The wolf swallows the sun. The stars fall. A ship made of dead men’s fingernails sails for the last battle. Ragnarök, the “doom of the gods,” is how the Norse imagined the end of the world. Our main sources are the Poetic Edda poem Völuspá and Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda. Meanwhile, in Valhalla the einherjar wait for it. They are warriors who died in battle, and they spend each day fighting and each night feasting, keeping their skills sharp for the end.
Portents of Ragnarök
According to Völuspá, three roosters crow: one among the giants, one among the gods, and a dark red one in Hel. The hound Garmr howls and breaks free. The sun turns black and the earth shakes. Then Heimdall sounds the Gjallarhorn to warn the gods. Naglfar sets sail loaded with giants: Snorri says the giant Hrym steers it, while Völuspá has Loki steering a ship of Muspell’s people.
Back on Midgard
First comes Fimbulwinter: three winters with no summer between them. Snorri says that before it come three more years of war, when brother kills brother and kinship means nothing. Völuspá calls it “an axe age, a sword age, shields are cloven; a wind age, a wolf age, before the world sinks.” The world tree Yggdrasil shudders.
Gods Versus Giants
The giants face the gods in a valley that has three names in three different sources (Vigridr, Oskopnir, and/or Oskapt). The unarmed god Freyr confronts the giant Surtr, who wields a flaming sword. Freyr had given his own sword away long before, to win the giantess Gerd. As a result, Surtr’s victory is certain.
Thor faces Jörmungandr, the serpent that circles the world and that he once hooked on a fishing trip. He kills it, but then walks nine steps and falls dead from its venom.
Odin, carrying Gungnir, the spear that can’t miss, rides the eight-legged horse Sleipnir against Fenrir, the monster wolf who is Loki’s son. The wolf is so large that he swallows Odin easily. Then Vidar, a god born for the purpose, avenges Odin and kills Fenrir with a sword.
Loki and Heimdall kill each other. Tyr, the one-handed god, fights the hound Garmr, and they, too, kill each other.
Ragnarök: End of the World
Surtr’s fire engulfs the world. Then the earth rises again from the sea, green and new. Baldur returns from Hel with his brother Hod, who killed him by accident. Odin’s avenger Vidar survives, with Baldur’s avenger Vali, Thor’s sons Modi and Magni (who inherit Mjölnir) and Honir, one of the gods who gave life to the first humans.
Two humans, Lif and Lifthrasir, survive by hiding in Hoddmimir’s wood and living on morning dew; from them the world is peopled again. Finally, Völuspá ends with a hall roofed in gold, Gimle, where the worthy will live. So Ragnarök is an ending, and a beginning.
Every ending in Norse myth answers a beginning. Read how the world was first made in Ginnungagap, Ymir, and Authumbla, and how the dead fare in Hel and the afterlife. To hear when the next myth is posted, join our newsletter.
For more, Jackson Crawford walks through what the Old Norse sources say about Ragnarök in this video.
Sources
- Jackson Crawford on YouTube, Ragnarok: What the Old Norse Sources Say
- The Poetic Edda, translated by Jackson Crawford, Hackett (2015): Völuspá.
- The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson, Penguin Classics (2005): Gylfaginning 51–53.
