Norse mythology is often described as bleak. Its gods are doomed; its greatest heroes die fighting; the world itself ends in fire and flood. But the story does not end with Ragnarök. In the final stanzas of the Völuspá, the seeress who has described the destruction of the cosmos looks again — and sees the earth rising out of the sea, green and fresh, with waterfalls pouring from the mountains and an eagle hunting fish. A few gods return. Two humans emerge from hiding. And a new age begins.
This vision of renewal is one of the most striking and debated passages in Norse literature. Is it an ancient pagan belief, a sign of Christian influence, or something of both?
The Earth Rises Again
The Völuspá describes it in a famous stanza:
She sees rising up a second time
the earth from the ocean, green again;
the waterfalls plunge, an eagle soars above,
hunting fish along the mountain.
Snorri Sturluson, following the poem in the Gylfaginning, adds that “the earth will shoot up out of the sea and be green and fair. Crops will grow there that were never sown.”
The image is the exact reverse of the destruction. At Ragnarök the earth sank into the sea; now it rises. The sun was swallowed; now there is light. The fields that were scorched now bear crops without labour — a return to a golden age before toil.
The Surviving Gods
Not all the gods die at Ragnarök. According to the Völuspá, the Vafþrúðnismál, and Snorri, the survivors include:
- Víðarr, the silent son of Odin, who avenged his father by killing Fenrir.
- Váli, the son of Odin born to avenge Baldr.
- Móði and Magni, the sons of Thor, who inherit their father’s hammer Mjölnir. Magni, whose name means “strength,” had shown his power as a baby of three nights by lifting the leg of a dead giant off his father.
- Baldr and Höðr, who return from the realm of Hel. The god killed by mistletoe and his blind, deceived brother come back reconciled.
- Hœnir, an old and mysterious god, who takes up the role of priest and chooses the lots of divination.
The Vafþrúðnismál says that Víðarr and Váli will live in the holy places of the gods “when Surtr’s fire is quenched,” and that Móði and Magni will have Mjölnir “when Vingnir [Thor] ceases fighting.”
The Golden Game Pieces
The surviving gods gather on Iðavöllr, the plain where the gods first met at the beginning of time, where Asgard once stood. They talk together and remember the great events of the past: the World Serpent, the wolf Fenrir, and the ancient runes of Odin.
Then they find, lying in the grass, golden game pieces (gullnar töflur) — the gaming pieces that the gods had played with in the golden age at the dawn of the world. The Völuspá says: “There will be found again in the grass the wonderful golden game pieces, which they had owned in days of old.”
The image is quietly moving. The golden age of the gods was a time of play. After the catastrophe, the survivors find the tokens of that lost innocence lying in the new grass, as if the game can begin again.
Líf and Lífþrasir
What of humanity? According to the Vafþrúðnismál, two humans survive the fire by hiding in Hoddmímis holt, “Hoddmimir’s wood” — often understood to be the world-tree Yggdrasil itself or a grove near it. Their names are Líf (“life”) and Lífþrasir (“one striving for life”). They live on the morning dew, and from them come the new generations of humankind.
This is the Norse counterpart to Noah and his family, or Deucalion and Pyrrha in Greek myth: a pair of survivors who repopulate a renewed world.
A New Sun
The sun was swallowed by the wolf Sköll at Ragnarök. But the Vafþrúðnismál says that before she was devoured, the sun gave birth to a daughter “no less fair than she,” who will ride her mother’s path when the gods have died. So the new world has a new sun.
Gimlé and Náströnd
The Völuspá also describes two dwelling places in the new world, one blessed and one damned.
Gimlé is a hall “fairer than the sun, thatched with gold,” where “the righteous people will live and enjoy delight for all ages.” Snorri places it in the southernmost part of heaven and says it will survive the destruction.
Náströnd, “corpse-shore,” is a hall far from the sun, with doors facing north. Its walls are woven of the spines of serpents, whose venom pours inside to form rivers. There, the seeress sees oath-breakers, murderers, and seducers of other men’s wives wading through the poisonous streams, while the dragon Níðhöggr sucks the corpses of the dead.
The Mighty One
One of the most controversial stanzas appears only in one manuscript version of the Völuspá, the Hauksbók:
Then comes the mighty one to the judgement of the powers,
strong, from above, he who rules over all.
Who is this “mighty one”? Many scholars have seen him as a reference to Christ coming in judgement, inserted into the poem by a Christian poet or scribe. Others have argued he is a pagan figure, perhaps a new supreme god. The stanza’s absence from the older Codex Regius manuscript suggests it may have been added later.
The Dragon Returns
The poem ends on a strangely ominous note. After the vision of the new world, the seeress sees one more thing:
There comes the dark dragon flying,
the shining serpent, up from Niðafjöll;
he carries corpses in his feathers,
Níðhöggr, flying over the plain.
Now she will sink.
Is this the dragon of death still at large in the new world? Or a last look back at the old one? The seeress sinks back into the earth, and the poem closes without resolving the question.
Cyclical or Linear?
Scholars disagree about whether Norse mythology imagined time as a single line — creation, fall, destruction, and a final renewal — or as an endless cycle of destruction and rebirth. The Völuspá’s picture of the earth rising “a second time” (öðru sinni) could support either reading.
- The Christian reading. The renewal of the world, the righteous in a golden hall, the damned in a hall of serpents, and the coming of a “mighty one” all resemble Christian teachings about the Last Judgement and the New Jerusalem. The Völuspá was composed close to the time of Iceland’s conversion in 1000 CE, and its poet may have been influenced by Christian ideas.
- The pagan reading. Other scholars point to parallels in Indo-European tradition, especially the Iranian idea of the Frashokereti, the final renovation of the world, and the Hindu cycles of creation and destruction. They argue that a myth of destruction and renewal is older than Christianity.
The most likely answer is that the poem draws on both: a genuinely pagan vision of cosmic destruction, told by a poet living in a world where the new religion was arriving.
Hope After the End
Whatever its origins, the vision of renewal changes the meaning of Ragnarök. The gods fight a battle they cannot win, and die. But their deaths are not meaningless. The world that follows is cleaner and brighter, free of the monsters and the broken oaths of the old. Baldr, the good god who was powerless in the old world, returns. Thor’s sons carry his hammer. And two humans, sheltered in the heart of the tree, walk out into a morning washed by dew.
Last reviewed: September 2026.