The order of the world breaks
Völuspá presents a seeress’s vision of a final crisis. Human bonds collapse into violence, warning sounds spread across the worlds, and Yggdrasil trembles. The wolf escapes restraint. Hrymr comes from the east, the serpent churns the sea, and Surtr advances with fire. The poem moves rapidly among scenes rather than supplying a complete military timetable.
Odin faces the wolf and falls. His son Víðarr avenges him by driving a sword into the creature’s heart in Bellows’s text. Thor confronts the serpent and takes nine steps before dying. The sun darkens, the earth sinks into the sea, and fire reaches the sky. The defenders do not escape the fate they have anticipated.
Source: The Poetic Edda (1923 translation) · Völuspá 44–58
The prose assembles a fuller sequence
Gylfaginning joins poetic material into a more continuous account. It adds named pairings: Týr and Garmr kill one another, as do Loki and Heimdall. Thor kills the serpent but dies from its venom. Víðarr kills the wolf by tearing its jaws apart, with the aid of a specially thick shoe, rather than using the sword described in Völuspá.
These are not merely different spellings of the same information. The exact mechanism and the set of combatants change. Snorri also quotes poetry that does not always match his prose detail, showing that the surviving book contains an act of compilation rather than a perfectly uniform system. The graph below highlights the change in Víðarr’s action and the additional prose pairings.
Sources: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing); The Poetic Edda (1923 translation) · Gylfaginning, chapter XVI, §§55–56 in Anderson; Völuspá 53–56
After the end
Destruction is followed by another vision: the earth rises green, the gods remember the old world, and Baldr returns. In the prose account, surviving divine sons inherit their fathers’ world and Thor’s hammer. Líf and Lífþrasir, a human pair preserved in shelter, become ancestors of a renewed humanity; that survival is also described in Vafþrúðnismál.
This is neither a simple victory for the gods nor an absolute extinction of everything. The relationship between its renewal imagery and Christian ideas has long invited debate. Medieval Icelandic preservation means Christian and pre-Christian intellectual settings cannot be cleanly separated by assertion. It does not license treating every detail as a disguised Christian doctrine, either. The atlas presents the extant witnesses and their differences, leaving uncertain historical layers uncertain. Ragnarök belongs to narrative time: the manuscripts do not supply a calendar date for the end of the world.
Sources: The Poetic Edda (1923 translation); The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Völuspá 59–66; Vafþrúðnismál 44–53; Gylfaginning, chapter XVII, §§57–58
One story, different sources
Choose a textual witness. The summary, diagram, and cited connections below change together. This is a selective map of claims, not a complete family tree.
Völuspá · visionary poem
Víðarr avenges Odin with a sword. Thor dies after facing the serpent. This selected poetic sequence does not narrate the Týr–Garmr or Loki–Heimdall duels.
Source: The Poetic Edda (1923 translation) · Völuspá 53–56
Cited connections 4
Wolf causes his fall Odin
Source: The Poetic Edda (1923 translation) · Völuspá 53
Víðarr pierces heart with sword Wolf
Source: The Poetic Edda (1923 translation) · Völuspá 54
Thor fights Serpent
Source: The Poetic Edda (1923 translation) · Völuspá 55–56
Serpent causes death after nine steps Thor
Source: The Poetic Edda (1923 translation) · Völuspá 56
Gylfaginning · prose synthesis
Víðarr tears the wolf’s jaws apart. The prose specifies reciprocal deaths for Týr and Garmr, and for Loki and Heimdall, alongside Thor’s killing of the serpent.
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Gylfaginning, chapter XVI, §56
Cited connections 6
Fenrir swallows Odin
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Gylfaginning, chapter XVI, §56
Víðarr tears jaws apart Fenrir
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Gylfaginning, chapter XVI, §56
Thor kills Jörmungandr
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Gylfaginning, chapter XVI, §56
Jörmungandr poisons fatally Thor
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Gylfaginning, chapter XVI, §56
Týr mutually fatal combat Garmr
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Gylfaginning, chapter XVI, §56
Loki mutually fatal combat Heimdall
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Gylfaginning, chapter XVI, §56
See what differs across the witnesses
Völuspá · visionary poem
Víðarr avenges Odin with a sword. Thor dies after facing the serpent. This selected poetic sequence does not narrate the Týr–Garmr or Loki–Heimdall duels.
Source: The Poetic Edda (1923 translation) · Völuspá 53–56
Gylfaginning · prose synthesis
Víðarr tears the wolf’s jaws apart. The prose specifies reciprocal deaths for Týr and Garmr, and for Loki and Heimdall, alongside Thor’s killing of the serpent.
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Gylfaginning, chapter XVI, §56
- Period / witness
- Poetic Edda witnesses chiefly thirteenth century CE; Prose Edda composed c.1220 and preserved in later copies. Mythic events are undated.
- Recording context
- Medieval Icelandic textual preservation; the principal Poetic Edda manuscript, Codex Regius, dates to c.1270. Recording and copying locations do not establish the birthplace of a story.
A recording location is not necessarily a story’s origin. Dates of texts, copies, and translations answer different questions.
Explore time & place →Read the sources
These references support the explanation above. Rights and edition notes are recorded individually.
The Poetic Edda (1923 translation) ↗
Anonymous Old Norse poets; translated by Henry Adams Bellows (1885–1939) · 1923 translation; medieval poems preserved principally in manuscripts of the thirteenth century
Edition & rights noteThe Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) ↗
Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241); translated by Rasmus B. Anderson (1846–1936) · 1901 printing of Anderson’s translation (copyright 1879); medieval work composed in Iceland around the 1220s
Edition & rights note