Norse Myths · Part 13 · Towards the end · C1
Ragnarök
Part 13 of the Norse Myths: the twilight of the gods. Three winters with no summer, the wolves swallowing the sun and moon, Loki and Fenrir breaking free, the last battle on the plain of Vígríd, and the fire that burns the world. And then, rising from the sea, a new green earth. The future for prophecy (will, will be fighting, will have fallen, is to, is bound to), inversion for dramatic effect (Then comes the wolf; Never again will…), and the language of the end and the new beginning, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
All through these stories we have heard the same word: until Ragnarök. Fenrir bound until Ragnarök, Loki bound until Ragnarök, the Serpent waiting until Ragnarök. Tonight, it comes. Ragnarök means “the fate of the gods”, and the gods know exactly what it will be.
They know they’re going to lose? And they fight anyway?
That is the heart of it, Marcos. The Norse gods are not all-powerful; they will die, and they know how. And still they fight. And after the fire, the prophecy says, something wonderful will happen. Tonight we use the grammar of prophecy: the future as if it were already certain.
Every people imagines the end. Let us see how close it comes to our prophets.
The main source is Völuspá, “The Prophecy of the Seeress”, the first poem in the Poetic Edda, in which a wise woman raised from the dead tells Odin the history of the world from its beginning to its end. Snorri retells it in the Prose Edda. Some scholars think parts of it, especially the new world after the end, were influenced by Christian ideas; others believe they are genuinely pagan. The poem itself may have been composed around the year…
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