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Portrait of Ragnarök

Myth · Norse

Ragnarök

Norse mythology — the doom of the gods

Ragnarök is the foretold end of the Norse world: three winters without a summer, the sun and moon swallowed by wolves, the dead sailing in a ship of nails, the rainbow bridge shattering under the fire-giants, and a last battle on the plain of Vígríðr in which almost every god and monster kills its opposite number. The earth sinks into the sea and then rises again, green, with a few survivors and the returning Baldr.

How to spot them

  • ▸Three successive winters with no summer between them, the Fimbulwinter
  • ▸A cock crows in each world; a horn is blown; a ship built from dead men's nails is loosed
  • ▸A last battle on a plain a hundred leagues on every side
  • ▸Quiz clue: 'the doom of the gods', 'Vígríðr', 'Naglfar', 'Surtr's fire'

Stories & episodes

Foretold to a wandering god by a seeress who rises from the dead to speak it

Völuspá, the first poem of the Poetic Edda and the chief source for the whole sequence.

Begins with three winters running together with no summer between

The Fimbulwinter, accompanied by war and the breaking of all kinship.

Heimdall blows the Gjallarhorn and the burning bridge shatters under the sons of Muspell

Bifröst breaks as Surtr's fire-giants ride across it.

A ship built from the untrimmed nails of the dead is loosed from its moorings

Naglfar, steered by Loki — which is why Snorri says the dead should have their nails cut.

Odin is swallowed, Thor walks nine paces, Freyr falls for want of the sword he gave away

The pairings on Vígríðr: Odin against Fenrir, Thor against the serpent, Freyr against Surtr, Týr against Garmr, Heimdall against Loki.

The earth sinks into the sea, then rises green, and the old gold chess-pieces are found in the grass

Baldr and Höðr return from the dead and the sons of Thor inherit the hammer.

Quick-fire facts

  • •The name means 'fate of the gods'; the variant ragnarøkkr, 'twilight of the gods', gives Wagner's Götterdämmerung
  • •The wolves Sköll and Hati swallow the sun and the moon; the sun bears a daughter who takes her place in the new world
  • •Three cocks crow the alarm: Fjalar in the giants' wood, Gullinkambi in Valhalla and a soot-red cock in Hel
  • •The battlefield Vígríðr is a hundred leagues in each direction
  • •Víðarr avenges Odin by tearing the wolf's jaws; Thor's sons Magni and Móði survive and inherit Mjölnir
  • •Líf and Lífthrasir, the two humans who survive, shelter in the world tree and repeople the earth
  • •The chief sources are Völuspá and Vafþrúðnismál in the Poetic Edda and Gylfaginning in Snorri's Prose Edda
  • •The 10th-century Gosforth Cross in Cumbria carries scenes usually read as Ragnarök beside Christian imagery

Drill it — 9 cards

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Sources