters and the sons of Muspell. The fights have been fated since the beginning – each god has his foe, and most of them fall:

Odin rides in a golden helm against Fenrir – and is swallowed by the wolf. But his silent son Vidar avenges him at once: he sets his foot in the wolf’s lower jaw and tears its maw apart. Thor slays the Midgard Serpent with his hammer – walks nine steps back and falls dead, poisoned by its venom. Freyr, who once gave away his sword for love of the giantess Gerd, stands weaponless before the fire giant Surt and falls. Tyr, the one-handed god of law, and the hound Garm kill each other. Heimdall and Loki, watchman and adversary, deal each other death. It is an end without victors.

At last Surt flings fire over the whole world. All burns; the stars fall; the earth sinks into the sea.

“The sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea, / the hot stars down from heaven are whirled; / fierce grows the steam and the life-feeding flame, / till fire leaps high about heaven itself.”Völuspá 57, translation after Henry Adams Bellows (public domain)

Fire giant with flaming sword – an image of Surt at the world-fire — Surt, the fire giant, ‘with the bane of branches’: at the end stands the fire that stood already at the beginning of the world. Motifs from saga and myth we engrave on slate.

And yet no mere end

The Völuspá does not end in darkness. From the sea a new, green earth rises up; some gods return, a human couple has survived within the world tree, and a new sun – the daughter of the old – shines. In the North, Ragnarök is no mere end but a cycle: downfall and rebirth. We devote a separate piece to this hopeful outcome: ‘What comes after Ragnarök – end or new beginning?’.

Ragnarök in stone – already in the Viking Age. The myth is not merely late literature. On the Gosforth Cross in Cumbria (England), a stone cross over 4 m high from the first half of the 10th century, Ragnarök scenes are carved: Heimdall with the horn, Vidar tearing Fenrir’s jaws, the bound Loki with Sigyn and her bowl – right beside the crucifixion of Christ. Similarly the Thorwald Cross on the Isle of Man: Odin with spear and raven, swallowed by the wolf. Scandinavian settlers let their old twilight of the gods grow into the new image of Christ.

A real kernel? Fimbulwinter and the ‘year without a summer’. Some scholars ask whether real climate catastrophes fed into the image of the Fimbulwinter. Bo Gräslund and Neil Price (‘Twilight of the gods? The “dust veil event” of AD 536’, Antiquity 86, 2012) connect the Ragnarök motif with the dust-veil event of AD 536, when volcanic eruptions brought ‘years without summer’ and, in Scandinavia, severe population loss. Clive Oppenheimer et al. (Climatic Change 147, 2018) also link the Icelandic Eldgjá eruption (939/940) to the dark images of the Völuspá – a blood-red darkened sun, fire and venom. Important: this is a plausible but unprovable thesis. The myth remains myth; it may have processed real experience.

From Aachen, for the North. ‘For courage. For remembrance. For legends that live on’ – this is our guiding line, and nowhere does it fit better than Ragnarök. Whoever would like the images of this saga on the wall will find our laser-engraved slate plaques (e.g. Thor & Jörmungandr, Tyr & Fenrir, Loki’s Brood) and more in the shop.

Sources & literature

Poetic Edda (Codex Regius): Völuspá (st. 42–66), Vafþrúðnismál. Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda / Gylfaginning (ch. 51), c. 1220. English public-domain translation: Henry Adams Bellows, The Poetic Edda (1923). Archaeology: Gosforth Cross (St Mary’s, Cumbria, 10th c.); Thorwald Cross, Kirk Andreas (Isle of Man). Scholarship: Bo Gräslund & Neil Price, ‘Twilight of the gods? The “dust veil event” of AD 536 in critical perspective’, Antiquity 86 (2012), 428–443; Clive Oppenheimer et al., ‘The Eldgjá eruption …’, Climatic Change 147 (2018); Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology; John Lindow, Norse Mythology (2001). Evidence and interpretation are kept apart.

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Ragnarök – Doom of the Gods