Ragnarök & Apocalypse, Odin & Christ

If there is one word from the Old Norse language that holds more meaning and more guttural power than any other, it is Ragnarök. The word is a combination of røk(k)r or røkkva meaning twilight, growing darkness, associated with fate, and ragna, the reign of gods, kings, ruling powers. Thus we are given Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods, or in German, Kampf der Untergehenden Götter, Battle of the Doomed Gods.

This is the great battle at the end of the world, where the the Æsir, the gods and the einherjar, Odin’s warriors selected by the Valkyries and brought to Volholl, meet their fate in the final cataclysmic war against the primordial beasts, creatures, and entities of the realms.

The broad sweep of Germanic mythology is fragmentary, scattered across poetry, runic artwork, and sagas and histories, usually written down by monks of the middle ages with no official anthology to hold the literature together in a clear canon. These stories were told around the mead hall and on the road and sea, often in specially crafted alliterative verse known as dróttkvætt meaning "court metre". This tight and flowing composition used by skalds in their grand poetry held the verses together in the minds of the listeners and made each line difficult to alter without outright breaking the structure. Within the sagas of heroes and legends and forefathers, the skalds frequently allude to and reference events and figures which were well known to the northerners of earlier ages, but which to us have since been lost to time. Germanic mythology is pieced together and woven from these thousand year old texts and from surviving runic carvings and folk traditions, and from this collection of stories and excerpts we come to learn of the events of Ragnarok. 

What we know of Ragnarok and its details is found primarily in the poem Völuspá, "The Prophecy of the Seeress" from the Codex Regius and from Hauksbók, and supplemented with details in Gylfaginning “The Beguiling of Gylfi”.

In Völuspá, a völva or seeress tells the god Odin about the events leading up to Ragnarök. Seeking a way to uncover hidden knowledge and overcome his fate, we can imagine Odin listening to this foretelling with rapt focus, but standing back so as not to betray the intensity of his desire for the vision.

Section II: The Gathering Storm

The seeress foretells that in the end times, the world will first be plagued by greed, kin-slaying, adultery and lawlessness. Then a great winter comes to the lands, which only worsens and not even summertime can unfreeze the lands. It grows so cold that most of life is killed. This is called the Fimbulwinter. It lasts for three years. Mankind and animals freeze and starve.  At the end of the fimbulwinter only a fraction of life remains alive.

After the filmbulwinter, the great wolf Fenrir is freed from his bonds and devours the female sun god sól. At the same time, the warg brother of Fenrir Vafþrúðnir leaps up to devour the male moon god máni. Waves will crash against the shore as the worldserpent Gjormungandr writhes in the deep, the seas boil and fire reaches the heavens - signaling the beginning of the end. 

The poetic richness of the language is so intense that it is best to read from the Voluspa directly.

38. A hall I saw, | far from the sun,
On Nastrond it stands, | and the doors face north,
Venom drops | through the smoke-vent down,
For around the walls | do serpents wind.

39. I saw there wading | through rivers wild
Treacherous men | and murderers too,
And workers of ill | with the wives of men;
There Nithhogg sucked | the blood of the slain,
And the wolf tore men; | would you know yet more?

40. The giantess old | in Ironwood sat,
In the east, and bore | the brood of Fenrir;
Among these one | in monster's guise
Was soon to steal | the sun from the sky.

The völva describes the monstrous wolf Fenrir breaking free from his bonds, with deep howls echoing from his cavern. The sea will rear up when Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent, writhes in fury. The ship Naglfar will set sail with giants onboard. Surtr, the lord of Muspellheim, will arrive from the south with flames enveloping his sword. The rooster crows three times to wake the einherjar, Odin’s warriors of Valholl.

41. There feeds he full | on the flesh of the dead,

And the home of the gods | he reddens with gore;

Dark grows the sun, | and in summer soon

Come mighty storms: | would you know yet more?

42. On a hill there sat, | and smote on his harp,

Eggther the joyous, | the giants' warder;

Above him the cock | in the bird-wood crowed,

Fair and red | did Fjalar stand.

43. Then to the gods | crowed Gollinkambi,

He wakes the heroes | in Othin's hall;

And beneath the earth | does another crow,

The rust-red bird | at the bars of Hel.

44. Now Garm howls loud | before Gnipahellir,

The fetters will burst, | and the wolf run free;

Much do I know, | and more can see

Of the fate of the gods, | the mighty in fight.

45. Brothers shall fight | and fell each other,

And sisters' sons | shall kinship stain;

Hard is it on earth, | with mighty whoredom;

Axe-time, sword-time, | shields are sundered,

Wind-time, wolf-time, | ere the world falls;

Nor ever shall men | each other spare.

46. Fast move the sons | of Mim, and fate

Is heard in the note | of the Gjallarhorn;

Loud blows Heimdall, | the horn is aloft,

In fear quake all | who on Hel-roads are.

47. Yggdrasil shakes, | and shiver on high

The ancient limbs, | and the giant is loose;

To the head of Mim | does Othin give heed,

But the kinsman of Surt | shall slay him soon.

50. From the east comes Hrym | with shield held high;

In giant-wrath | does the serpent writhe;

O'er the waves he twists, | and the tawny eagle

Gnaws corpses screaming; | Naglfar is loose.

Section III: The Last Battle

According to the Prose Edda, the final battle will take place on the field of Vígríðr. The gods will face invaders including the ship Naglfar, Fenrir, Surtr and a horde of jotunn which are giants. 

51. O'er the sea from the east | there sails a ship
With the people of Muspell, | at the helm stands Loki;
After the wolf | do wild men follow,
And with them the brother | of Byleist goes.

52. Surt fares from the south | with the scourge of branches,
The sun of the battle-gods | shone from his sword;
The crags are sundered, | the giant-women sink,
The dead throng Hel-way, | and heaven is cloven.

53. Now comes to Hlin | yet another hurt,
When Othin fares | to fight with the wolf,
And Beli's fair slayer | seeks out Surt,
For there must fall | the joy of Frigg.

54. Then comes Sigfather's | mighty son,
Vithar, to fight | with the foaming wolf;
In the giant's son | does he thrust his sword
Full to the heart: | his father is avenged.

55. Hither there comes | the son of Hlothyn,
The bright snake gapes | to heaven above;
. . . . . . . . . .
Against the serpent | goes Othin's son.

When the gods ride out to face these threats, Odin himself fights the giant wolf Fenrir, battling it with his spear Gungir, but the beast is too strong and too mighty. It devours Odin whole, swallowing his body. Odin’s wife Frigg suffers her second great sorrow at the loss of her husband. Odin's son Víðarr confronts Fenrir in battle and avenges his father by breaking the wolf's jaws and running his sword clear through its heart. Thor fights with the great world serpent Jormungand and manages to kill it but is poisoned by its potent venom and after staggering only nine steps, falls to the ground dead. Loki the trickster god and Heimdall slay each other in battle and the earth sinks into the sea amidst all-engulfing flames. 

Many great heroes will perish. The earth will sink into the sea. But the world will be reborn anew. 

56. In anger smites | the warder of earth,--
Forth from their homes | must all men flee;-
Nine paces fares | the son of Fjorgyn,
And, slain by the serpent, | fearless he sinks.

57. The sun turns black, | earth sinks in the sea,
The hot stars down | from heaven are whirled;
Fierce grows the steam | and the life-feeding flame,
Till fire leaps high | about heaven itself.

Section IV: Restoration

The völva reveals that afterward, the world will resurface, green and fertile again. The surviving gods will reunite, and Baldr and Hödr will return from the underworld. The sons of Thor will inherit his hammer. A new generation of humans, Líf and Lífþrasir, will repopulate the earth. And a new righteous king in a new mighty hall comes to govern all powers and lands forever after.

59. Now do I see | the earth anew
Rise all green | from the waves again;
The cataracts fall, | and the eagle flies,
And fish he catches | beneath the cliffs.

61. In wondrous beauty | once again
Shall the golden tables | stand mid the grass,
Which the gods had owned | in the days of old,

62. Then fields unsowed | bear ripened fruit,
All ills grow better, | and Baldr comes back;
Baldr and Hoth dwell | in Hropt's battle-hall,
And the mighty gods: | would you know yet more?

64. More fair than the sun, | a hall I see,
Roofed with gold, | on Gimle it stands;
There shall the righteous | rulers dwell,
And happiness ever | there shall they have.

65. There comes on high, | all power to hold,
A mighty lord, | all lands he rules. 

Several archaeological finds have been interpreted as depicting events from the norse myth of Ragnarök. The 11th century Thorwald's Cross from the Isle of Man bears an image of a warrior holding a spear downward at a wolf's mouth, while a large bird perches on his shoulder. This is considered a depiction of Odin with his raven being killed by Fenrir. On the reverse side, there is an image of Christ, illustrating the mixing of pagan and Christian symbolism during this transitional period.

The Gosforth Cross in northern England also combines pagan and Christian imagery. It includes various scenes interpreted as part of the Ragnarök story - a man battling a monstrous head, and a figure with one foot in the mouth of a beast, thought to be Vidar fighting Fenrir. Thebinding of Fenrir and other mythical themes are depicted as well.

On the early 11th century Ledberg stone from Sweden, a figure with his foot in the mouth of a four-legged beast appears below a depiction of a helmeted, unarmed man. This may represent Odin being consumed by Fenrir. The inscription on the stone bears a cryptic formula believed to have ritualistic significance. 

The Skarpåker Stone was created by a grieving father who used the same poetic meter as The Poetic Edda when memorializing his dead son. This shows how Ragnarok was seen as a fitting parallel to human loss and death at the time.

While these stone carvings are open to some interpretation, they provide tangible evidence of the Norse apocalyptic myth of Ragnarök and its significance in Viking Age culture. The myth was clearly meaningful not only as recorded in the poems, but also in the artwork of the everyday world of the Vikings.

The myth also warns about the consequences of moral decay in society. The Fimbulvetr comes after man moves away from piety and hospitality and kinship. Only the pious survivors Lif and Lifthrasir will repopulate the new purified world. Ragnarök represents an outlook on moral decline causing disaster – resolved only through punishing the wicked and renewing virtues.

Section VI: Interpretation

The Poetic Edda and Prose Edda provide first-hand accounts of Ragnarök in Old Norse poetry. As Snorri Sturluson wrote in the 13th century Prose Edda:

"High describes the binding of the wolf Fenrir by the gods...that Fenrir remains there until Ragnarök.” There, venom drops onto his face periodically from a snake placed by the jötunn Skaði. Loki is further described as being bound this way until the onset of Ragnarök.

This foretells how the gods themselves took actions that led to their doom - binding the wolf that would break free and attack them, and binding Loki whose writhing would unleash earthquakes. 

The gods march out to fight though their fates are sealed. Völuspá foretells:

"Odin is swallowed whole and alive fighting the wolf Fenrir, causing his wife Frigg her second great sorrow."

Even knowing the prophecies, the gods choose to meet their destinies with courage and honor. The mythic stage is set through both human failures and the gods' proud choices to provoke their twilight. Ragnarök dawns from seeds within the Eddas' myths themselves.

In the Poetic Edda poem Völuspá, the völva prophetess says:

"No man will have mercy on another… Brothers will fight and kill each other, sisters' children will defile kinship. It is harsh in the world, whoredom rife - an axe age, a sword age - shields are riven - a wind age, a wolf age - before the world goes headlong."

Here Ragnarök is presaged by humanity's moral dissolution in an age of conflict, lust, and vice. The world is already on a course to disaster before the prophesied events begin.

Section VII: Tolkien 

In this passage we can also clear resonance with Tolkien’s Rohirrim, who in the figure of King Theoden, before the great cavalry charge at the Battle of Pelennor Fields, shouts to his riders “spear shall be shaken, shield shall be splintered, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now, ride now, ride! Ride for ruin and the world's ending!” In Tolkien’s world we see this moment of total Ragnarok for the men of middle earth who ride out to meet their doom with northern courage.

In Tolkien’s middle earth, each age has an ultimate reckoning, destruction and renewal. The destruction of Numenor. The War of The Ring. At the time of Aaragorn, this is the Ragnarok of the third age culminating in deaths of great heroes and a renewal and rebinding of man and woman in the marriages that follow, eventually to be followed by a later apocalypse in the coming age as eluded to in the great battle-speech by Aaragorn himself. 

“A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of Men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!

As Tolkien writes in his lecture Beowulf: The Monsters and The Critics, he describes the mortality and needed fatalism of the northern gods. They are doomed to die the same as men. The Southern (Roman and Greek) pagan gods were immortal, so to Tolkien (a Christian), the Southern religion "must go forward to philosophy or relapse into anarchy”.

Tolkien goes further in discussing what constitutes Northern Courage when he writes the following.

“One of the most potent elements in that fusion is the Northern courage: the theory of courage, which is the great contribution of early Northern literature. This is not a military judgement. I am not asserting that, if the Trojans could have employed a Northern king and his companions, they would have driven Agamemnon and Achilles into the sea, more decisively than the Greek hexameter routs the alliterative line—though it is not improbable. I refer rather to the central position the creed of unyielding will holds in the North. With due reserve we may turn to the tradition of pagan imagination as it survived in Icelandic. Of English pre-Christian mythology we know practically nothing. But the fundamentally similar heroic temper of ancient England and Scandinavia cannot have been founded on (or perhaps rather, cannot have generated) mythologies divergent on this essential point. 'The Northern Gods', Ker said, 'have an exultant extravagance in their warfare which makes them more like Titans than Olympians; only they are on the right side, though it is not the side that wins. The winning side is Chaos and Unreason'—mythologically, the monsters—'but the gods, who are defeated, think that defeat no refutation.' 18 And in their war men are their chosen allies, able when heroic to share in this 'absolute resistance, perfect because without hope'. At least in this vision of the final defeat of the humane (and of the divine made in its image), and in the essential hostility of the gods and heroes on the one hand and the monsters on the other, we may suppose that pagan English and Norse imagination agreed.”

This is the secret of Martyrdom. That defeat is no refutation. That death holds a glory all its own and the manner of death is what separates glory from ignominy.

Another poem from the north atlantic which intertwines Christian and pre-christian northern european beliefs is that of Beowulf. In the essay Beowulf and The Heroic Age, the australian knight and professor of English language and literature Sir Archibald Thomas Strong writes,

“In the epoch of Beowulf a Heroic Age more wild and primitive than that of Greece is 

brought into touch with Christendom, with the Sermon on the Mount, with Catholic theology and ideas of Heaven and Hell. We see the difference, if we compare the wilder things—the folk-tale element—in Beowulf with the wilder things of Homer. Take for example the tale of Odysseus and the Cyclops —the No-man trick. Odysseus is struggling with a monstrous and wicked foe, but he is not exactly thought of as struggling with the powers of darkness. Polyphemus, by devouring his guests, acts in a way which is hateful to Zeus and the other gods: yet the Cyclops is himself god-begotten and under divine protection, and the fact that Odysseus has maimed him is a wrong which Poseidon is slow to forgive. But the gigantic foes whom Beowulf has to meet are identified with the foes of God. Grendel and the dragon are constantly referred to in language which is meant to recall the powers of darkness with which Christian men felt themselves to be encompassed. They14 are the 'inmates of Hell', 'adversaries of God', 'offspring of Cain', 'enemies of mankind'. Consequently, the matter of the main story of Beowulf, monstrous as it is, is not so far removed from common mediaeval experience as it seems to us to be from our own. ... Grendel hardly differs15 from the fiends of the pit who were always in ambush to waylay a righteous man. And so Beowulf, for all that he moves in the world of the primitive Heroic Age of the Germans, nevertheless is almost a Christian knight.”

In reading norse mythology I’m struck by many of the meta-parallels in the grand arc of the stories with the meta-narrative of Christianity. Both tell of our most ancient origins, and end with prophecy about the future and the end and rebirth of the world. By the time Snorri Sturluson wrote down these ancient stories, it is reasonable to assume a certain amount of Christianization took place in the writing in the vein of the poem Heliand, but even still I can’t help but think that, like branches on a tree, they are both remembering the same primordial truth of the world. Germanic belief in this way, never truly left far from the tree of Genesis. 

Both present a cyclic view of creation and destruction - the world is created, falls into corruption, is destroyed, and is created anew. Genesis depicts the Garden of Eden followed by the Flood, while Ragnarök sees the world reborn after fiery destruction.

Moral failings of humans play a key role in both myths. In Genesis, humanity's sins unleash God's wrath via the Flood. In Ragnarök, moral decay precedes the apocalypse with greed, adultery and kin-slaying. Both link apocalypse to moral decline.

A new righteous human world emerges after the old sinful world perishes. Noah and his family survive the Flood, while Lif and Lifthrasir repopulate the earth after Ragnarök. Again both associate apocalypse with human redemption.

Judgement Day in Christian eschatology finds echoes in the epic battles of Ragnarök where gods confront evil forces and meet their destined fates, resulting in renewal.

Figures like Surtr and Fenrir can be seen as demonic adversaries of the gods, similar to Antichrist traditions which embellished upon Biblical apocalypse stories.

The binding of Loki leading to earthquakes parallels Revelation's prophecy that Satan would be bound and cast into prison before being released prior to Armageddon.

Section VIII: Spenglerian Cycles

An unofficial student of Nietzsche, German philosopher Oswald Spengler’s philosophy of civilizational decline resonates with the tragic yet heroic themes in Tolkien's Middle Earth, the Book of Revelation, and Norse Ragnarök. 

Like the Norse gods fated for destruction at Ragnarök, Spengler saw cultures as organic entities that experience a birth, maturation, and eventual decay. Tolkien’s elves epitomize this in their bittersweet passing from Middle Earth. Revelation and Ragnarök likewise depict civilizations facing apocalyptic ends with corrupting forces overtaking wisdom and purity built over generations.

Spengler’s pessimism aligns with the Norse view of an inevitable decline from a heroic age into chaos and conflict preceding Ragnarök. Tolkien’s works convey this arc from glory faded into twilight with cyclical civilizational deaths and rebirths along the span of history. Revelation degenerates from a sinless world into corruption and all manor of human failings, before wrathful judgment and the glorious return of Christ. Each sees the apocalypse as the inevitable culmination of civilizational deterioration.

Yet within this bleak outlook lie sparks of heroism and redemption. The greater the challenge and darker the night, the greater the courage. The Norse gods charge out of Valholl in the bleak night of Ragnarök. After even the very sun and moon of the sky are devoured and extinguished, the Aesir and einherjar and valkyries still fight side by side. Tolkien’s flawed yet steadfast characters like Aragorn and Boromir epitomize this struggle. In Revelation, the faithful withstand corruption even with persecution.

Spengler saw cultures as undergoing a cyclical journey of growth and decay, writing "I see, in place of that empty figment of one linear history...the drama of a number of mighty Cultures, each springing with primitive strength from the soil of a mother region to which it remains firmly bound throughout its whole life-cycle." This aligns with the Norse view of Asgard's doomed arc from origins to fiery destruction at Ragnarök. Tolkien's realms like Gondor poetically reflect "the drama of...Cultures" rising and falling across Middle Earth's history. 

Spengler claimed "Every Culture passes through the age-phases of the individual man. Each has its childhood, youth, manhood and old age.” Tolkien explored this life cycle in numinous races like the elves who transition from magic to mundanity as their civilization fades. The Norse gods' twilight transition from triumph to fated tragedy echoes cultures entering their "old age" phase in Spengler's framework.

When a culture decays into "mere civilization" Spengler argued it becomes characterized by “imperialism and mass society”—again reflected in Revelation's vision of Babylon's totalizing and industrial scale idolatry and oppression, sounding Ragnarök's horn of late-phase cultural corruption.

In Spengler’s writings we find the great sweep of cultures rising and falling that Tolkien mythologized in Middle Earth’s defeated kingdoms, that Norse mythology tells of through Asgard and Midgard’s destruction, and that Revelation prophecies via Babylon’s judgment. 

Section IX: The Experience of Northern Courage

So if Ragnarök is inescapable even for the gods, how are we to face it?

On The Andrew Huberman Podcast, author Robert Greene recounts a story in his new book.

https://youtu.be/50BZQRT1dAg?t=10936 (at 3 hours, 2 minutes)

"...It has vast philosophical implications... You can almost think of it like barometric pressure when necessity is pressing in on you, like your back is against the wall... You find energy in there that you never believed before. William James talks about this when he talks about getting a second wind... When you feel like your life's in danger, suddenly you can leap over things that you never could leap over before. Sun Tzu says put an army on death ground and it will fight... Meaning put an army with its back to the ocean or a back to the mountain and it's either win or die, they're going to fight ten times harder. You're going to find the energy in you that you normally lack when death is facing you in the face, or urgency, or deadlines, or people pressing in on you. When that barometric pressure loosens up and there's none of it, you think you have all the time in the world, you get nothing done... I'm 23, I've got all these years ahead of me, I'm going to figure it out, right? ...No, you don't. That pressure now is gone and you're wasting time... You're doing all sorts of things that aren't leading to any kind of skill... You need to put yourself on death ground, you need to feel that barometric pressure, which is the actual reality... You could die tomorrow, you could have a stroke tomorrow, you could be fired tomorrow, everything could fall apart. You need to have that sense of urgency now because that's the reality. You're fooling yourself by thinking you have all of this time... When you feel that pressure, suddenly you can move mountains... Neurologically, everything clicks in... People who've had that experience, where they've felt like the ship was going under and they better get their act together and survive, they talk about all these physical processes... I have a story in my new book... about a mountain climber who was climbing this mountain by himself... A storm was coming, and he had to get down... He suddenly fell and cut his leg open massively... He broke all these bones and he was going to die... He was on a ledge, it was getting dark, and storm clouds were massing... This was in the Rocky Mountains, he was alone... Suddenly he managed to get up on his two feet... All of this energy, all this adrenaline started flowing in him... He said he was like a mountain goat... He jumped, he was able to get down to another ledge... He got out of it, and for the next 20 years he was haunted by how did that happen. I want that feeling again because it was actually the most ecstatic feeling. I had energy that I never suspected in myself."

Section X: Nietzsche, Spengler, Tolkien, and Carlyle 

Nietzsche proposed that comprehending existence as endless recurrence is humanity's heaviest burden. But he called for boldly embracing and loving one's fate in this cycle - amor fati. The Norse gods epitomize this spirit by facing Ragnarök's destructive prophecy with courage and nobility. Though their doom is foretold, they march to battle with heads held high, sanctifying their final moments through deed and valor.

Nietzsche defined amor fati as loving one's fate and "wanting nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity."

The Gospels present Christ's life, death, and resurrection as the pivotal cycle transforming all history. His miraculous birth signals a new era, while his crucifixion heralds the end times foretold in Revelation. As Spengler wrote, "death following life, rigidity following expansion"- Christ's passion represents the decay of one age giving birth to another.

Yet cyclical rebirth emerges after death's darkest hour. Christ returns from the tomb as Scripture rises from Ragnarök's ashes - a story rejuvenated across the epochs to shape civilization anew.

This ecstatic fatalism is embodied throughout nordic literature, such as in verse 78 of Hávamál which extolls the value of embracing glory and heroic death. 

“Cattle die, and kinsmen die,

And so one dies one's self;

One thing now, that never dies,

The fame of a dead man's deeds.”

-Hávamál v78,

In the open forum of 1944 Oxford talk, C.S. Lewis on the subject of Ragnarok, responded to a student, saying, “We have the Twilight of the Gods. All this time, silently, unceasingly, out of all reach of human power, Nature, the old enemy, has been steadily gnawing away. The sun will cool — all suns will cool — the whole universe will run down. Life (every form of life) will be banished, without hope of return, from every inch of infinite space. All ends in nothingness, and “universal darkness covers all.”

The pattern of the myth thus becomes one of the noblest we can conceive. It is the pattern of many Elizabethan tragedies, where the protagonist’s career can be represented by a slowly ascending and then rapidly falling curve, with its highest point in Act IV. You see him climbing up and up, then blazing in his bright meridian, then finally overwhelmed in ruin.”

Oswald Spengler also writes in The Decline of The West Volume I on The Norsemen that, 

“It was the spirit of the Vikings and the Hansa, as of those dim peoples, so unlike the Hellenes with their domestic funerary urns, who heaped up great barrows as memorials of the lonely soul on the wide plains. It was the spirit of those who sent their dead kings to sea in their burning ships, thrilling manifests of their dark yearning for the boundless. The spirit of the Norsemen drove their cockleboats - in the Tenth Century that heralded the Faustian birth - to the coasts of America.”

“The will-to-power (to use Nietzsche's great formula) that from the earliest Gothic of the Eddas, the Cathedrals and Crusades, and even from the old conquering Goths and Vikings, has distinguished the attitude of the Northern soul to its world, appears also in the sense-transcending energy”

“What the myth of Gotterdammerung signified of old, the irreligious form of it, the theory of Entropy, signifies to-day - world's end as completion of an inwardly necessary evolution.”

“Lastly, consider Western tragedy; observe how the same feeling leads it to prefer .. historical" material - meaning thereby not so much demonstrably actual or even possible, but remote and crusted subjects. That which the Faustian soul wanted, and must have, could not be expressed by any event of purely momentary meaning, lacking in distance of time or place, or by a tragic art of the Classical kind, or by a timeless myth. Our tragedies, consequently, are tragedies of the past and of the future - the latter category, in which men yet to be are shown as carriers of a Destiny, is represented in a certain sense by "Faust," "Peer Gynt" and the "Gotterdammerung."

-Spengler Decline of the West Volume I: Form and Actuality

“In Norse mythology, things are quite different. The gods are very much within time, and though they are powerful, strange, and enigmatic like the Greek gods, they are a lot more human. For, like mortals, they are not in control, and they are in constant conflict with the powers of evil. In this war against the monsters, the gods must ally themselves with men. Men who are killed in battle go to Valhalla. There they prepare for war and drink beer with the gods. At Ragnarök, they fight alongside Odin, Thor, Tyr, and the other gods of Ásgard against the giants, and monsters such as the World Serpent and the Fenrir Wolf. What makes this wild Norse world so distinct is that this final battle is a battle that the gods and men have been foretold to lose. The winning side is Chaos and Unreason, the giants and the monsters. The gods are doomed with their allies to death. Thor, who is killed by the World Serpent, and Odin, who is killed by the Fenrir Wolf, cannot escape death any more than mortal man. Nevertheless, the gods, who know that they will be defeated, do not see certain defeat as a reason to give up, to stop fighting. And likewise, men, their chosen allies in this war, can share in this perfect resistance when acting heroically—a resistance that is perfect because it is without hope.” 

The Norse gods and men are fighting to the last whether they live or die they will fight. Tolkien writes that Norse myth gave

“the monsters in the centre, gave them Victory but no honour, and found a potent but terrible solution in naked will and courage.”

 –J.R.R. Tolkien The Monsters and the Critics.

In describing the norse gods from a Scottish and Northern European perspective, Thomas Carlyle says, “Spiritually as well as bodily these men are our progenitors.”

He says in Lecture I: The Hero as Divinity, from Heroes and Hero Worship,

“I take this to have been the soul of the whole Norse Belief. They understood in their heart that it was indispensable to be brave …

It is an everlasting duty, valid in our day as in that, the duty of being brave. 

Valor is still value. The first duty for a man is still that of subduing Fear. We must get rid of Fear; we cannot act at all till then. 

A man's acts are slavish, not true but specious; his very thoughts are false, he thinks too as a slave and coward, till he have got Fear under his feet. 

A man shall and must be valiant; he must march forward, and quit himself like a man,—trusting imperturbably in the appointment and choice of the upper Powers; and, on the whole, not fear at all.

Now and always, the completeness of his victory over Fear will determine how much of a man he is.”

“eight hundred years ago the Norwegians were still worshippers of Odin. It is interesting also as the creed of our fathers; the men whose blood still runs in our veins, whom doubtless we still resemble in so many ways. Strange: they did believe that, while we believe so differently. Let us look a little at this poor Norse creed, for many reasons. We have tolerable means to do it; for there is another point of interest in these Scandinavian mythologies: that they have been preserved so well.”

“...what the essence of Scandinavian and indeed of all Paganism is: a recognition of the forces of Nature as godlike, stupendous, personal Agencies,—as Gods and Demons. Not inconceivable to us. It is the infant Thought of man opening itself, with awe and wonder, on this ever-stupendous Universe. To me there is in the Norse system something very genuine, very great and manlike. A broad simplicity, rusticity, so very different from the light gracefulness of the old Greek Paganism, distinguishes this Scandinavian System.”

Thomas Carlyle - “Lecture I: The hero as divinity. Odin. Paganism: Scandinavian Mythology.”

[May 5, 1840.]

Thomas Carlyle refers to Odin as “...the First Norse Thinker…” and says, “there is this huge Shadow of him which still projects itself over the whole History of his People… What this Odin saw into, and taught with his runes and his rhymes, the whole Teutonic People laid to heart and carried forward. His way of thought became their way of thought:—such, under new conditions, is the history of every great thinker still. In gigantic confused lineaments, like some enormous camera-obscure shadow thrown upwards from the dead deeps of the Past, and covering the whole Northern Heaven, is not that Scandinavian Mythology in some sort the Portraiture of this man Odin? “

In the chapter Nature-Knowledge in Form and Actuality, Oswald Spengler criticizes the older interpretations of Faustian mythology, which separated Catholic and Northern-Heathen elements as being opposed. Spengler instead asserts that the transformation of Christian ideas and consolidation of pagan cults were two sides of the same creative act.

“Only in this way can we understand the immense wealth of religious intuitive creations that fills the three centuries of the Imperial Age in Germany.

What came into existence then was the Faustian mythology. Hitherto , owing

to religious and learned preconceptions , either the Catholic element has been

treated to the exclusion of the Northern-Heathen or vice versa, and consequently

we have been blind to the breadth and the unity of this form-world. In reality there is no such difference. The deep change of meaning in the Christian circle

of ideas is identical, as a creative act , with the consolidation of the old heathen

cults of the Migrations . It was in this age that the folk-lore of Western Europe

became an entirety; if the bulk of its material was far older, and if, far later

again, it came to be linked with new outer experiences and enriched by more

conscious treatment, yet it was then and neither earlier nor later that it was

vitalized with its symbolic meaning. To this lore belong the great God-legends of the Edda and many motives in the gospel- poetry of learned monks ;

the German hero- tales of Siegfried and Gudrun, Dietrich and Wayland; the

vast wealth of chivalry-tales , derived from ancient Celtic fables, that was

simultaneously coming to harvest on French soil , concerning King Arthur and

the Round Table, the Holy Grail , Tristan, Percival and Roland. And with these

are to be counted - beside the spiritual transvaluation, unremarked but all the

deeper for that, of the Passion-Story- the Catholic hagiology of which the

richest floraison was in the 10th and 11th Centuries and which produced the

Lives of the Virgin and the histories of SS. Roch, Sebald, Severin, Francis,

Bernard, Odilia. The Legenda Aurea was composed about 1250 — this was the

blossoming-time of courtly epic and Icelandic skald-poetry alike .

He emphasizes the wholeness of Western European folklore and even though its content came from various sources and evolved over time, he uses these examples of Germanic gods and legends and heroes and chivalric stories to point to a deeper unity with the simultaneous flowering of courtly epic and Icelandic poetry around 1250.

Here he also mentions Catholic hagiology and the connection between myths like Valhalla and Ragnarok with Christian equivalents like Muspilli. Spengler takes the radical position that the internal unity and symbolic meaning of Faustian myth, stating that figures like Siegfried, Baldur, and Christ represent one underlying archetype.

“The great Valhalla Gods of the North and the mythic group of the "Fourteen Helpers" in South Germany are contemporary, and by the side of Ragnarok the Twilight of the Gods. In the Voluspa we have a Christian form in the South German Muspilli. This great myth develops, like heroic poetry at the climax of the' early Culture. They both belong to the two primary estates. priesthood and nobility; they are at home in the cathedral and the castle and not in the village below where amongst the people the simple saga-world lives on for centuries called "fairy-tale," "popular beliefs" or "superstition" and yet inseparable from the world of high centemplation. Nowhere is the final meaning of these religious creations more clearly indicated than in the history of Valhalla. It was not an original German idea and even the tribes of the Migrations were totally without it. It took shape just at this time, instantly and as an inward necessity, in the consciousness of the peoples newly-arisen on the soil of the West. Thus it is contemporary with Olympus, which we know from the Homeric epos and which is as little Mycenaean as Valhalla is German in origin. Moveover, it is only for the two higher estates that Valhalla emerges from the notion of Hel; in the beliefs of the people Hel remained the realm of the dead. The deep inward unity of this Faustian world of myth and saga and the complete congruence of its expression-symbolism has never hitherto been realized, and yet Siegfried, Baldur, Roland, Christ the King in the Heliand.. are different names for one and the same figure. 

Valhalla and Avalon, the Round Table and the communion of the Grail-templars, Mary, Frigga and Frau Holle mean the same. On the other hand, the external provenance of the material motives and elements, on which mythological research has wasted an excessive zeal, is a matter of which the importance does not go deeper than the surface. As to the meaning of a myth, its provenance proves nothing. 

The .. numen" itself, the primary form of the world-feeling, is a pure, necessary and unconscious creation, and it is not transferable. What one people takes over from another - in .. conversion" or in admiring imitation - is a name, dress and mask for its own feeling, never the feeling of that other. 

The old Celtic and old Germanic myth-motives have to be treated, like the repertory of Classical forms possessed by the learned monk, and like the entire body of Christian-Eastern faith taken over by the Western Church, simply as the material out of which the Faustian soul in these centuries created a mythic architecture of its own. It mattered little whether the persons through whose minds and mouths the myth came to life were individual skalds, missionaries, priests or .. the people," nor did the circumstance that the Christian ideas dictated its forms affect the inward independence of that which had come to life.”

-Spengler Decline of The West - Chapter Nature-Knowledge - The Decline of The West Volume I Form and Actuality

Section XI: Odin & Christ

There is great value in examining how the gods face their end.

Odin has his Valkyries seek out the most noble and brave and heroic men from across midgard to gather them together in Valhöll where they train and feast and celebrate, awaiting the day of battle. So Odin always has the end pursuit in mind, he never loses sight of the cosmic battle to come. Odin embodies cunning, wisdom, and foresight - always planning for the long term battle ahead and the great winter war that he knows is coming. He listens to his two ravens Huginn and Muninn who scout the skies and report to his ears. And to this end he is setting in motion plans that are measured across generations. In our time, in a Spenglerian autumn or winter age, when subtlety, long term vision, and preparation are most needed, an Odinnic mindset is more valuable than ever.

Yet Odin's tragic weakness is that even his mighty gifts cannot surmount death itself. Even Odin, for as mighty and wise and far-sighted as he may be, is ultimately devoured by Fenrir (if the völva is to be believed). Christ died as well, just as the Germanic gods died, but Christ won ultimate victory through his death and rose again. So in this way, Christ embodies northern courage but he also embodies something that Odin is seeking. He embodies hope that we may be reborn and live with him after the fires and drowning of Ragnarök, after Apocalypse, in the new Miðgarðr the new restored middle earth where a mighty and righteous king reigns for eternity. In this way we can see Odin trying to learn the knowledge of Christ and going to great lengths to discover the truth of what it will take to face Ragnarok, much as the Greek Philosophers, and Plato in particular, were seeking truth and rediscovering God through philosophy. 

C.S. Lewis writes in mere Christianity, 

“There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it.”

-Mere Christianity page 176

But Odin tries to survive Ragnarök without being devoured by darkness by using the logic of the old world. He tries to fight his way into the next world using spear and armies and tactics, and although those are valuable, what is ultimately needed most is self sacrificial love. Odin must be willing to lay down his own life for the love of his friends and the coming King.

Matthew 16:25: “For whosoever would save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it”

This is the path of the Christian Martyr. The heroic path of self-sacrifice as exemplified by Christ’s Passion. As Our Lord says, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” 

Thus Odin must embrace the courage of martyrdom that he demands of his Einherjar and must die for Christ if he is to find true life after Ragnarok. 

Christ shows this narrow way, this path through a narrow ravine to move through death into resurrection.

Reading Stanza 64 of Voluspa, I’m struck by the connection to Chapter 19 of The Book of Revelation.

64. More fair than the sun, | a hall I see,

Roofed with gold, | on Gimle it stands;

There shall the righteous | rulers dwell,

And happiness ever | there shall they have.

65. There comes on high, | all power to hold,

A mighty lord, | all lands he rules.

Revelation 19:11,
“Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. 12His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. 13He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. 14And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. 15Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. 16And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written:

KING OF KINGS AND

LORD OF LORDS.” 

“Has he (Odin) not solved for them the sphinx-enigma of this Universe; given assurance to them of their own destiny there? By him they know now what they have to do here, what to look for hereafter. Existence has become articulate, melodious by him; he first has made Life alive!—We may call this Odin, the origin of Norse Mythology” - Carlyle Heroes and Hero Worship

In some sense you could even see Odin as a John the Baptist figure, preparing the way in the north for Christ’s arrival by aligning the northern soul towards the transcendent, heroic, eternal father.

This tradition, more of reconciliation than syncretism, is also affirmed by The Catholic Church in Nostra Aetate, in which Pope Paul VI writes, 

“Men expect from the various religions answers to the unsolved riddles of the human condition, which today, even as in former times, deeply stir the hearts of men: What is man? What is the meaning, the aim of our life? What is moral good, what is sin? Whence suffering and what purpose does it serve? Which is the road to true happiness? What are death, judgment and retribution after death? What, finally, is that ultimate inexpressible mystery which encompasses our existence: whence do we come, and where are we going?

From ancient times down to the present, there is found among various peoples a certain perception of that hidden power which hovers over the course of things and over the events of human history; at times some indeed have come to the recognition of a Supreme Being, or even of a Father. This perception and recognition penetrates their lives with a profound religious sense.

Religions, however, that are bound up with an advanced culture have struggled to answer the same questions by means of more refined concepts and a more developed language.. The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.(4)”

So we should emulate Odin's strategic intelligence, his ability to rally warriors under his banner and in his great hall, which are needed in the wars ahead. But we must transcend these traits with Christ's call for martyrdom, for total self sacrifice if we are to attain spiritual victory and victory over mortality. Like Christ, we should lead by selfless love rather than seeking domination. As Christ says in John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” 

C.S. Lewis in his 1942 Essay First and Second things, writes about Odin and the germanic gods, saying, 

“What business have people who call might right to worship Odin? The whole point about Odin was that he had the right but not the might. The point about Norse religion was that it alone of all mythologies told men to serve gods who were admittedly fighting with their backs to the wall and would certainly be defeated in the end. ‘I am off to die with Odin’ said the rover in Stevenson’s fable, thus proving that Stevenson understood something about the Nordic spirit… The gods will fall. The wisdom of Odin, the humourous courage of Thor (Thor was something of a Yorkshireman) and the beauty of Balder, will all be smashed eventually by the realpolitik of the stupid giants and misshapen trolls. But that does not in the least alter the allegiance of any free man. Hence, as we should expect, real Germanic poetry is all about heroic stands, and fighting against hopeless odds.”

— C. S. Lewis, First and Second Things

Christ brings us through Ragnarok to the new reborn Midgard. Christ’s story arc answers Ragnarök's unsolved riddle - how to pass through death into new life. He represents the next phase of heroism beyond Odin's strength and cunning. In Christ, the stories of Odin and all mythic heroes can find their ultimate meaning and baptism. In this way, the stories of the pagan gods are not separate from stories of Christianity in some separate canon, just as the stories of Rome are not separate from the stories of Gaul and Germany and Greece. They are playing out in history and around us even today.

It could be that the groundwork of this syncretism was already laid out by Snorri and the writers of the middle ages, but it is also likely that many of these parallels and connections exist naturally as they are descended from a singular primordial truth. Germanic mythology never strayed as far from the root as other religious traditions, keeping in itself much of the same core spiritual truth, preparing itself even in a subliminal way for the arrival of Christ to complete its story of Ragnarok.