In the news recently have been several breathless reports that claim that followers of the old Norse faith believe that Ragnarok is upon us. What’s actually going on is that a Viking history center in Britain is simply ginning up interest. However, on a Fark.com discussion thread on this topic, one of the commenters raised some good points:
atomicmask 2014-02-22 06:49:39 PM
so according to the norse calendar, ragnarok begins today and this marks the end of fimbulwinter (3 years of winter, cold, wet and with record lows) So according to norse myth the following will happen..
1. fenrir will devour odin
2. Midgaard serpent will poison thor
3. Loki will kill hemdall the keeper of the bridge
4. The hound garm will kill the god Tyr
Sounds like silly jargon? Lets look at it like a metaphor..like most myth should be observed.
1. Fenrir is a giant wolf, a symbol of wrath and gluttony. Odin is the symbol of wisdom, forethought, and memory. When war takes president over forethought, when gluttony and greed devours wisdom, it foretells doom.
2. Jorgamundr or the midgaard serpent is a symbol of corruption and and deceit, thor is a symbol of leadership, honesty, bravery, and strength. When corruption poisons leadership, and honesty bravery and strength dies, it brings doom.
3. Loki is a symbol of trickery, pranks, and the father of hel. Hemdall is the symbol of watching, vigilance, guarding, and protection. When the world is more interested in entertainment it destroys vigilance, and thus the above two may happen. A note of interest is that loki is the father of hel, death. How a god of pranks and trickery can be such a major deity in the cosmology is evident if you look at it from this perspective, inattentiveness leads to disaster. It allows doom
4. The hound Garm is a symbol of pure evil, it is malace without logic or intent, a snarling, vicious dog out for blood. Tyr is the god of noble sacrifice, heroic deeds and soldiers, he who sticks his hands in the mouth of fenrir to quiet him. When Pure evil rules the world, soldiers die by the thousands. tossed into the jaws of death. Noble sacrifice becomes meaningless slaughter. It is doom.
5. Yggdrasil the world tree, will shake. No one in the world will be without fear and upheaval.
Now armed with this knowledge, it is far easier to reflect the wisdom of this ancient mythology.
1. If you are more interested in entertainment, you will make it easy to fail at vigilance against those out to wrong you.
2. If you allow corruption and deceit to rule you, it will poison the good in you, just like a serpent.
3. If you allow wrath and gluttony to devour you, wisdom will die, you will not see what is coming, and forget what has been. Stupidity devours all that is good.
4. If you allow evil to rule you, you sacrifice good for your own gain.
5. While the above is going on, massive amounts of upheaval and terror will be going on, the world will be ruled by fear.
How this relates to the modern world, and why it may very well be true and happening.
1. Greed and gluttony are currently destroying our environment. Wisdom states that if we destroy the world we live in, we cant feed ourselves or breathe the air.
2. Corruption and deceit plague our government. No leaders exist, only politicians.
3. Every time a change in policy occurs, a new bill, or some major world event (Riots in Kiev, Singapore, greece, france, etc…better see what justin beiber is up to!) the media instead focus on some celeb and what silly fux pas they did this week.
4. wars over oil, soldiers sent to battle simply to expand corporate interests instead of defense of our nation.
5. Terrorists, and a terror based world. We are so afraid of our own shadows that we allow constant spying on ourselves and wavier our rights for a little bit of security.
It isn’t all bad, much like the book of revelations in the bible after the events come and pass, the world becomes a veritable paradise. The earth reverts to a standard of extreme growth and fertility, food is plentiful and peace reigns for thousands of years. Humanity survives and becomes enlightened from the event. The god Vidar, or “rightous fury” will survive, he hunts down fenrir and rips him apart with his bare hands. Justice survives in this analogy, and we put those responsible on trial.
Vali survives, the god of “old justice” who was birthed specifically to kill a murderer. Executions are the punishment for the previous.
Magni survives, the son of thor, whos name means strength. The strong survive and those strong willed.
Modi survives, the god of berzerkers. Soldiers survive the event and lead the world post apocolypse
Lif and Lifbrasir, man and woman survives, humanity lives threw it all, and goes on to repopulate the newly fertile earth.
Baldr and Hodur return from death, a love of beauty, art, and song. Hodur returns also, a caring for the sick and weak, the disabled and poor.
Looks like Ragnarok *is* upon us. However, I disagree with the commenters view that it ends well. If you’ve read the Eddas, you might agreed that the happy ending where the Earth is reborn seems kinda tacked on. Up until that point, the tone and teachings of the Eddas are quite distinct from those of the Bible, yet there is a 90 degree left turn at the end. I’ve long believed that that ending was simply added to the Norse beliefs by the Christian Snorri Sturluson, much as he added a preface claiming that the Aesir and Vanir were misremembered tales of the likes of the Trojan kings. So… if you eliminate the last little bit, the forces of chaos and stupidity win at the end of Ragnarok, or at the very least the forces of good and order lose. Everything in the Norse tales lends a sense of foreboding and impending doom, a recognition that all the efforts to fight the forces of evil are not to defeat evil, but to delay the inevitable. And that seems to me far more likely than a happy ending, the way things are going today.
If for no other reason: if western civilization gets taken down, by plague or asteroid or EMP or war, how will we build back up? All the easy energy sources are gone. If you want coal or oil to heat your home, you can’t exactly go get it with a rusty pickaxe. And a civilization that has been knocked down is hardly likely to ever again be able to reach for the stars without nukes and the products of petroleum (not just gas to drive cars, but chemicals to grow crops, plastics to build stuff out of and meds to keep us marginally healthy). And if we don’t reach for the stars… then even if mankind lasts another geological age, it will have all been for nothing. The stupid, strong unteachable monsters are certain to be victorious at last.