King Gylfrey (2:35)

In Asgard, I have heard many tales of creation of Odin and the gods, or Thor and Loki, and how we mortals might reach Valhalla. Now we must hear of the end of Ragnarok, which is the end of all things, of the gods, of mortals, of Asgard and of the Earth. This is how it will happen.

Matt Lewis (3:01)

Welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. This is the final part of our special series on Norse mythology. We've heard how the world began, met Odin and the pantheon of gods with Elena, got to know Thor and Loki a little bit better, and considered the effect the Norse gods had on those mortals who believed in them. If you haven't heard the previous four episodes, you can listen to them all now. But it's time to close the circle of our story. As King Gylfrey has told you, this is about the moment that will see the destruction of the nine Realms and everything within them. This is the culmination of our series, and I'll be joined by the fantastic Elena Barraclough to find out precisely how the Vikings believed it would all end, why they had an apocalypse story, and how the threat of Ragnarok affected them. And we'll also consider whether there was any hope in the story. For now, let's hear how the Vikings described the death of the gods and the destruction of the world.

King Gylfrey (4:05)

In the halls of Asgard, where I sought answers from the three kings and my guide, Gangleary, I heard the terrible tale of doom that turned my blood to ice. The king spoke of a time when Loki would be bound deep in the earth, a venomous snake above him to drip poison on his face. Loki's wife, Sigern, would stand by her husband with a bowl to catch the poison. Each time the bowl was full, Sigern would be forced to leave to empty it. In those moments, the poison would drip into Loki's face and he would writhe and thrash against the venom so that the whole earth trembles and shakes. Here, the king said Loki would remain bound until the weird of the gods. This term was one unknown to Ganglehiri and I, as we listened and he asked the kings what they could tell us of the weird of the gods. With sombre faces, the kings warned us that the story of this time was one of destruction. But they agreed to tell us what they knew. The weird of the gods will be preceded by the awful winter. There will be warnings that the awful winter is coming. There will be three winters during which battle shall rage all over the earth, when brother shall kill brother in greed. The legends say, brothers shall strive and slaughter each other. Own sisters, children shall sin together. Three days among men, many a hoarder an axe age, a sword age. Shields shall be cloven, a wind age, a wolf age ere the world totters following this, there will be three winters in a row with no summer in between them, snow will drive in from all corners of the world. Great frosts will gnaw and chill winds will bite. The sun will offer no warmth in those times. Then shall come the awful winter. A giant wolf shall swallow the sun, causing much fear. Another wolf shall eat the moon and the stars shall vanish from the heavens. Then shall the earth shake so violently that trees shall be torn up, crags will fall into ruin, and all bonds and fetters shall break. Do you remember Fenris Wulf, the son of Loki, bound deep in the earth? And the Midgard Serpent, another son of Loki who was cast into the ocean? The bonds holding Fenris Wolf shall shatter and he shall be let loose upon the world. The sea shall gush forth onto the earth as the mighty Midgard serpent rises up and onto the land. Then a great ship named Naglfar shall appear, steered by the giant Hymir. The ship is made from the nails of the dead, so be warned that if you should die with long nails, you will contribute greatly to the construction of this ship, which both gods and mortals should prefer to be unfit, diminished for as long as possible. Fenris Wolf advances with gaping mouth, stretching from the ground below to heaven above. Fire shall rage in his eyes and blaze from his nostrils as he devours the earth and the sky. At the side of Fenris Wolf shall be the Midgard Serpent, spitting venom into the air and water. The sons of Muspell ride, led by Surtr, who guards the way into the primordial fire realm of Moosebell. They ride over Bifrost, the bridge that connects the realms, and it shall shatter behind them in a wide field known as Vigradir. They will all gather. Fenris, Wulf, the Midgard serpent, Surtr and his army, the giant Hymir, and Loki, who has also been freed from his bonds. All of the champions of Hel, Loki's daughter, also join them and follow Loki. When this happens in Asgard, Heimdall will summon all the gods with a mighty blast on his horn. Now shall the world tree Yggdrasil tremble, for nothing in heaven or earth will be without fear. Odin and the gods put on their armor, take up their weapons and ride out to the field of Ygradir to give battle. Freyr shall fight with Surtr, a close contest. Before Freyr finally falls, the fearsome dog Garmir, the greatest monster in all the world, will be unleashed and face Tyr. Each shall kill the other. Thor will defeat the immense Midgard serpent, but only strides away victorious for nine paces before he falls down dead. Because of the venom the serpent spat at him. Odin will face Fenris and a wolf will swallow Odin with his great jaw. This is to be the end of the Allfather. Then Vidar will step forth to fight Fenris Wolf. And he shall place his boot on the wolf's lower jaw. Vidar's boot is made from all the scraps of leather thrown away by mortals across time. So to help the gods in this final battle, we mortals must throw these scraps away to help make Vidar's boot large and heavy. Reaching his hand into the mouth of Fenris Wolf, Vidar tears out his golem. Loki shall fight Heimdall and they will each kill the other. Then Surtr will cast fire over the earth and burn all the world. For it is written, the sun shall be darkened, Earth sinks in the sea glide from the heaven and the glittering stars. Smoke wreak rages and reddening fire. The high heat licks against heaven itself. What will come to pass when the world is burned and when the gods, the champions and all mortals have perished? Ragnarok is not quite the end of all things. Eventually the Earth shall emerge from beneath the oceans and it will be green, lush and fair. Vidar and Vali shall remain and will live at either place where Asgard had been. The sons of Thor shall come here with the hammer. Mjolnir and Baldr and Hod shall follow. They will all sit and speak of the things that befell the world. The son shall have borne a daughter to walk in her mother's footsteps. Two mortals shall have survived the fires of Surtr. They will be called Leif and Leafdrasir. The morning dew shall be their food and their offspring will people the earth anew as the prophecies tell us. Leaf and leaf. Thrasir. These shall lurk hidden in the halt of Hod. Mimir. The morning dews their meat shall be thence Are gendered the generations. There is much here to frighten us all. It is a complex story of the end and of the beginning. Fortunately, there is one wiser than AI to help us understand this doom vector.

Matt Lewis (11:40)

Eleanor. You've come back to us at the end of Days. You've come back to finish the world for us.

Eleanor Barraclough (11:45)

I'm back. It's all going to go down now.

Matt Lewis (11:48)

I would say it's nice to see you, but we kind of need this episode not to end. Because the world is going to come to an end.

Eleanor Barraclough (11:53)

Let's just keep talking. Right. How long can people last? We just.

Matt Lewis (11:57)

We just.

Eleanor Barraclough (11:57)

That's it. We just for the rest of our lives, we will be talking to each other and therefore avert Ragnarok. It's going to be fun.

Matt Lewis (12:02)

For the sake of humanity. Yes, we're going to do this. The unending episode of Gone medieval. Wonderful. Right, so the end of Days, I think. I guess. First things first. Ragnarok. Where does that word come from and what does it mean?

Eleanor Barraclough (12:15)

Oh, it's a good word, isn't it? So, yeah. So Ragnarok, there are two forms of the word. Let's start with etymology. Everyone loves a bit of etymology. Ragnar. Easy. It means of the gods. Two versions of the word that appears in our source material. So if it's just Ragnarok as we know it, then RUK is sort of Fates destinies, something like that. But Snorri Sturglisson, our friend, who we have met before, author of the Prose Edda and also one of the eddic poems in the Poetic edda, both those 13th century texts from Iceland that we are so grateful to, there's one of those called Lokasenna, where Loki basically tips up and starts making fun of everyone, being extreme, extremely rude. But they use a variant of that, Ragnarok, which is very slightly different. And it means pretty much Twilight of the Gods. And obviously that's the one that's picked up by Wagner in his Ring cycle. It's also picked up by. Is it Douglas Adams? You know, you've got the tea time of the gods, one of the Dirk Gently ones. So, yeah, it's either the. The Fates of the Gods or the Twilight of the Gods. Either way doesn't sound good for the gods, really, does it?

Matt Lewis (13:28)

No, it doesn't. And before we get into the meat of what Norse mythology tells us will happen at the end of the world, it seems like the Norse people are as obsessed as the rest of humanity have always been. I guess with stories of the apocalypse, how everything is going to end, how we're all going to die.

Eleanor Barraclough (13:45)

Yeah. I think it's a very human thing and it comes back to something we touched on. You know, the idea of the beginning and the end of the world. It's something almost that's so beyond our ken, we can't really conceptualise of it. So what do we do? We make up stories about it. And the weirder the stories, the better, which is lucky for us, because this one is definitely a weird one. Yeah.

Matt Lewis (14:10)

And do you think there's anything that makes this distinctively Norse, the story of Ragnarok, as compared to other apocalypse stories? Is there something particularly Norse about the way the world is going to end at Ragnarok?

Eleanor Barraclough (14:22)

Yeah, that's a good question. Well, I mean, it's very. It's very bloody. It's very dramatic, which feels very Norse in the sense they are excellent storytellers. It's full of giants and gods. So, again, you know, very much along the. The Norse brand lines there. I wonder as well, though. So, you know, are obviously sort of our main sources, and we can talk more about those, I'm sure, but our main sources, texturally speaking, are both from 13th century Iceland. And so I wonder. It's been suggested that maybe there's something quite distinctively Icelandic about how Ragnarok is conceptualized. You know, it's this idea of the. The ice and the fire and the ground shaking like an earthquake, and the sky is darkening overhead, almost like a volcanic eruption. So I wonder whether, you know, we. We can at least sort of invite the possibility that it's not just Norse, but it's an Icelandic take on that myth.

Matt Lewis (15:20)

And I guess for. For people in Iceland, that combination of fire and ice and the ground shaking is part of life. So they experience these things all of the time. So it's easy to hang stories around the things that, you know.

Eleanor Barraclough (15:34)

Yeah, exactly that. And they know the sort of. The danger of that. It's not like there's a volcano going off every week, but certainly there is. I mean, there is an amazing. Oh, my goodness. There's a. I'm going to totally get the dates wrong now, but the first major volcano that probably went off in Iceland once the settlers had arrived. So they start arriving towards the end of the 9th century, I think. I think. Don't quote me on this, but I think the first volcano, the big one, goes off around 900 or so. And there's a really fabulous, incredible discovery that archaeologists have made within the last five years, 10 years, which is under the lava fields that were formed during this volcanic eruption going off, they found what seems to be a cave where people are going to make offerings to maybe some sort of fire being to stop another volcano going off. And so you really do get a sense that it's like, oh, we know how dangerous this stuff can be. You know, some say the world will end in, you know, fire, some say in ice. Well, you know, in Iceland, you've got. You've got the delightful possibility of both possibly at the same time.

Matt Lewis (16:47)

Yeah. And we should talk a little bit about our sources, as we did at creation point. We talked a lot about the Poetic Edda and the Prose edda, coming from 13th century Iceland, so written by Christians by that point. Are they the same sources that we would use for Ragnarok, or do we have any other sources around this? Do we have more archaeology to bulk out Ragnarok for us?

Eleanor Barraclough (17:09)

Yeah, no. So we. So our main sources are once again, Snorri Sturgason, poet, politician, saga writer, with his Prose Edda, which he writes as a handbook for aspiring poets who really need to know the mythological stories. And then the Poetic Edda, which is very much that anonymous collection of mythological and legendary poems collected in the manuscript Codex Regis, the King's Codex. Those are our main ones, but there are some other ones. So if we're thinking particularly about the archaeology, actually we can go to England for that one. So there's the Gosforth Cross in Cumbria. It's still there, you can still see it. And it's carved. I think it's sort of very early 10th century. Probably it's carved with Christian imagery. So it's got Christ on the cross, for example, but it's also got Norse pagan imagery on there. And some of that is very much to do with Ragnarok. Think it's got Loki bound, you know, as sort of Sigyn. His wife is holding this bowl over to stop the poison dripping into his mouth from this snake that's been suspended above. We've got Heimdallr holding his horn, blowing his horn. We know he does that at Ragnarok. But we've also got an image of what people think is Vidar, who's Odin's son, who is conceived and born specifically to avenge his father at Ragnarok, stepping with a big boot into the mouth of this toothy beast, which is probably the Fenrir's wolf or Fenrir. We'll. We'll talk about that, I'm sure, because that's a very important part of the end of days.

Matt Lewis (18:52)

And do we need to be aware of, particularly with those 13th century Icelandic sources of the Christian influence on the idea of the end of the world? Because there is this idea that, I mean, it feels. When you read the story of Ragnarok in the Pro Zeda, for example, it's cataclysmic. Everybody's going to die, everything's going to end. Beat. But some people survive. So there is that kind of sense of it's not actually the end of everything. There is this idea of rebirth and continuation. Is that some Christian influence working its way in or. Or has that always been part of the Norse mythology? Or don't we know.

Eleanor Barraclough (19:29)

We just don't know. We don't know. Certainly there is a likelihood. There's, funnily enough, when, say, a dragon doesn't feel like the most Christian thing to be sort of comparing it to. But you write at the end of Voluspa or this, the prophecy of the seeress poem, the beginning and the end of the world. She ends with this image of. It's beautiful, this shadow, dark dragon flying over the dark moon hills and it's got corpses in its talons, which feels very sort of pagan, Norse. But it has been compared to imagery in the book of Revelation, for example. So, yeah, this sense of rebirth, who knows? We just don't know. But certainly if you are talking about source material that comes from 13th century Iceland, where most people have been at least nominally Christian for a good couple of centuries, you know, it would be. I think it would be more surprising if you don't have some Christian inflections somewhere in there.

Matt Lewis (20:27)

It almost has a hint of kind of Noah and the Ark about it, doesn't it, that there is a story that it will feel like the world is going to end, but there will be some survivors and there will be this sense of renewal.

Eleanor Barraclough (20:36)

Yeah, exactly. I suppose the question there is sort of, does Noah and the Ark and other stories like that speak to a more general sense in sort of the human storytelling, you know, throughout cultures, throughout mythology of, you know, basically, not everything is rubbish. You know, this sense like, okay, you know, so this idea of apocalypse is not the end of all times. It's not like the opposite of the big bang. Apocalypse is this unveiling. It's this sense of the end of things, but often the start of new things. And you see that in cultures all around the world. So it might be that humans are just more optimistic than sometimes we give ourselves credit for.

Matt Lewis (21:18)

Yeah. And I think it's also something very human about the awareness that everything has a life cycle, that, you know, everything lives and dies and something will follow it. You know, for us, it's our children or something like that, you know, that there is a sense of continuity, even if it's not existing exactly the same as it was.

Eleanor Barraclough (21:32)

Yeah, I think very strongly that. Yeah.

Matt Lewis (21:34)

And so the story of Ragnarok listeners will have heard a bit of that in the introduction. It has a whole lot of moving parts that all seem to depend on a lot on each other and on pulling together lots of the earlier myths. Like, lots of stuff have been tucked away just to wait for Ragnarok. And it all comes out on this moment, this final day kind of thing. Could you give us a kind of a quick recap of what will happen at Ragnarok, perhaps starting off with, what is the thing that kicks it off? What begins the path towards Ragnarok?

Eleanor Barraclough (22:06)

Well, okay, so I could be, like, really annoying and saying it can go all the way back. We could. We could take it back to the. The killing of Emir and say, you know, there are all sorts of points where the end might be said to begin. But in terms of if we're going for that cinematic. Right, okay, the scene is set, it's coming. The first thing you hear is that rooster crowing, which is. I think it's really eerie, you know, So a rooster will crow in the three worlds. So, of Asgard, where the gods live, Jotunheim, where the Jotnar or the giants live. And then in hell, the realm of the dead, the underworld. And so that is the sort of clarion call it's about to go down here. And so then. And this is, as you say, there are lots of moving parts. And that's a beautiful way of describing it because most of this we can take from both Snorri and from Voluspa and other poems. But there are some inconsistencies. There's some bits where we have to kind of smooth the edges of the narrative, shall we say? So then in Hel Garmr, this hellhound, possibly Fenrir, possibly not, it breaks free from its chains. And then we're told that the sun turns black and the earth starts to tremble. And then the God Heimdadlr with that big horn, you know, that he seems to be on the Gosforth cross from Cumbria. He blows his horn to warn everyone that Ragnarok is on its way. And then it gets gruesome because this ship, Naglfar, starts to appear. And I just. Oh, my goodness. So it's Naglfar is carrying an army of, you know, giants and monsters and the undead and the dead that are now undead. And they. It's sort of captained by Loki, who has also broken free from his chains. And the meaning of Nagulfar is it starts to get quite Gothic, right? So Nagal means nails. Fard is like a vessel, a moving thing. But Nagal, it's okay. It might be metal nails, but Snorri tells us that it's human nails and this ship is made from the nails of the dead. And so Snorri puts in a note. He says, this is why you've always got to cut the nails of the dead. Because otherwise you're going to bring about Ragnarok quicker, because that ship is going to be finished quicker. And there is this sense throughout that Ragnarok can't be averted. But we still have agency in all the moments leading up to it. And, you know, we can explore that later. So Nagulfar is approaching. And then the Fimbulwetr begins. And the Fimbulwetr means monstrous or awful, terrible winter. And it's basically a sort of a nuclear winter. It's a three year winter without a summer in between. Human start to fight, brother starts to fight brother. There's a brilliant stanza. This is from Volusbaut. This is about this bit, so I can give it to you. It'd been an old Norse and then a translation, so it says, OK. @ Bernimwarda munus sistrenga silvum spila harts ar I heimi hordem ermikil skegg earld skolmld skildir ereklovnir vind vargld other verold stay pisg mun engimader uddhrum firma. That translates as brother will fight brother and be his slayer. Sisters sons will violate the kinship bonds. It'll be hard in the world. Sort of sexiness abounds like whoredom abounds. Sort of not having a lot of sex you shouldn't be having abounds. Let's try and think of another word for that. Axe age. Sword age. Shields are cleft asunder. Wind age. Wolf age. Before the world plunges headlong and no one will spare another. And so it's all going down, right? And then there's a big battle in this valley. And then this awful giant creature appears, Surtr, the fire giant. And he's got this burning flaming brand and he's burning all the worlds with it. And then Yggdrasil, the world tree, starts to burn. And you know, at that point there's this huge battle and you know, the gods and the giants are all killing each other and all these monstrous beings. And it's really horrible. But then exactly as you say, it is cyclical. It's not hopeless. So after Surtr's flames have gone out, some of the gods return. So Baldr, the beautiful God, the one who ends up accidentally being killed by his brother Hirr, he comes back and so does his brother Hodr, which I really like because I always feel he gets a bit of a raw deal. Vidar, who is Odin's son, the one who we saw on the Gospeth cross with his big boot, stepping into the mouth of the Fenris wolf. He comes back, and Thor's sons, Magni and Mirthy, they come back. And then it's this idea that the gods will play sort of with golden gaming pieces. And, you know, there's this new world called Gimli, like Shining One. So, yeah, there's. There's a cyclical idea here, but exactly as you say. Is this original? We don't know.

Matt Lewis (27:18)

We heard in an earlier episode about how there is a sense that maybe Loki is, to some extent, possibly, but possibly not kind of coordinating all of this, that he sort of plays a part in Baldr's death as an effort to get himself chained up, because the prophecy requires him to be released from chains before Ragnarok can come. So there is a sense that Loki could maybe be driving some of this. There is also then a sense that everybody has their own opponent at Ragnarok, don't they? So that battle that we're talking about, when Surtr comes, which, you know, you can think about maybe the Marvel film Ragnarok, and you can think of Surtr turning up with his flaming sword and setting fire to everything. But Loki will arrive with the army of all of the enemies of the gods, essentially, and everyone that has gone to the halls of Valhalla will turn out to fight for Odin and the gods. But it feels like everybody has their own rival, the person that they have to fight, that they were destined to be locked into a fight at Ragnarok with. Can you give us a bit of detail about who ends up fighting who and what happens to them all at that battle?

Eleanor Barraclough (28:24)

Yeah, and that word destined is really important. I think it is. It's this moment of reckoning between these different components. So Freyr, the sort of the God of fertility and growth, he fights Surtr, the fire giants, and he's killed. He fights him without his sword because he's given it to his servant Skinir. And that's a different story, but not good at this point. Thor and Jormungandr, the world serpent, they kill each other. Now they've got beef, they've got history. So there's another, you know, you may have touched on it, but where Thor goes fishing with an ox head as bait, with a giant, and he accidentally catches Jormungandr, the world serpent, on the edge of his fishing hook, pulls so hard that his foot goes through the bottom of the boat. We know that because also, sometimes that appears on sort of picture stones from, you know, the time from the Viking age. Obviously it's going to be Thor and Jormungandr, the rematch, and they kill. Well, Thor kills Jormungandr and then manages to walk nine steps before Jormungandr spews poison all over him and Thor falls down dead there. Odin, obviously it's got to be Fenrir, it's got to be that, that wolf. And we should sort of remember that Loki has actually fathered these three monstrous creatures. So Fenrir, Jormungandr and also Hel, this sort of half corpse, half living human who presides over, you know, the place of the same name, the underworld. So Odin fights Fenrir, Fenrir kills Odin, but then, you know, Vidar, his son comes with his big leather boot and prizes Fenrir's jaws apart and therefore avenges his father. So, you know, honour is satisfied there. Yet Snorri says that Loki fights Heimdattlr or Heimdadlir with the, with the horn. Tyr, in, I think one version is said to fight Garma, that hellhound who's freed from its bonds. So, yeah, exactly as you say. There are, there are all these set pieces between different figures who in some ways, you might say, represent some different sides of the ideological coin.

King Gylfrey (30:39)

Foreign.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (30:50)

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Eleanor Barraclough (31:20)

We're here.

Ryan Seacrest (31:21)

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Matt Lewis (31:51)

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King Gylfrey (32:17)

History hit wherever you get your podcasts.

Matt Lewis (32:36)

Yeah, I was going to ask how much can we read into the very specific pairing offs that we get? You know, there is Thor, who is the God of. Of the weather and, and, you know, lots of things that, that humans would want to pray to and to have good weather, good, you know, lack of storms, good crops and all of those kinds of things. Is fighting against the Midgard serpent, who is kind of encirc. Is this monster who is out there in the sea kind of on the edge of everything. And it's almost like the. The core of human experience is fighting with the edges of the world. Am I reading too much into all of this or are those pairings meant to signify something?

Eleanor Barraclough (33:10)

So I, I love, I love the idea that they are. And I love that specific one that you say. I think. I think probably we. We can't be too prescriptive about it. And also we always have to remember what source material have we got and what other versions of this story might have been told. But, yeah, certainly, I mean, are there, if you think, for example, if Freyr, the God of fertility and life and growth, is fighting Surtr, this idea, and particularly coming back to sort of Iceland, where volcanoes, I mean, obviously we know volcanic ash can be sort of nice for growing things later on, but certainly at the moment where the lava is covering your fields and you've been trying to grow crops and, you know, put your animals out to pasture, it's very much the absence of life. And so, yeah, I think the pairings are interesting. But, yeah, there are some that I can't quite think of how they would work quite so well ideologically, so shouldn't push it too far. But yeah, I do like that. I do like that idea. I think there is something very dramatic about these set pieces.

Matt Lewis (34:11)

Yeah. And what part do the giants play? Because Surtr actually comes from that kind of primordial, before the creation of the world, place of fire, doesn't he? But he kind of leads an army across the Bifrost and destroys the Bifrost as he comes. And do the giants kind of join in on their side as well? Loki's obviously quite often connected to the giants and the giants are frequently the enemies of the gods.

Eleanor Barraclough (34:36)

Yeah, exactly. So there is definitely that sense of, you know, on one side for the Most part are the gods, and on the other side are the Ytnr, the giants, and sort of the. Of the other sort of. It's like humans and gods sort of on one side and then the beings that are not that on the other. Yes, but I think it's always important to remember that. Well, you know, Odin, all the gods, they're descended from the giants. We have, you know, intermarriage between gods and giants often. So it's not just, you know. Yeah, so Loki, who's one of his parents, is a giant, at least there's definitely that. But also Frey has married a giantess, and Njr marries a giantess. And so it's. I don't know. I wonder whether maybe that is partly, in Snorri's case, at least, trying to make that logical framework that just makes everything a little easier to understand. But, yeah, who knows? Certainly there's aspects of that.

Matt Lewis (35:39)

Yeah. And is there a part for humans to play during Ragnarok? I mean, we've heard that, you know why you should get your fingernails cut when you die? Because you don't want to be part of that fingernail ship. But is there a sense that, you know, if Hel, who is controlling the realms of the dead, is fighting for the enemies of the gods. I'm trying not to say goodies and baddies all the time here, but if Hel is. If Hel is fighting on that side, is she bringing people back from the dead to fight for her? And is Odin drawing on all of those warriors that he's gathered in Valhalla to fight on his side? So is there an element of human against human here, too?

Eleanor Barraclough (36:13)

Yeah, exactly. I think so. Obviously, we hear at the beginning, you know, when. When brother will fight brother and the bonds of kinship will be broken, there's very much this sense of social chaos, and that's really important. So I think it's. Yeah, it's exactly as you say. It's not goodies and baddies. There's something much more complex and much more interesting going on. I can't remember how much Hel is said herself to play a part in that. There are things that come out of hell, but Loki is very much leading that charge. And it's. Yeah, exact. You say on the side of the gods, you have the Einherja, these like, the chosen ones who feast at Odin's halls of Valhalla each night, waiting to be his warriors at Ragnarok. One version says that they are among the ones that come back to life after Ragnarok. Has passed. Having said that, though, shout out to Freyja, because she also has a hall folkvanger and she takes the other half of the chosen dead warriors. So it's not just Odin's bag, it's just Odin tends to get the praise for that particular side of it, which.

Matt Lewis (37:18)

I'm sure would make Odin very happy.

Eleanor Barraclough (37:20)

Yes. Oh, yeah. He probably was putting about the rumors in the first place. Yeah. I don't think I'd have got on with Odin. I think he's an absolute creep. Oh, I genuinely don't feel I should be saying that. Odin is lovely. And please don't come and do bad things to me. This is the thing, Right. You spend enough time doing Norse mythology and I spend a lot of time. So working within that world, you. You stop seeing it as entirely fictional. You really. It's. It's very, very hard to maintain that distance. And I think that is. It's worth saying that with the source material as well. Although it is. Yeah. Textually speaking, 13th century, post conversion, you always get the sense that, you know, these, these gods have not entirely disappeared. And, you know, there are runic inscriptions from later on, again, that very much mentioned the gods. And it's like, well, let's not be pissing anyone off, you know, let's just. Let's just. Let's just keep everyone.

Matt Lewis (38:17)

Hedge some bets.

Eleanor Barraclough (38:19)

Exactly. Let us hedge those bets. Exactly that.

Matt Lewis (38:22)

And it's interesting that you. You say that. That you feel kind of drawn into these because surely that the. The point of them, as we. We mentioned with the creation stories, these are meant to be told dramatically around the fire while everyone is getting drunk after dinner. And you need it to be entertaining. So this is a story that is full of stories of wolves chasing the sun and the moon across the sky. We've got a ship made out of dead people's fingernails, we've got the sky cracking open and we've got giant wolves and snakes coming out. And we've almost got, as you said before, the gods and the good, successful warriors versus kind of everybody else and everything else in the universe. And surely all of that is just driving towards making this a brilliant story to tell that will really, really engage people. And it's still engag you in 2025 into believing that some of this could be real.

Eleanor Barraclough (39:10)

Yeah, exactly. And look. Oh, God, can you just clip that bit? Put that out, like, Eleanor thinks it's all real. She talks to Odin at night. Let's see.

Matt Lewis (39:21)

Well, I'm glad you said that. Not me. I don't have to say that.

Eleanor Barraclough (39:24)

No, but exactly. And there's a reason for Marvel Comics and Marvel Films and, you know, the sheer, I don't know, the scale of the creative afterlives of these men, myths going down the centuries all the way into the present day. You know, it doesn't disappear. And there is a reason for that. It's absolutely brilliant stuff.

Matt Lewis (39:44)

Yeah. Do we have a sense about what Norse people thought or how they engaged with the stories of Ragnarok? You know, is it. Is it prophecy? Is it a myth? Is it allegory for what may be going on in the world at any given time? That, you know, the end of the world isn't necessarily the end of everything? Do we know how they. How they thought about it or how they engaged with it?

Eleanor Barraclough (40:05)

It. This is it. It is really hard to tell. And I don't know if we went back to a particular point in, say, the Viking age and picked a particular location, whether we would really know even then. You know, I think. I think there is going to be such a spectrum of beliefs and I don't know, it's like any of this stuff and it's very difficult to quantify belief and meaning at the time, let alone hundreds of years later. So, I don't know, I think it's telling that Snorri says, and this is why you should cut the fingernails of the dead before you. You bury them, you know, or, you know, somewhere else. I think it's Snorri again. He says, and this is why, you know, we. The off cuts of sort of leather boots. When you make boots or shoes, they are used to make Vidar's giant boot. That's going to help, you know, rip apart Fenrir the wolf.

Matt Lewis (41:00)

Yes. He kind of says, you know, you should make sure you throw away all those offcuts of leather because they'll be collected up to make these boots that are going to help at Ragnarok. So cut fingernails, throw away scraps of leather.

Eleanor Barraclough (41:10)

Exactly. And of course, he's sort of, sort of coming, you know, we don't want to kind of become too abstract, but, you know, at what point does belief become superstition? What. What point does superstition become folk memory? You know, so it might well be that in the 13th century they're still doing all that. And maybe Snorri's just saying, well, and this is why we tend to do that. But maybe he's saying, and this is why you should do that. So it's quite difficult to tell. So going back tortuously again to Your original question and trying to remember exactly what you said. It's like, what's it like? Prophecy? Allegory?

Matt Lewis (41:46)

Is it kind of. Is it prophecy? Is it mythology? Is it allegory? Any or all of the above?

Eleanor Barraclough (41:53)

All of the above and none of the above. Love. Let's just cover every single base we can. We just don't. Don't know.

Matt Lewis (41:59)

Yeah. Because I guess we've also got to think that everybody's engagement with this will be individual as well. It's impossible to say how everybody, as you say, across centuries and across the whole diaspora, will have engaged with this story. It will have meant different things to different people, I guess.

Eleanor Barraclough (42:15)

Yes, exactly. And at different times. And so again, going back to. Well, I mean, yeah, even my own experience of this, I. I have.

Matt Lewis (42:24)

When you talk to Odin, when I talk.

Eleanor Barraclough (42:26)

So.

Matt Lewis (42:26)

Well.

Eleanor Barraclough (42:26)

Right. Okay. So. So I'm gonna be completely honest. I would talk to Freya and Frey and Tier. Those are my. Those are my favorite. Right. I wouldn't. I. I wouldn't be talking.

Matt Lewis (42:35)

I'm gonna tell Odin you don't like him.

Eleanor Barraclough (42:40)

Genuinely a little bit worried. Can you tell?

Matt Lewis (42:42)

It's.

Eleanor Barraclough (42:43)

I. I've had so much caffeine today. I'm going to be talking to Odin as soon as I said, but. No but say, but it is interesting. I've been in one form or another, sort of engaged with sort of Norse mythology maybe more than anything else since I was a teenager, since I was an undergraduate. And the forms in which I engage with it sort of as a sort of specialist in this material change. And they continue to change over the time. Time and sort of the creative elements and the. The bits that pique my interest, they change over time. So I think even within an individual. And this is me, you know, who's very much sort of coming at it from the point of view of, you know, not living in the Viking age or being part of this culture. I think there is just something about it that is very hard for, I say to shake, but for humanity to shake. This is good stuff. It's a bit like the Greek and the Roman stuff. There is a reason that it just keeps going. It's great.

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Matt Lewis (45:15)

Yeah, yeah. And just the. The ways in which Ragnarok is going to happen. We've talked about kind of Yggdrasil, the world tree is going to suffer, that there's going to be this long winter, that. That this surtr is going to turn up with fire to destroy everything. Does this maybe speak to a Norse concern about the fragility of the natural world, anxieties about climate, about famine? You know, we often hear that Vikings go traveling to look for better farmland and things like that. Does this really relate to their connection with the land and their fear about the insecurity of that connection?

Eleanor Barraclough (45:46)

It would be sort of foolish if it didn't in some levels, because, yeah, we are dealing with an insecure, unknowable world that might sort of flip on you suddenly. And a couple of bad winters and there's nothing left left. I think so. So there have been some really interesting studies in the last, you know, few years looking at whether there are specific events that might be connected to, you know, at least the origins of some of what Ragnarok is. So one example. Well, one example I mentioned already, this first big volcanic eruption that goes off in Iceland. The possibility that people are sacrificing to some fire being under the earth. That's absolutely what's going on there. It's. Please don't go off again. We know we are living in quite a freaky world in some way. You know this, when they came over from the British Isles from Norway, they didn't have volcanoes and earthquakes in that way, but the other big one. So in the sort of first decades of the 6th century, there's some very big volcanic activity. And it looks like this had sort of impact all over the world. And there is in a lot of source material from all sorts of different cultures, but it looks like it was also there in Scandinavia. And, you know, you imagine this big dark cloud that comes over, you know, the lack of summers. It Looks possible that there was sort of depopulation, or at least there's quite a few settlements that are abandoned during that time. And so it's not. It's definitely not beyond the realms of possibility that the origins of that insecurity and the trauma of what happens when the world turns on you and you suddenly, you know, everyone around you is dying of famine and there's social breakdown, that's all going on, and that makes its way into the mythology. Because how do humans process information and how do they keep that information passed down the generations? It's through storytelling. And mythology is sort of the ultimate form of storytelling.

Matt Lewis (47:51)

Yeah, I mean, I was. It occurred to me then when you were talking there, I saw a parallel in kind of Game of Thrones, when you've got old Nan telling stories about the long winters and things like that to Bran, and he just doesn't understand it because she's lived through this in the past and she's recounting all of these tales and he doesn't get it, and she's kind of calling you sweet summer child. One day you'll find out kind of thing. And maybe there's an element of that, you know, he ran the storytelling people about what you might have experienced in the past or what, what you have a cultural memory of.

Eleanor Barraclough (48:19)

Yes.

Matt Lewis (48:19)

And warning people that it's going to come again. Because everyone likes a good, scary story.

Eleanor Barraclough (48:23)

Yeah, exactly. That. It's. It's something I've done, Done some research on this, actually, which I don't worry, I'm not going to bore you with, but I was looking at, you know, volcanoes, specifically in Iceland, and what you find is that. So there's some big ones that went off early in the 20th century, and anthropologists went and spoke to people who had experienced them for themselves. But also, you know, the generation after that, the generation after that, and what do they remember and how do they deal with the fact that they are still living in the shadow of an extremely active volcano that's about to go off? And the people who lived at the time, they're like, this was awful. You know, people died. You know, our farms were wiped out. This is terrible. But with that, stories that are sort of heroic and larger than life and sort of the start of legends are also being transmitted. So it's like, you know, farmer Grimur from this farm who leapt down from the lava fields and managed to save all his sheep or something like that. What you find a couple of generations later is that people are saying, we don't really like to think about that, if you don't mind not talking about it, we would really appreciate that. Okay. We know it's not extinct, but we would like to believe it's extinct and we can't. So it's the idea. Humans can't really imagine something until it's happening. And until that point, the world feels like it's going to go on like it always did, you know, And I think that exactly as you say, that transmission of cultural memory, that transmission of mythology is part of not just a warning, but it's. It's. Yeah, it. Well, maybe it is a warning, but certainly going back to your original question, it's that sense of. It's that strong recognition of the fragility of the world and the fragility of life, but also the possibility that things can get better as well.

Matt Lewis (50:20)

Which interestingly brings us back to that whole Ragnarok idea of rebirth, doesn't it? And that study of people living in the shadow of volcano almost exactly plays into that. You know, it will feel like the end of days, but it will recover and it will come back and maybe the end of days will come again, but there will be rebirth after. It's sort of the requirement for hope in the face of all of that fear.

Eleanor Barraclough (50:41)

Yeah, I think so. I think. I think that's a really important point. And it's something that sort of the. The drama and the, you know, the larger than life, almost cartoonish sometimes, nature of these myths aside, there is a very strong set of human messages that I think are that. Yeah. That go beyond the. Oh, isn't this fun? Look, a giant wild serpent spitting poison at Thor. Which is great, don't get me wrong. Love it. But there is this sense of. There are deeper core messages that need to be passed on. The form in which that takes, I always think is quite interesting. There's this idea of. There's a fatalism, a fatalistic approach to this material that I think we also. I don't know, fate is a really important part of Norse culture and also sort of other Germanic cultures. So there's a saying in Old English, the language that the Anglo Saxons spoke around the same time as we get the Viking Age, you know, and it's weird. Bith fuller rad. So, you know, fate is inflexible or fully inexorable. Fate is going to happen. There's a lovely line actually from one of the eddic poems, Skirnis Mal or Skinnis, like the journey of Skirness, actually Freyja's Frey. Sorry, his servant who Frey then gives this sword to. And therefore, Freyja doesn't have it at Ragnarok. But he says something like, you know, there are better choices than simply sobbing for anyone who wants to get on with things in life. And then, you know, he goes on to say, you know, on one day, you know, in the past, my lifespan was shaped and all of my days laid down. And the idea there, the message is that, yes, fate is fixed. And, you know, on a mythic scale, that's Ragnarok. But, you know, we can also apply that to all our lives. But fate is also, you know, beyond our reckoning. It's unknowable. And you do the things that you need to do because it's every moment that leads up to that final moment that counts. And I think that is very much. That is also the message of Ragnarok, I think. And I think that is there's, you know, which also kind of ties into, you know, that very famous. You know, there's another eddic poem, Havamal, sayings of the High One, meant to be spoken by Odin. It's the idea of a person's name or reputation living beyond their lifetime. So it's the one that is Deir Fay der Freindr Deir Selvig Sam. So the cattle die, kin die, self too, dies. But the one thing that never dies is sort of the memory of a good person. And that I feel. Yes. And when we come back to that point in Ragnarok where things are coming back, it is sort of almost the fulfillment of that. But it's not like if all the gods came back to life, we'd almost be cheating. So it's not that. It's just. So maybe coming back to what we were talking about at the beginning, how influenced is this by sort of Christian ideas of rebirth? Maybe not as much as we might think. You know, that cyclical sense of the fulfillment of fate is actually possibly important.

Matt Lewis (54:05)

Yeah. And listening to you talk about that, it becomes easy to understand why that kind of story, with, yes, hardship and a disaster, but with hope at the end of it, would appeal to a group of people who are living in the most inhospitable places on earth, you know, on the very edges of the world, living a really fragile existence underneath volcanoes, when you don't know if crops are going to grow this year.

Eleanor Barraclough (54:28)

Yeah.

Matt Lewis (54:29)

It becomes easy to understand why these stories would appeal to those specific people.

Eleanor Barraclough (54:34)

Yes. Yes, there is a grimness about Norse culture and a grim. A humor with it. But, yeah, you can't. You can't get away from that. There is a grimness in the sagas, in the mythology, you know, lightness as well. Humanity, sort of. Yes. Humor, but. And exactly as you say, this is not. This is, you know, what's it. Is it Camus who took the tender indifference of the world? I always think that's very appropriate when you're looking at. Well, I mean, sort of nowhere in that part of sort of medieval world was, you know, was there a box of chocolates, I don't know, plate of roses, whatever it might be. You know, it's. Life was hard. But exactly as you say, there is something about living in sort of the margins of what can be still seen as being sort of medieval European, northern European culture, with its. Yeah. Its ability just to flip. And that's not just Iceland, of course. You go further afield, you go from Iceland, keep going west to Greenland, that's even more extreme. And there they did have their version of Ragnarok that was a part of the Norse world that comes to an end. And mysteriously, but also in parts, possibly not entirely pleasantly, we see the limits of what can be done there when everything does start to tip. So, yeah, I think maybe there is something quite Norse about it. But to go back to an earlier question of yours in that sense, too.

Matt Lewis (56:14)

Yeah, yeah. Are there any versions of Ragnarok that we know of that don't see any renewal, that are literally the end of everything?

Eleanor Barraclough (56:23)

It sort of depends on when you. I say end the source material, you know. So, for example, with Voluspao, if you cut it off a few stanzas earlier. Yeah, it's just like the end of the world. Everything goes black, you know, and that's the difficulty of not knowing, or I think not knowing the original version. That's not the right thing, actually, to want to know, because there may well not have been an original version. And this comes back to this idea that this material is passed down and it's shaped and it's retold and things are added and things are taken out. Or there might be one version of it in this country or this part of a country, and a different version that's related but different. So who knows? Yeah, maybe. Maybe in one part of the Norse world, it is very much, you know, screen FADES TO black and then in another, it's the dragon comes over the hill carrying corpses. But there are new people down in the fields playing, you know, Nefertafel with golden pieces, you know, that's the lovely thing. Or it might also be farm specific, you know, there's one version, you know, it's a bit like, I don't know, you tell fairy tales now that the sort of fairy tale that are collected by the Brothers Grimm, well, you know, Cinderella, the version of it that they collect is very different to the version that ended up in the Disney film. So it's possible that that is also true of Ragnarok. And there are versions that, shall we say, possibly are more or less suitable for children or other audiences. Maybe when you're out in the middle of the North Atlantic on a ship and a storm is blowing and everything is dark and feels very terrible, maybe you want the version where everything almost ends up okay again.

Matt Lewis (58:21)

And I quite like the idea that this could also be down to a storyteller judging his audience. If the audience are playing ball and they're being really engaged, you give them a bit of hope at the end. But if it's not going quite so well or they're not being very responsive, you just leave them with, fade to black, roll credits, everyone's going to die, and that's the end of it. Good night, I'm off.

Eleanor Barraclough (58:38)

Exactly. Thank you very much.

Matt Lewis (58:42)

And just to leave us on the hopeful note, hopefully, do we get a sense of what the world will be like after Ragnarok?

Eleanor Barraclough (58:49)

Well, it's described as this word gymnya, which means sort of like bright. Yeah. It's not entirely clear. It, again, it depends, you know, there is a version where it's the survivors or those who are rebirthed find the gods gaming pieces in the meadows where they used to play, and it's basically sort of not quite a repeat, you know, but I think. I think it's quite, you know, if we're trying to imagine what that looks like, I think we are given a lot of room to imagine that version for ourselves. And I think it is. There are enough mixed messages coming in that makes it hard to form that picture. And so I think it is a reminder of that slightly tricksy nature of the source material, but also possibly a reflection of the reality at the time when these stories were being told.

Matt Lewis (59:42)

Yeah. And given the Norse love for ideas of destiny and things like that, it's quite striking that they kind of lead what will happen to all of this new round of gods and beings to the imagination. We've got very detailed accounts of what is going to happen from the beginning of time to Ragnarok. And it's almost like Ragnarok becomes the death of destiny, the death of fate, because people will be around and gods will come back, but we don't know what's going to happen then.

Eleanor Barraclough (60:07)

Yes. And I think that's a really good way of looking at it. It's curious because there's often the question of, well, when is Ragnarok? Has it already happened or is it in the future? Is it now? You know, it's not clear from the way the source material tells it. So maybe that is the way to look at it. Exactly. As you say, it's that point where, yes, we're sort of freed from fate. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe that's too extreme.

Matt Lewis (60:38)

But, yeah, or maybe that's just a story for another night.

Eleanor Barraclough (60:41)

There we go. It's like, yes, you can now leave the fire, go and find your little beds and curl up for the night.

Matt Lewis (60:49)

Yeah. Come back tomorrow to hear a little bit more. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of that with us, Ellen. It feels really fitting that you began this series with the creation of the world and you've brought it all to an end for us, although left us with a little bit of hope, too. I have thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you very, very much. And I will forever now know you as Eleanor Odinhater. I'm just going to call you that from now on.

Eleanor Barraclough (61:10)

No, no, no. I like to think of myself, given that I topped and tailed this. I'm like the. The Seeress from Voluspa. Right. Let's. Let's give me a bit of credit and I'm probably in dialogue with Odin and, you know, we're all having a lovely time and a cup of tea and I definitely do not hate Odin. Okay. Very important to put that out there.

Matt Lewis (61:28)

Okay. I won't. I won't tell him what you said about him then. But thank you so much for joining us. It's been an absolute pleasure. I've really enjoyed this.

Eleanor Barraclough (61:35)

Such a pleasure.

Matt Lewis (61:36)

Thank you. I hope you found that as interesting as I did, this is, fittingly the end of our series. If you've missed any of it, take a look back through the last four episodes in our feed to travel through creation, the gods and human connections to the mythology. To help offer some context for the end, there are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday. So please come back and join Eleanor and I from more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and all of History Hits podcasts ad free. Head over to historyhit.com subscribe to sign up now. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History hits.

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