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Ragnarok - Norse Mythology for Smart People
Norse Mythology for Smart People
RAGNAROK
Ragnarok (Old Norse Ragnarök,
“The Doom of the Gods”) is the
name the pre-Christian Norse
gave to the end of their mythical
cycle, during which the cosmos is
destroyed and is subsequently recreated. “Ragnarok” is something
of a play on words; an alternate
form, which sounds almost identical when spoken, is Ragnarøkkr,
“Battle of the Doomed Gods” by Friedrich Wilhelm
Heine (1882)
“The Twilight of the Gods.” The
signi cance of this variation will be discussed below.
But rst, here’s the tale itself:
The Doom of the Gods
Ominous prophecies and dreams had long foretold the downfall of the
cosmos and of its gods and goddesses along with it. When the rst of
these prophesied events came to pass – the beloved god Baldur was killed
by Loki and consigned to the underworld – the gods had to face the fact
they could no longer escape their tragic destiny. They prepared as well as
they could. Odin took a great deal of time and care selecting the ablest
human warriors to join him in the nal battle against the world-devouring giants. But, deep down, they knew that all of their desperate actions
were in vain.
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In Midgard, the realm of human civilization, people abandoned their traditional ways, disregarded the bonds of kinship, and sank into a wayward,
listless nihilism. The gods weren’t exactly innocent of these same charges,
however. They had broken oaths and fallen short of their expectations of
one another on many occasions. (See, for example, The Forti cation of
Asgard and The Binding of Fenrir.) Three winters came in a row with no
summer in between, a plodding, devastating season of darkness and
frigidity which the prophecies had called the Fimbulwinter (“The Great
Winter”).
At last, the pseudo-god Loki and his son, the dreaded wolf Fenrir, who
had both been chained up to prevent them from wreaking further destruction in the Nine Worlds, broke free of their fetters and set about doing precisely what the gods who had imprisoned them had feared. Yggdrasil, the great world-tree that holds the Nine Worlds in its branches
and roots, began to tremble.
The far-seeing Heimdall, the watchman of the gods’ fortress, Asgard, was
the rst to spy a vast army of giants headed for the celestial stronghold.
Among the gruesome mass was the gods’ ckle friend, Loki, at the helm
of the ship Naglfar (“Ship of the Dead”). Heimdall sounded his horn Gjallarhorn (“Resounding Horn”) to alert the gods, who were no doubt
alarmed and despairing.
The giants set about destroying the abode of the gods and the entire cosmos along with it. Fenrir, the great wolf, ran across the land with his lower jaw on the ground and his upper jaw in the sky, consuming everything
in between. Even the sun itself was dragged from its height and into the
beast’s stomach. Surt, a giant bearing a aming sword, swept across the
earth and le nothing but an inferno in his wake.
But, like the heroes of a Greek tragedy, the gods fought valiantly to the
end. Thor and the sea serpent Jormungand slew each other, as did Surt
and the god Freyr, and likewise Heimdall and Loki. Odin and Tyr both
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fell to Fenrir (also called “Garmr” in some texts), who was then killed by
Vidar, Odin’s son and avenger.
At last, in the ultimate reversal of the original process of creation, the ravaged land sank back into the sea and vanished below the waves. The perfect darkness and silence of the anti-cosmic void, Ginnungagap, reigned
once more.
But this age of death and repose
did not last forever. Soon the
earth was once again raised from
the ocean. Baldur returned from
the underworld, and the gladdened land became more lush
and fruitful than it had been since
it was created the previous time.
A new human pair, Lif and
“A er Ragnarok” by Emil Doepler (1905)
Li hrasir, the equivalents of Ask
and Embla in the Norse creation
narrative, awakened in the green world. The gods, too, returned and resumed their merrymaking.[1][2][3]
The Twilight of the Gods
While some scholars have attempted to portray Ragnarok as being much
like the Christian “End Times,” where the world is destroyed once and for
all and historical time is abolished, other scholars, such as historian of religions Mircea Eliade[4] and Old Norse philologist Rudolf Simek[5] have
realized that the tale of Ragnarok conveys a very, very di erent message.
Given that the accounts of the destruction of the world in the Old Norse
primary sources are immediately followed by accounts of its re-creation,
the assertion that Ragnarok describes the end of linear history is completely unfounded. A more sensitive reading of the primary sources
makes it obvious that what Ragnarok describes is a cyclical end of the
world, a er which follows a new creation, which will in turn be followed
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by another Ragnarok, and so on throughout eternity. In other words, creation and destruction are points at opposite ends of a circle, not points at
opposite ends of a straight line.
With this understanding, we can grasp the meaning of the play on words
in the name “Ragnarok,” as was mentioned in the opening paragraph of
this article. This cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth for which Norse
mythology provides an archetype occurs at every scale of existence: the
cycle of the seasons, of day and night, of the phases of the moon, of the
life of any organism, and of the ourishing of life between mass extinctions. The “Twilight of the Gods,” in other words, expresses the meaning
the pre-Christian Norse perceived within every physical twilight, every
autumn, every waning moon, and every aging being. This, nally, is the
heart of the pre-Christian worldview of the Norse and other Germanic
peoples: by imbuing existence with these sacred meanings, they sanctied all of existence, and, if they kept the proper mindset, lived their lives
immersed in the sacred at every turn. They could say, along with William
Blake, “Everything that lives is holy.”
Looking for more great information on Norse mythology and religion?
While this site provides the ultimate online introduction to the topic, my
book The Viking Spirit provides the ultimate introduction to Norse
mythology and religion period. I’ve also written a popular list of The 10
Best Norse Mythology Books, which you’ll probably nd helpful in your
pursuit.
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References:
[1]
The Poetic Edda. Völuspá.
[2]
The Poetic Edda. Vafþrúðnismál.
[3]
Snorri Sturluson. The Prose Edda. Gylfaginning.
[4]
Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and His-
tory. p. 113.
[5]
Simek, Rudolf. 1993. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Translated by
Angela Hall. p. 259.
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