Who Is Surtr, Fire Giant of Ragnarok?
Meet Surtr, the fire giant who will lead the sons of Muspel against the gods at Ragnarok, his flaming sword, and his role in the end of the world.
Surtr is the chief of the fire giants of Muspelheim, the great being who waits at the southern edge of the world with a flaming sword and who, at the end of time, will lead the Muspell’s people across the Bifröst and engulf the nine worlds in fire. According to the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson and the Völuspá of the Poetic Edda, Surtr is the bringer of the end: he will kill Freyr in single combat and then set fire to the entire world. The image of the fire giant with the flaming sword is one of the most striking in the Norse mythological corpus.
The Name and the Domain
The name Surtr (Old Norse Surtr, sometimes anglicized Surt or Surtur) means “the black one” or “the swarthy one” — a name that fits his origin in the primeval fire of the south. The figure is described as a being who waits at the southern edge of the world, at the border of Muspelheim, the realm of fire. He is the chief of the Muspells (the people of Muspel), the fire giants who will cross the Bifröst at the end of the world.
The earliest attestation of the name is in the Völuspá (stanza 52), one of the oldest of the eddic poems. The seeress says: “Surtr comes from the south with the scourge of branches” (i.e., a flaming sword, the “scourge” being a poetic term for a sword). The image is vivid: the fire giant, in the south, advancing with a weapon that burns.
Surtr in the Prose Edda
Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, in Gylfaginning (chapter 4), gives a fuller account of Surtr’s origin. According to Snorri, in the early days of the world, sparks from Muspelheim flew into the air and came to rest in the north, where they met the rime of Niflheim and gave rise to the primeval giant Ymir and the cosmic cow Auðumbla. The world, in this sense, is born from the meeting of fire and cold, and Surtr is the original fire from the south.
Snorri’s account of Surtr’s role in Ragnarok, in the same text (chapter 51), is the most detailed. He says: “At the time of the great winter, the Fimbulvetr, Muspel’s sons will ride across the Bifröst, and the bridge will break under their hooves. Surtr will be at their head, with a flaming sword that shines brighter than the sun.” The fire giant and his people will cross the bridge into the world of the gods, the bridge will shatter under their weight, and Surtr will lead the final assault on Asgard.
The same chapter describes the duel between Surtr and Freyr. The fire giant and the lord of fertility face each other on the field of the final battle, and Freyr is killed. The killing is significant in the mythological system: Surtr, the destroyer, kills Freyr, the one who has given up his sword to win the giantess Gerðr. Without his weapon, Freyr is vulnerable, and his death is one of the central events of Ragnarok.
The Gylfaginning continues: “After this, Surtr will fling fire over all the world, and the world will be consumed.” The picture is of a final conflagration that destroys everything: Asgard, Midgard, the worlds of the giants, the dwarves, the elves, the dead. Surtr’s fire is the absolute fire, the fire at the end of all fires, that returns the world to its original primeval condition of heat and chaos.
Surtr and the South
In the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda, Surtr is consistently placed in the south. The Norse imagination conceived of the world as oriented in a way that the cold, the rime, and the dark were in the north, and the fire, the heat, and the burning were in the south. The southern edge of the world is the edge of Muspelheim, the home of fire. Surtr, as the chief of Muspelheim, is the southern fire.
The orientation is cosmological. The four quarters — north, south, east, west — are not merely geographical but also elemental. The north is the cold and the dark; the south is the fire and the light. The east and the west are, in the surviving sources, less clearly defined. The Norse imagination, in this respect, is closer to the Indo-European pattern of a four-element world (earth, water, fire, air) than to the Greek or medieval Christian pattern.
Surtr and the End of the World
The role of Surtr at Ragnarok is described in detail in the Völuspá (stanzas 50–52). Stanza 50 describes the coming of the Muspell’s people:
“The ship sails from the east, Muspell’s people come over the waves, and Loki is at the helm.”
The ship is Naglfar, the ship of the dead, made from the nails of the deceased. The crew are the fire giants of Muspelheim. Loki, who has broken free from his bonds, is the helmsman. The image of the ship of the dead, captained by the trickster god, sailing toward the world of the gods, is one of the most striking in the apocalyptic literature of the North.
Stanza 52 then describes the fire giant himself:
“Surtr comes from the south with the scourge of branches, the scourge of the gods; a sword shines in his hand, brighter than the sun; the high mountain of the slain burns, the dead fall in the red haze.”
The “scourge of branches” is a poetic term for a sword — the twigs of the trees used to make the hilt. The “high mountain of the slain” is the battlefield itself. The “red haze” is the fiery mist of Ragnarok. The poem is a short, vivid apocalypse.
In stanza 53, the seeress describes the final battle:
“She sees, immersed in flood, a hall, the house of the dead, the shining hall, the house of the serpent-bed, and the dead are dragged in wading water. There the man of the oath sits in the iron wood, eating his food, slothful.”
The reference to the “man of the oath” in the iron wood is a reference to the oath-bound traitor of the Norse imagination — the figure who, like Loki, is a destroyer of the social bond. The image of the dead, in the underworld, waiting for the end, is one of the most poignant in the Völuspá.
Surtr and Freyr
The duel between Surtr and Freyr is one of the most discussed episodes in Norse mythology. The Gylfaginning describes it as a single combat between the lord of the Muspell and the lord of fertility, with the fire giant emerging as the victor. The Gylfaginning notes that Freyr is without his sword (which he has given away to win the giantess Gerðr) and so is doomed. The combat is one of the few specific pairings of combatants at Ragnarok in the surviving sources, and the symbolism is striking: the fire giant kills the fertility god, and the world is consumed by fire.
The combat is sometimes read as an allegory: the world, having given up its weapons (i.e., having been made vulnerable by the choices of its gods), is consumed by the very fire that is its origin. The reading matches with the Norse cosmic pessimism, in which the world is described as a temporary, doomed structure, destined to return to the elements from which it was made.
Surtr in the Post-Ragnarok World
The Völuspá (stanzas 56–60) describes the world after Ragnarok. The surviving gods gather on the reborn earth, the new world rises from the sea, and the surviving gods walk the new world. Surtr is not mentioned by name in the surviving fragments of the new world, but the implication of stanza 60 — “the earth rises green from the sea” — is that the fire is past, and the new world is a place of green, not red.
Some modern scholars have argued that Surtr, like the primeval fire, is the source of the new world as well as the end of the old. The argument is that the fire that destroys is the same as the fire that renews: the world returns to the primeval fire, and from that fire, a new world arises. The reading is suggestive but not directly supported by the surviving sources, and it is one of many modern interpretations of the role of Surtr at the end of the world.
Surtr and the Other Fire Beings
The Norse cosmos is populated with several fire beings, of whom Surtr is the chief. The Muspell’s people (the fire giants of Muspelheim) include a class of beings called the Einherjar of Muspel — the chosen warriors of fire, in parallel to the Einherjar of Valhalla of the slain. The ship Naglfar, captained by Loki in the Völuspá’s account, is described as carrying the fire giants across the sea.
Other fire beings include the volvas and fire spirits mentioned in medieval Icelandic folklore, the landvættir (spirits of the land) that protect Iceland, and the various fire-demon and flame-demon figures in the medieval Scandinavian literature. The list is long, but Surtr is consistently the most important fire being in the surviving sources.
Surtr in Modern Culture
The figure of Surtr has had a significant impact on modern popular culture, most famously in the God of War video game series, in which Surtr is a major character. The image of the fire giant with the flaming sword has also appeared in many fantasy novels, tabletop role-playing games, and other works of fiction. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has not, as of this writing, depicted Surtr in the Norse mythology of the films, but the figure of the fire giant is well known in the popular imagination.
In modern Heathenry, Surtr is invoked in some rituals as a symbol of the destructive power of nature, the fire that consumes the old to make way for the new. The figure is sometimes understood as a figure of purification rather than destruction — the fire that burns away the dead wood of the world, leaving the living wood to grow. The reading is one of many modern interpretations of the figure, and it reflects the contemporary tendency to look to Norse mythology for a more ecological and less anthropocentric view of the world.
Surtr and the Cosmic Order
The figure of Surtr is important in the structure of the Norse cosmos because it represents the final return of the world to its primeval state. The Norse cosmos was born from the meeting of fire and cold; it is destroyed by the return of fire alone. The world is, in this sense, a temporary pause in an eternal cycle of fire and ice — the same two elements that gave rise to the primeval giant Ymir. The fire giant, as the bringer of the end, is the bringer of the return.
The image is striking: Surtr, with his flaming sword, advancing on the world of the gods, is the image of the world’s own primeval condition, returning to the world. The fire giant is the original being, the original fire, and the end of the world is the end of the pause between two primeval states.