So let's talk about the end of the world.
General consensus: probably not a fun time.
We kind of need the world.
Even societies that believe in nice afterlives tend to demonstrably prefer living to dying.
And most mythologies seem to agree, since most of the time
the end of the world is a threat that needs to be averted.
Consider the Aztecs, who sustained the sun god Huitzilopochtli with sacrificed blood
so he could prevent the moon from eating the earth,
or the ancient Egyptians, who prayed against Apophis and his nightly attempts to eat the sun.
But sometimes the end of the world is a little less preventable and a little more inevitable.
Some societies have a cyclic thing where the world ends a lot.
The Navajo belief system involved a series of five worlds,
each one becoming sequentially uninhabitable,
causing the residents to climb up to the next world.
And the pre-Aztec Nahua tradition held that there had been four worlds and suns before the current one,
each one being destroyed in its own unique way.
My favorite was the one where it rained jaguars.
And then there's the Norse, where in the neverending fight party that is the mythology,
there's no cyclic destruction or continuous threats.
There's just Ragnarok!
The prophesied, inevitable, incredibly heavy metal upcoming apocalypse you've all been waiting for!
So let's take a look at how that mess is supposed to go down!
Now, Ragnarok gets talked about pretty frequently in the Poetic and Prose Edda,
and while the exact timeline of events is a little unclear,
we can gather a lot from the scattered references in the text,
and hopefully piece together what exactly this album cover is supposed to look like.
The general agreement is that the first sign of the apocalypse is Fimbulvetr,
three consecutive winters that throw Midgard into chaos,
leading to an age of battle epically described as:
"an Axe Age, a Sword Age, a Wind Age, a Wolf Age."
Then Yggdrasil, the world tree, starts shaking, causing Fenrir to break his chains,
and meanwhile in the ocean, Jörmungandr does a little wiggle,
which causes Naglfar, the boat made of dead man's fingernails,
to break its moorings and set sail for Vígríðr with an army on board.
In fact, it seems like Vígríðr is the place to be,
as the frost giant King Hrym, the fire jotun Surtr, and the entire population of Muspelheim
all start advancing towards it in preparation for the final battle.
At some point in all this, the Sun and Moon are eaten, possibly by Fenrir, definitely by a wolf of some variety.
Also Loki is there somehow, although how exactly he escapes his underground snake prison is unclear.
I guess it's good to leave some surprise.
Recognizing that junk is getting real on Midgard,
Heimdall blows the Gjallarhorn to alert the Aesir that it's about to go down.
Odin chats with Mimir's severed head for a bit,
probably looking for some last-minute advice,
and then it's Ragnarok o'clock and time for the final battle.
The gates of Valhalla open and the Einherjar stream out to battle,
and quick sidenote:
Fun Fact, Valhalla is the most famous warrior afterlife,
but traditionally after a battle, Freya and Odin split the souls of dead warriors,
with half going to Freya's realm of Folkvangr, and the other half to Valhalla.
It's not explicit that the warriors in Folkvangr joined the battle, or even that Freya does,
but it wouldn't really make sense for them not to.
Freya is one of only five Norse war gods.
Anyway, starting Ragnarok off on a high note, Odin is eaten by Fenrir,
but is avenged shortly thereafter when his son Vídar kills Fenrir.
Thor and Jörmungandr kick the crap out of each other for a while,
and while Thor wins, he doesn't get to celebrate for very long, as he dies after taking nine steps away.
Freyr fights Surtr and loses, because he doesn't have his sword,
which, we may recall, he gave to his servant way back when he was trying to court Gerðr.
Tyr fights this big scary dog named Garmr, and they wind up killing each other.
Loki and Heimdall joined the mutually assured destruction party by also killing each other,
and the fight winds down in a chill way with Surtr raising the earth,
which subsequently sinks into the sea as stars vanish from the sky.
Some time passes.
At some point, Sol's daughter takes her place as the Sun, and the earth begins to re-emerge from the water.
The surviving Aesir reunite on the field of Iðavöllr.
Present and accounted for are Odin's son's Vali and Víðarr,
Thor's sons Magni and Móði, now wielding Mjolnir in the absence of their father,
and last but not least, Baldr and Hodr, returned from Hel none the worse for wear.
Luckily for everyone, two humans have also managed to survive:
Líf and Lífþrasir, who set about repopulating the earth.
Exactly what other gods survive Ragnarok is unclear, which isn't too surprising when we recall
that this is all fragmentary prophecies warning Odin in advance of Ragnarok, not the actual event itself.
The final consequence of Ragnarok is basically "out with the old, in with the new."
The old gods die, the old messed up humans die,
and the new generation inherits the earth to try and do it better this time.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
It's still no fun for the old gods or humans the wind up dead, but it's not like it's the end of the world.
Well, I mean, I guess technically...
♪ I hear hurricanes a-blowing ♪
♪ I know the end is coming soon ♪
♪ I fear rivers overflowing ♪
♪ I hear the voice of rage and ruin ♪
♪ Don't go around tonight ♪
♪ Because it's bound to take your life ♪
♪ There's a bad moon on the rise ♪