Ragnarok
Ragnarök / Ragnarok. The big one. The show down.
This is sort of part of the Gullveig series, but can also stand on its own.
But for consistency, the previous post in this series: Is Gullveig Freyja? - Gullveig Part 8
A reminder of a few key dates (I already outlined this in my intro post, but let's go again):
< 800 - People just talked. I'm sure you've heard it before, but Heathenry back then had an oral tradition, telling the myths by word of mouth. It was just life. It likely just didn't seem important to write it down and most people were illiterate at this point in history. This also meant that stories likely had multiple versions that changed from place to place.
800-1000 AD - Contents of what became the Poetic (Elder) Edda, and is regarded as the most accurate version of our mythology and religion, was a collection of hand-written sagas most likely found in Norway and on Iceland sometime during these years. Christianity was spreading.
1000-1100 AD - Scandinavia was Christianised in "official" capacity. Conversion was slow, starting around the early 800s in the southern areas of continental Scandinavia. The recognised dates for conversion are all over the place, but by the 1100's, Christianity had become the major religion in the region for a multitude of reasons. Saxo also beings work on "The History of the Danes" circa 1185.
1200-1300 AD - These sagas and poems were hand-transcribed to the book Codex Regius sometime during this time, and is what we call today the Poetic Edda, and then used by Snorri to right the Prose Edda circa 1220
Most - nearly all - of our written sources are from around the 1100-1300 period. We have some poems from before then, but they are mostly fragments. You can probably already see the challenge that poses for pinpointing accurate beliefs and stories in the sources.
To paraphrase archaeologist (and based YouTube nerd) Milo Rossi;
"In archaeology, context is everything. If you remove context you lose more information than the artifact itself"
The same can be said for historical writing; we need to look at the period of time and the situations the authors were in, and use that context to understand the perspectives and motivations of the Poet, and try to catch what biases they had (because they definitely had biases). Scandinavia as a whole was undergoing some drastic social changes in the late 10th century and that is also important to keep in mind when examining sources on Ragnarok.
Is Ragnarok Christian?
Ragnarok is often written off as a Christian insert and the validity of using it in praxis in any way, for any reason, as a modern heathen is often hotly debated and questioned. I don't think it's as simple as “it’s Christian, so we should throw it out.” Has it been Christianised? I think so, yes, without a doubt, but I don't think it was as much as people claim, and there is quite a bit of evidence to support this.
The majority of what we know about Ragnarok, found most famously in the Voluspa (but also many other poems and sagas), pre-dates any significant Christian influence, with many being dated to the 10th century or possibly earlier. As I mentioned briefly in Ymir and the Origins of Giants, conversion to Christianity in Scandinavia was slow and late compared to the rest of Europe, and didn’t officially solidify in most places until the 11th century.
As Christian as many of the aspects of Ragnarok described in the Voluspa sound, they actually fit in quite well with the understanding of the Old Norse worldviews of rebirth, cycles, non-linear time, fate, and prophecy.
The consistent idea - the theme - of Ragnarok throughout many poems and sagas is evident. I find it hard to believe such a pivotal underlying story was inserted in so many bodies of work over such a period of time and then kept in with the details they have after Christianity got a foothold in Scandinavian countries. It is far more likely that it was present in the much older oral traditions of Iceland and Scandinavia, which were later written down by those familiar with them.
If Voluspa and the Ragnarok myths were indeed meant as a means for Christianity to take over, they did a pretty shit job - as it ensured the survival of stories about the Aesir (it’s one of the most well-known sources we have!), whilst also including that God with a capital G did not create the universe, if we are to believe that this was the idea. Why include anything positive about a group of gods that you claim don’t exist, and give them powers that your one-and-only God has? Doesn’t make a lot of sense, right?
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| Moe, Louis. Valkyries at Ragnarök. From: Moe, Louis Maria Niels Peder Halling. Ragnarok: En Billeddigtning. København, A.F. Høst, 1929. [73]. MyNDIR: My Norse Digital Image Repository. Ed. P. A. Baer. 2024. Edition 2.6. Victoria, B. C.: Humanities Computing and Media Centre, University of Victoria. 2024. |
The Word Ragnarök
Some interesting word things around "Ragnarök", or what became "Ragnarøkkr,” which are two very different words with different meanings. It’s often referred to as "Ragnarøkkr" or some variant, and translated to "Twilight of the gods”; however, this is a bit of a misnomer started by ol Snorri in his Prose Edda, and later perpetuated by one Richard (Dick) Wagner, but the original Poetic Edda refers to this spelling: Ragnarök. So let's link to dictionaries again that are hard to read!
Ragna-rök
Here is what you been looking forward to. Dictionary stuff:
Ragna means Regin, or roughly "the gods as the makers and rulers of the universe" (that's a lot for a small word)
Rök, which means "fate" or "end"
Røkkr, which comes from another root word rikwiz, meaning "darkness" - which is where we get "twilight" from, which seems to be a pretty clear mistranslation.
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| Moe, Louis. Óðinn Attacking Fenrir. From: Moe, Louis Maria Niels Peder Halling. Ragnarok: En Billeddigtning. København, A.F. Høst, 1929. [76]. MyNDIR: My Norse Digital Image Repository. Ed. P. A. Baer. 2024. Edition 2.6. Victoria, B. C.: Humanities Computing and Media Centre, University of Victoria. 2024. |
The Great Battle
In Tommy Kuusela's paper Halls, Gods, and Giants: The Enigma of Gullveig in Óðinn’s Hall, it is proposed that the cruelty inflicted upon Gullveig leads to warfare between the gods and the giants, which is the primary driver for Ragnarok. Using the ideas in that paper, with some of my own, I've attempted to lay out a basic timeline of what the myths could have been, if we had access to the full body of work. For me this narrative makes sense and closes quite a few of the "plot holes" we currently have, but this is not fact; it is my interpretation.
I should note, that this is mythology, this isn't the truth, or literal events. It isn't to demonstrate how the gods are now, but to attempt to put a clearer narrative of the myths we have, and how the people of old may have told them. I hold that Ragnarok is a story about cycles. About natural events, likely the volcanic winter of 536, which is argued by some scholars to be the inspiration for the idea of Fimbulvetr, and the story of Ragnarok is one way to explain that. Regardless, there are still fragments missing from this story that might have given us insight as to how the gods were viewed.
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| Moe, Louis. Valkyries at Ragnarök. From: Moe, Louis Maria Niels Peder Halling. Ragnarok: En Billeddigtning. København, A.F. Høst, 1929. [73]. MyNDIR: My Norse Digital Image Repository. Ed. P. A. Baer. 2024. Edition 2.6. Victoria, B. C.: Humanities Computing and Media Centre, University of Victoria. 2024. |
The story of Ragnarok is... complex. That is to say there are many aspects and stories within the poem itself. I'm not going to elaborate on all of that (maybe for another post one day), but just focus on one possibility and theme.
- Gullveig is burnt and stabbed in Odin's hall - something very bad must have happened for Odin to break grith here, but it’s been proposed it was a war over politics and power, with the old giants opposing the new order of the Aesir.
- Gullveig is reborn - you can’t kill a God, especially one as old as Gullveig, and as I have demonstrated, she is as old as gods get. What do you do when you're "killed" as an immortal being? You plot revenge, of course.
- This underlying motive throughout the myths is that of revenge, a tale as old as time, that ultimately leads to Ragnarok and the destruction of the gods.
There is no doubt that there are Christian elements inserted into the Ragnarok myth, as mentioned. I don't think it’s too hard to peel these back, but if we step outside of the mythos for a moment and look at the time during which these poems were composed and compiled into the Codex Regius and later the Eddas, I think Ragnarok tells the story of Gullveig and her revenge against the Aesir for her attempted murder.
Marnie Tunay in their blog Gullveig, Heiðr and Who Composed Vǫluspá? concludes with what I think is a brilliant summation speaking of the Christianisation of Ragnarok;
"I think it’s very likely that the composer of Völuspá was the late-10th century Norse court poet Eyvindr skáldaspillir Finsson, or, someone who was in his immediate circle of friends and family. I think the poet, who served under two heathen rulers and a Christian one, intended the poem as a warning to heathens, and also as a message of hope: ‘The end is coming; the new religion will prevail, and there’s going to be trouble. Run away to new lands. One day, we will return.’ And so it happened that way, too."
I love that. And return we have.
