Ragnarok: The End of the World in Norse Mythology
Explore Ragnarok, the prophesied end of the world in Norse mythology: the Fimbulvetr, the battle of Vígríðr, the death of the gods, and the rebirth of the world.
Ragnarok (Old Norse Ragnarök, “the doom of the powers” or “the twilight of the gods”) is the prophesied end of the world in Norse mythology. The event is described most fully in the Völuspá of the Poetic Edda and in the Gylfaginning of the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, and it has become one of the most influential eschatological images in the European tradition. Ragnarok is preceded by the Fimbulvetr, the great winter of three successive winters without summer; the period is marked by the breaking of social bonds, the swallowing of the sun and moon by the wolves, the shaking of Yggdrasil, and the rising of the World Serpent from the sea. The great battle takes place on the field of Vígríðr, where the gods and the Einherjar from Valhalla meet the giants, the sons of Muspell, the Fenrir, and the World Serpent. The gods fall, the world is consumed by fire, and a new earth rises from the sea.
This page is an encyclopedic account of Ragnarok: the signs that precede it, the events of the great battle, the doom of the principal gods, and the renewal of the world that follows the catastrophe.
The Name and Its Meaning
The Old Norse name Ragnarök is composed of regin (the divine powers, the ruling gods) and rök (fate, doom, end). The name is sometimes translated as “the doom of the powers” or “the twilight of the gods” (the latter being Jacob Grimm’s coinage in his Deutsche Mythologie of 1835, which has been widely adopted in English). The plural form ragnarök (“the dooms of the powers,” or “the final fates”) is the more common in the Old Norse sources, but the singular ragnarök is attested in the Völuspá and elsewhere.
The figure of Ragnarok in Norse mythology is part of a larger Indo-European pattern of cosmic catastrophe that includes the Gotterdammerung (the Germanic “twilight of the gods” tradition, in the Völuspá and the Muspilli), the Iranian Frashokereti (the renovation of the world at the end of time), and the Christian Apocalypse. The Norse version is distinctive in its cyclical structure: the world is not ended once and for all, but is destroyed and then renewed, with a new earth and a new heaven emerging from the ashes of the old.
The Fimbulvetr
The Fimbulvetr (“the great winter” or “the mighty winter”) is the great winter of three successive winters without summer, the period that precedes Ragnarok. The Völuspá describes it as a time of great social and moral disorder: brothers kill brothers, kinsmen fight kinsmen, and the bonds of the social order are broken. The Fimbulvetr is the Norse equivalent of the “latter days” of Christian eschatology, and it is the period in which the signs of Ragnarok appear.
The signs include:
- The wolf Sköll (“mockery”) swallows the sun, and the wolf Hati Hróðvitnisson (“he who hates”) swallows the moon.
- The stars vanish from the sky.
- The great tree Yggdrasil shudders and groans.
- The World Serpent writhes in rage.
- The bonds of Fenrir and Loki break.
- The Gjallarhorn is sounded by Heimdall.
- The bridge Bifrost is broken under the feet of the sons of Muspell as they cross it to Asgard.
- The ship Naglfar (“nail-ship,” a ship made of the nails of the dead) sails with the giants from below.
- The ship Hringhorni (“ship of the ring,” the ship of the goddess of death) bears the host of Hel.
- The Jotnar march from the east, the sons of Muspell from the south.
These signs are described in stanzas 40–58 of the Völuspá, and the order of the events varies somewhat between the Völuspá and the Gylfaginning.
The Battle of Vígríðr
The great battle of Ragnarok takes place on the field of Vígríðr, which the Völuspá describes as a plain of one hundred leagues (or, in some readings, one hundred rasts) in each direction. The gods march out from Asgard, the Einherjar from Valhalla in their gleaming armor, with the Gjallarhorn sounding. Opposing them are the sons of Muspell with Surtr at their head, the broken Loki come back from his long binding, Fenrir with his terrible jaws from which the upper jaw touches the sky and the lower touches the earth, and the World Serpent writhing in rage.
The battles that ensue are not single combats but mass engagements in which the worlds of being meet to be finally destroyed. The principal encounters are:
The Death of Odin
Odin, the Allfather, fights the wolf Fenrir, and the two destroy each other. The Völuspá describes the encounter vividly:
“Odin goes forth to fight the wolf, and the bright slayer of Beli goes forth to fight Surtr; but Odin’s fate comes upon him, and the hound of Hel swallows him.”
The wolf’s upper jaw touches the sky and his lower jaw the earth, and the Allfather is swallowed. The death of Odin is one of the most powerful images in Old Norse poetry — the chief of the gods, the lord of Valhalla, falls in a single encounter with the monstrous wolf. Odin’s son Vidar avenges him by stepping into the wolf’s mouth with a great shoe (made from the leather-strips that have been gathered through the ages by those who wished to help the Allfather in his hour of need) and tearing the wolf’s jaws apart.
The Death of Thor
Thor, the mighty god of thunder, fights the World Serpent. The encounter is the climax of a long-standing antagonism between the two, and it has its earlier setting in the tale of Hymiskviða, in which Thor fishes for the serpent and almost catches him before the giant Hymir cuts the line. At Ragnarok, the two meet in earnest, and Thor slays the serpent — but he walks only nine paces from the corpse before falling dead from the serpent’s venom. The death of Thor is one of the most poignant images of the Norse eschatology, and it has been the subject of countless artistic and literary treatments.
The Death of Týr
Týr, the god of war and law, fights the hound Garmr (the hound that guards the gates of Helheim, and the two destroy each other. The death of Týr is the end of the principle of law and order in the cosmos, and the death of his adversary Garmr is the end of the principle of the underworld’s bounds. Týr’s loss is particularly poignant because he had already given his right hand as a pledge to the binding of Fenrir, and he is the god who is most closely associated with the binding of the world-order.
The Death of Loki and Heimdall
Loki, the trickster god, has been bound by the gods after his role in the death of Baldr, with the entrails of his son Narfi wrapped around him and a serpent dripping venom into his face. At Ragnarok, the serpent is shaken loose (in some readings, by the giantess Skadi) and Loki breaks free, joining the host of the giants. He fights Heimdall, the watchman of the gods, and the two destroy each other. The death of Loki and Heimdall is the death of trickery and the death of watchfulness — the two opposing figures meet and are annihilated.
The Death of Freyja and Freyr
Freyja and Freyr, the twin Vanir gods of fertility, also fall at Ragnarok, though their specific deaths are not described in the surviving Eddic sources. The death of the Vanir is the end of the principle of fertility and prosperity, and the end of the alliance between the Æsir and the Vanir that had been established after the great war of the two tribes.
The Fire of Surtr
The principal destroyer at Ragnarok is Surtr, the fire giant who leads the sons of Muspell from the south. Surtr bears a sword brighter than the sun, and at the close of the great battle he flings fire over all the earth, consuming the world in flame. The Völuspá describes the catastrophe:
“Surtr comes from the south with the scourge of branches, the sun of the gods is shamed; the fire leaps high, and the great God is consumed.”
The image of Surtr’s fire is one of the most striking in the Norse sources. The world is not destroyed by a battle or a judgement, but by fire, the same fire that was the source of the world at its creation. The fire of destruction is the same fire as the fire of creation, and the new world will rise from the ashes of the old. The fire of Surtr is the fire of transformation, the fire that consumes in order to renew.
The Survivors of Ragnarok
The Norse eschatology is distinctive in having a substantial list of survivors of the great battle. The Völuspá names the following figures as surviving Ragnarok:
- Vidar, son of Odin, who avenges his father by slaying Fenrir
- Váli, son of Odin, who avenges Baldr by slaying Höðr in the time before Ragnarok
- Móði and Magni, sons of Thor, who inherit their father’s hammer Mjölnir
- Baldr, who returns from Helheim in the new world
- Höðr, who returns from Helheim together with Baldr
- Líf and Lífþrasir, the two human beings who shelter in the Hoddmímis holt and emerge to repopulate the world
- The unnamed “more powerful” lord who arrives from below in the new world, sometimes identified with the renewed Baldr
The fact that the great majority of the principal gods fall at Ragnarok, while a small group of new and reborn figures inherit the new world, is one of the most striking features of the Norse eschatology. The new world is not a return to the old order but a new beginning with new figures, in which the surviving gods from the old world are joined by reborn figures and the new lord.
The New Earth
The Völuspá’s vision of what follows the catastrophe is among the most striking passages in Old Norse literature. The goddess who has been recounting the doom of the gods to Odin — the völva of the poem — goes on to see the world rising green and fair from the sea, the new earth filled with the unsown harvests of the renewed fields, the surviving gods coming back to the recreated Iðavöllr, and a new ruler, a being “more powerful than any other,” arriving from below. The Völuspá describes the renewed world in detail:
“I see the earth rising a second time from the sea, fair and green; the waters fall, and the eagle flies, and he catches fish on the mountain.”
“Unsown the fields bring forth, and the wounds are healed; Baldr comes, and Höðr comes, to the halls of Hel; they come from below, and they dwell together in the renewed world.”
The new world is described as a place of unsown harvests, healed wounds, and the return of the lost Baldr and Höðr. The hall of Helheim is renewed, and the lost figures of the old world return to the halls of the gods. The new earth is, in this sense, a reunification of the worlds: the dead return, the gods meet again, the harvests grow again, and the cycle of being continues.
The Hall of Gimlé
In the new world, a great hall rises, called Gimlé, which the Völuspá describes as the home of the righteous and the bright. Snorri, in the Prose Edda, identifies Gimlé as the new dwelling of the righteous after Ragnarok, and he connects it to the Christian image of the New Jerusalem. The hall of Gimlé is described as “more beautiful than the sun,” with a golden roof and walls of red gold. The righteous dead of the old world inhabit Gimlé in the new.
The image of Gimlé is one of the most debated passages in the Völuspá. Some scholars have argued that the passage is a late Christian interpolation into the Eddic text, designed to make the pagan prophecy more compatible with Christian eschatology. Others have argued that the image is authentically Norse and reflects a pre-Christian expectation of a renewed paradise. The most likely reading is that the passage is a later addition by a Christian redactor, but one that draws on an older, pagan expectation of a renewed world at the end of time.
The Halls of the New World
In addition to Gimlé, the new world contains a number of halls and locations. The Völuspá mentions several:
- Gimlé — the great hall of the righteous, with a golden roof
- Brimir — a hall mentioned in the Völuspá as being “on Okolnir,” perhaps a counterpart to Gimlé
- Sindri — a hall of the pure and good, mentioned in the Vafþrúðnismál
- The hall of Náströnd — the strand of corpses, which is also present in the new world, in some readings
- Hoddmímis holt — the grove in which Líf and Lífþrasir shelter
The image of the renewed world is not a single, uniform place but a complex of halls and locations, each with its own role and its own inhabitants. The Völuspá’s geography of the new world is, in this sense, as complex as the geography of the old world, with the same variety of being, the same variety of places, and the same variety of fates.
The Death of the Aesir and the Vanir Together
The fall of the gods at Ragnarok is, in the Völuspá’s account, the fall of both the Æsir and the Vanir. The Æsir — Odin, Thor, Týr, Heimdall — fall in the great battle. The Vanir — Freyja, Freyr — also fall, though their deaths are not described in the surviving Eddic sources. The fall of both tribes is significant because the alliance of the two tribes — the truce that ended the Aesir-Vanir war — is one of the great structural events of the pre-Ragnarok world, and the breaking of that alliance in the catastrophe is part of the larger breaking of the cosmic order.
The fact that the surviving gods in the new world include both Æsir (Vidar, Váli, the sons of Thor) and reborn figures (Baldr, Höðr) suggests that the alliance of the two tribes is renewed in the new world, in a form that reflects the new cosmic order.
The Continued Existence of the World-Serpent and Níðhöggr
One of the more curious features of the Völuspá’s closing stanzas is the continued existence of Níðhöggr in the new world. The Völuspá describes him as flying out of the dark mountains, and his appearance in the renewed world is sometimes read as a sign of the continuing importance of the chthonic forces in the new order. The fact that the dragon survives the catastrophe suggests that the principle of slow destruction is not abolished in the new world; it is transformed and continues to operate in the renewed order.
The Cosmological Cycle
The cyclical structure of the Norse cosmos is clear from the Völuspá as a whole. The world has a beginning in Ginnungagap and the meeting of ice and fire; it has a middle in the reign of the gods and the unfolding of human history; and it has an end at Ragnarok. But the end is not a final end; it is the transition to a new beginning. The world is destroyed by fire, and a new world rises from the sea. The gods who survive the doom inherit the new earth, and the lost gods (notably Baldr and Höðr) return from Helheim. The cycle of being is endless, and the gods who survive (or who are reborn in the new world) take their place in a renewed cosmic order.
This cyclical structure is one of the most distinctive features of Norse cosmology. The world is not created once and for all; it is created, ages, is destroyed, and is renewed, and the destruction is the precondition for the new creation. The same fire that consumes the world at Ragnarok is, in the renewed world, the source of the warmth and light of the new sun, and the cold that follows is the cold of a world that has been cooled by the loss of the old order.
The Sources of the Image
The principal sources for Ragnarok are the Völuspá of the Poetic Edda, the Gylfaginning of the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, the Vafþrúðnismál (which contains a detailed account of the principal events of Ragnarok as recited by the giant Vafþrúðnir), and the Baldrs draumar (which contains the prophecy of the death of Baldr and its consequences). The Hauksbók version of the Völuspá and the Húsdrápa of Úlfr Uggason are also important. The image is reinforced by the Gotländische Bildsteine (Gotlandic picture-stones), several of which depict the great battle of Ragnarok in detail, and by the Gosforth Cross in Cumberland, which contains a complex set of scenes from the Norse eschatology.