Ragnarök is a foretold final clash between the divine forces of civilised good called Aesir and Vanir, fought against the chaotic wild-nature spirits named Jötnar. It’s an ancient trope. The Tuatha Dé Danann fending off the seafaring Fomhóraigh, Olympians battling their Titanic forbears, angels smiting demons, and Devas confronting the baser Asuras. The Norse approach to this dualistic conflict, Ragnarök, has most famously been evoked by Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sturlusons. In his poetry about the end of times, children slay their parents, oaths are broken, and the dead rise from their graves to confront Loki’s maleficent spawn. This is the picture Sturluson crafted with Völuspá, the poetic prophesy of the seeress, a prediction of the end of the world.

         Sturluson’s Twilight of the Gods is a tale about the Northern pantheon’s demise, but what if the cataclysm actually happened? Perhaps the Völuspá’s Völva was not warning her people about tough times ahead, but instead, she was offering Sturluson’s readers a memorandum of historical catastrophes experienced by ancient Northern Europeans. Maybe the poem depicts social and natural disasters that occurred centuries before historian’s writing, events which saw the end of communities, traditions, faiths, and entire cultures?

 

‘I saw there wading | through rivers wild,

‘Treacherous men | and murderers too,

‘And workers of ill | with the wives of men;

‘There Níðhöggr sucked | the blood of the slain,

‘And the wolf tore men; | would you know yet more?’1

 

Ragnarök emerged from a backdrop of sudden change. In the iron heart of Rome, during the late fourth century, former Emperor Theodosius passed the Cunctos Populos edict. The legislation denounced the rights of those who adhere to, ‘All heresies and all perfidies, all schisms and all superstitions of the pagans and all false doctrines.’2 Clergy of the Roman faith gained new powers to condemn pagans with proscription, a punishment wherein ‘Rewards were offered to anyone killing or betraying the proscribed, and severe penalties were inflicted on anyone harbouring them.’3 Some of the largest collections of pagan communities within the imperial territories, who were eligible for proscription, lived in Rome’s Northern colonies of Great Britain. From that moment onwards, the native Britons, Celts, and Picts became prime candidates for scorn, forced conversion, and even execution.

         Thirty years after the Holy Empire’s genocidal edict, Rome’s occupation of Britain abruptly ended. Pressures mounted against the Italian nation from the Visigoths and Sassanian Empire forced Emperor Honorius to withdraw his nation’s military presence from Britain. Rome’s homelands needed defending, and Britain was still too difficult to overcome. This consolidation of the wolf-empire's forces left a power vacuum in its wake. The remaining indigenous tribes of Britain started taking back what little land they could, while larger post-Roman cities were left to fend for themselves...

 

‘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.’4

 

As the military might of Rome crumbled in 411AD, its missionaries were starting to put the Edict of Thessalonica into practice, to hold on to the imperial citizens’ souls even if their governance was lost. A succession of saints promoting and proselytizing under the state’s faith started a hundred-year mission across the British and Irish isles. First of note was Pádraig, the apostle of Ireland. A famed politician, teacher, and orator, St. Patrick used selective education and resource management to convince native leaders to convert to Christianity. He made sure to ‘Give out not less than the price of fifteen persons [to judges in those regions], so that you might benefit from me, and that I might benefit from you in God,’5 cementing the Church’s image of generosity towards those who submitted to God across Irish society.

         The Apostle of Ireland’s soft handed approach was not taken up by his followers. Saints Columba and Kessog both toured the untamed Scotland from Ireland, to bring their God’s light to the pagans. But the disciples of Pádraig did not use money or wisdom to convince the masses, they opted for a tried-and-tested Holy Roman method, proscription. Kessog, the warrior Saint depicted with bow-in-hand, brought Christianity to the Picts with his martial prowess. The first patron of Scotland founded a military base on Innis Taigh a' Mhanaich and introduced the occupiers’ faith to the local Picts at all costs. Likewise, then, Saint Columba was exiled to Scotland from Ireland following conflicts with the nations treasured poets. ‘He came—poet, warrior, angel-spirit—and softened the desolate hearts of warrior pagans, who, before his coming, lived and died for the little power they could exact from their petty kingdoms.’6

         We know that this history was written by the biased victors, because ‘Neither Gregory nor Bede, both of whom came to be revered as Fathers of the Church, were passive observers of the conversion process. On the contrary, both men were active participants in the eradication of error amongst the English; error whose detail they had no interest or incentive to describe empirically.’7 So, the Roman faith won out against the lands’ native barbarians, and legend would remember how Britain and Ireland were gladly relieved of their snakes.

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‘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.’8

 

At the zenith of Saint Columba’s career, one-hundred years after the warriors of Lupercal retreated from Britain, a mighty winter arrived and smothered the island nation. Around 536AD, the first hints of Fimbulvetr—a mythological three-year long winter signalling the start of Ragnarök in Sturluson’s Vafþrúðnismál—were felt by Northern peoples. Without warning, an unprecedented tidal wave hit the British Isles from the North Sea. A great deluge crashed into the North-East coasts of Scotland and Ireland, while utterly smothering the islands of Faroes, Orkney, Shetland, and Stornoway.

         The fury of the abandoned gods seemed to swell against the coastal lands in a wave said to reach ‘400M [inland, with an] elevation of 5.6M above high tide.’9 If the tides swelled at night, thousands of sleeping villagers living along shorelines would have drowned in their beds. In a daytime flood, people working across homes and fields might have had chance to flee further inland, but much of these hamlets’ working adults—surely out to sea or grafting on beaches at the time—will have instantly perished.

 

‘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?’10

 

Swiftly following the ruinous wave—and possibly born from the same geological activity—came a thick blanket of smog. That moment saw the start of a ten-year string of volcanic eruptions, leading to a decade-spanning build-up of ash, carbon dioxide, and sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere. The three volcanoes’ emissions combined in the lower atmosphere and brought about a state of temporary global cooling, called the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA). In Iceland, the first of these volcanoes—or fjala in Old Norse—awoke and spewed its ejecta across Europe. The skies of Britain darkened in a matter of days. Months after the Icelandic eruption, forage yields fell, animals starved, and a harrowing cold set in as an awful, mighty winter; the Fimbulvetr, started its deadly reign.

         Subsistence communities thriving outside of Britain’s post-Roman settlements, most commonly the proscribed native pagans, faced starvation and strife. The lowering of global temperatures from volcanic smog meant that, ‘In the following years, war and famine fed on each other and the unusually bountiful harvest of 535AD was consumed without replacement. In 541AD large portions of the human population began to die from hunger, disease, and warfare, so much so that the number of Europeans fell to its lowest between classical and modern times.’11 In desperate efforts to survive rapid climate change, the island’s indigenous populations either sought refuge in the Roman cities, or came together to form new settlements mimicking those of the old occupiers.

​

‘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.’12

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The Roman Empire then unwittingly launched a final attack against the dwindling Britons. As the volcanic smog cleared by 550AD, and seasons across the British Isles returned to normal, the Plague of Justinian slowly crept in from the South. Vital imports from Southern Europe and Western Asia, necessary for British survival during the LALIA, carried with them the bacterium Yersinia Pestis. Without the large-scale food preservation, storage, or medical infrastructure of the larger Anglo cities, the tribal Britons’ hamlets and villages relied heavily on infected imports to survive. The British people were beset by a demon of the flesh as they struggled to feed themselves. A bacterial powder keg quickly exploded and within a matter of years, Northern Europe was gripped by bubonic plague.

         In the Britons’ newer towns where more pastoral lives were led side-by-side with livestock, plague ran rampant. Native losses from Yersinia Pestis alone, ignoring the frost and piety, were catastrophic. An already ravaged population fell further ‘when the plague reached Britain in boats from mainland Europe, it killed up to half of the native British population but left the English [post-Roman] colonists largely unscathed.’13 Death seemed to be waiting in every shadow and in the heart of every keep. The sheer loss of numbers led communities, belief systems, and folk traditions to perish.

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‘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.’14

 

Finally, the post-Roman fort-towns of Londinium (London), Pons Aelius (Newcastle), and Eboracum (York) swelled with desperate immigration. People sought out the safety and security offered by larger cities. Elsewhere, Saxon, Nordic, and Jute settlers intermingled with the dwindling tribes of Britain to bolster newfound towns. Beormas (Birmingham), Djúra-bý (Derby), and en Troshynt Stoc (Stoke-on-Trent) were fortified in the names of survival and land reclamation. As old towns expanded to account for their growing numbers, and newer cities claimed evermore space to meet their basic needs, territorial wars were inevitable.

         Between 570AD and 590AD, six colossal battles reduced the country’s dwindling populations even further. Arfderydd, Alclud Ford, Bedcanford, Deorham, Raith, and Woden’s Barrow were all raised in bloody war. Thousands died in unnecessary resource grabs and cultural clashes. The warlords who led these conflicts would go down in legend. Many congealed together under the mythological moniker of King Arthur, such Arther Dux Bellorum from the Historica Britanum and Ceni bei ef Artur. The impact of these conflicts, stacked atop an untold number of deaths from climate change, pestilence, and proscription, formed a final death knell for the native Britons, Picts, and Na hÉireann. By 600AD, feudal Christian domination bought an end to Ragnarök. The truth of this era would live on in poetry and fantastic narratives as a prophesy of a cultural extinction; the death of the Northern gods.

 

‘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.

‘Brothers shall fight | and fell each other,’15

 

Would you know yet more?

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References

1 Henry Adams Bellows. ‘Völuspá’ Poetic Edda. (New Jersey: Princeton University Press; 1936). Stanza 39. https://www.voluspa.org/voluspa36-40.htm

2 Pharr C. The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions. (New Jersey: Princeton University Press; 1952). Page 16.5.62.

3 Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. ‘Proscription’ Encyclopaedia Britannica. (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica; 2012). https://www.britannica.com/topic/proscription.

4 Bellows. ‘Völuspá’ Poetic Edda. (1936). Stanza 45.

5 St. Patrick. Confessio. (Ireland: Royal Irish Academy; 2011). https://www.confessio.ie/etexts/confessio_english.

6 Wendy Murray. What is “The Columba Option,” and Who Was Saint Columba? (Massachusetts: Gordon Cornwell; 2024). https://www.gordonconwell.edu/blog/what-is-the-columba-option-and-who-was-saint-columba/

7 S. D. Church. ‘Paganism in Conversion-Age Anglo-Saxon England: The Evidence of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History Reconsidered’ History. (England: University of East Anglia; 2008). Vol. 93, No. 2 (310) https://www.jstor.org/stable/24428427

8 Bellows. ‘Völuspá’ Poetic Edda. (1936). Stanza 40.

9 Max Engel; Katharina, Hess; et al. ‘Sedimentary evidence of the Late Holocene tsunami in the Shetland Islands (UK) at Loch Flugarth, Northern Mainland’ Boreas. (New Jersey: Wiley; 2004). Volume 53, Issue 1 Page 2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374547260_Sedimentary_evidence_of_the_Late_Holocene_tsunami_in_the_Shetland_Islands_UK_at_Loch_Flugarth_northern_Mainland

10 Bellows. ‘Völuspá’ Poetic Edda. (1936). Stanza 41.

11 Joel D. Gunn. The Years Without Summer Tracing A.D. 536 and its Aftermath. (Oxford: Bar Publishing; 2000). Page 5.

12 Bellows. ‘Völuspá’ Poetic Edda. (1936). Stanza 42.

13 Unknown Author. The Plague That Made England. (London: The BJM Opinion; 2007). https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2007/04/10/the-plague-that-made-england/

14 Bellows. ‘Völuspá’ Poetic Edda. (1936). Stanza 43.

15 Bellows. ‘Völuspá’ Poetic Edda. (1936). Stanza 44.