Most mythologies tell of how the world began. The Norse told, with unusual power and detail, of how it would end. Ragnarök — “the doom of the gods” or “the fate of the powers” — is the final catastrophe of Norse mythology: a cosmic battle in which the gods and their enemies destroy each other, the sun and moon are devoured, the earth sinks into the sea, and fire consumes everything. The gods know it is coming. They cannot prevent it. They prepare for it anyway, gathering the bravest of the human dead in Valhalla to fight on the last day.
Yet Ragnarök is not quite the end. From the drowned world a new earth rises, green and fair, where a few gods and two humans survive to begin again.
The Name
The Old Norse word Ragnarök combines regin, “the gods” or “the ruling powers,” and rök, “fate,” “destiny,” or “final end.” In some sources it appears as Ragnarøkkr, “the twilight of the gods,” from røkkr, “twilight” — the form that Richard Wagner translated into German as Götterdämmerung. Both readings capture the same idea: the gods’ destined end.
The Sources
The two main sources are:
- The Völuspá (“The Prophecy of the Seeress”), the first poem of the Poetic Edda, in which a seeress raised from the dead describes to Odin the creation of the world and its end. Composed in the late tenth or early eleventh century, around the time of Iceland’s conversion to Christianity, it is the most powerful poem in Old Norse.
- The Gylfaginning section of Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda (c. 1220), which weaves the Völuspá together with the Eddic poems Vafþrúðnismál and Grímnismál into a continuous narrative.
Scenes from Ragnarök also appear on Viking-Age carved stones such as the Gosforth Cross in Cumbria and Thorwald’s Cross on the Isle of Man.
The Road to Ragnarök
The seeds of Ragnarök are sown throughout the mythology. The gods break oaths — most gravely when they cheat the giant who built the walls of Asgard. They bind Fenrir with a trick (see Tyr and Fenrir). They cast Jörmungandr into the sea and Hel into the underworld. And above all, Baldr, the best and brightest of the gods, is killed by the scheming of Loki (see The Death of Baldr). After that, Loki is bound in a cave, and the signs of the end begin.
The Signs
The Fimbulwinter. First comes the Fimbulvetr, “the mighty winter”: three winters in a row with no summer between them. Snow drives from every direction; there are hard frosts and biting winds, and the sun gives no warmth.
The age of strife. Before or during the winter come three years of war across the world. The Völuspá describes the moral collapse:
Brothers will fight and kill each other,
sisters’ children will break the bonds of kinship.
Hard it is in the world — great whoredom,
an axe age, a sword age, shields are cloven,
a wind age, a wolf age, before the world falls.
No man will spare another.
The devouring of the sun and moon. The wolf Sköll, who has chased the sun across the sky since the beginning of time, catches it and swallows it. His brother Hati swallows the moon. The stars fall from the sky.
The earthquake. The earth and mountains shake so violently that trees are uprooted, cliffs collapse, and every fetter and bond breaks.
The Monsters Break Free
With the bonds broken, the enemies of the gods are released.
- Fenrir, the great wolf, breaks free of Gleipnir. He advances with his jaws gaping from earth to sky, fire blazing from his eyes and nostrils.
- Jörmungandr, the World Serpent, rises from the ocean in a giant’s fury, flooding the land and spraying poison over the sky and sea.
- Loki breaks free from his cave and steers the ship Naglfar, made from the untrimmed nails of the dead, carrying the hosts of Hel.
- The frost giant Hrym steers another ship from the east, carrying the frost giants.
- Surtr, the fire giant, rides out from Muspelheim at the head of the sons of Muspell, with a flaming sword that shines brighter than the sun. As they ride over Bifröst, the rainbow bridge breaks behind them.
The Horn Is Sounded
Heimdall, the watchman of the gods, stands up and blows a mighty blast on the Gjallarhorn, waking all the gods. Odin rides to Mimir’s well to seek counsel from Mimir’s head. The world-tree Yggdrasil shudders and groans, and everything in heaven and earth is afraid.
The gods arm themselves, and the einherjar — the warriors who died bravely and were gathered in Valhalla — march out of its 540 doors, eight hundred at each, to fight on the plain of Vígríðr, which stretches a hundred leagues in every direction (see Valhalla: The Hall of the Slain).
The Final Battle
The great duels of Ragnarök are fixed by fate:
- Odin and Fenrir. Odin, wearing his golden helmet and carrying his spear Gungnir, rides first against the wolf. Fenrir swallows him whole.
- Víðarr and Fenrir. Odin’s son Víðarr, the silent god, immediately avenges his father. He sets one foot in the wolf’s lower jaw — protected by a thick shoe made from all the leather scraps that humans have ever trimmed from their shoes — grasps the upper jaw, and tears the wolf apart. (In another version he stabs Fenrir through the heart.)
- Thor and Jörmungandr. Thor fights the World Serpent, his lifelong enemy, and kills it with Mjölnir. But he has been sprayed with its venom, and after staggering nine steps away, he falls dead.
- Freyr and Surtr. Freyr fights the fire giant. He falls, because he gave away his magic sword long ago to win the giantess Gerðr, and now fights with only a stag’s antler.
- Tyr and Garmr. Tyr, the one-handed god, fights the hound Garmr, and they kill each other.
- Heimdall and Loki. Heimdall and Loki, old enemies, kill each other.
The Burning of the World
When the gods have fallen, Surtr throws fire over the earth and burns the whole world. The Völuspá gives the terrible image:
The sun turns black, earth sinks into the sea,
the bright stars vanish from the sky;
steam rises up with the life-feeding fire,
high flame plays against heaven itself.
After the End
But the seeress sees further. She sees the earth rising a second time out of the sea, green again, with waterfalls and an eagle hunting fish from the mountains. The surviving gods return, and a new world begins. That renewal — and its mysteries — are described in What Happens After Ragnarök?.
Interpretations
What did Ragnarök mean to those who told it?
- A pagan apocalypse. For many scholars, Ragnarök is an authentic pre-Christian myth of cosmic destruction, related to other Indo-European end-of-the-world myths, such as the Iranian vision of a final battle between good and evil.
- Christian influence. The Völuspá was composed around the time of the conversion, and its vision of a world destroyed and renewed, with a “mighty one” coming from above to rule, may reflect Christian teaching about the Last Judgement.
- Natural catastrophe. Some have linked the Fimbulwinter to the real climate disaster of 536–540 CE, when volcanic eruptions darkened the sky over the northern hemisphere, causing years of cold, crop failure, and famine in Scandinavia. Archaeological evidence suggests a dramatic population decline there.
- Heroic ethic. Above all, Ragnarök expresses the Norse heroic ideal: fight on bravely even when defeat is certain. The gods do not win. What matters is that they fight.
Ragnarök Today
Ragnarök has become one of the best-known mythological concepts in the world. Wagner’s Götterdämmerung (1876) concludes his Ring cycle with the burning of Valhalla. The Marvel film Thor: Ragnarok (2017), the video game God of War Ragnarök (2022), and countless novels and heavy metal albums have drawn on it. The phrase “twilight of the gods” has entered many languages as a metaphor for the collapse of an old order.
Last reviewed: September 2026.