RAGNARÖK AS A COSMOGONY

RAGNARÖK AS A COSMOGONY Jan A. Kozák, PhD. Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Faculty of Arts Charles University in Prague

Dear Colleagues, I would like to talk today about the Old Norse ragnarök from the perspective of a scholar in religious studies. I will try to offer new perspective on the topic and I hope you’ll find the interpretations provocative enough to inspire a debate :-)

0.0 Structure The talk will be structured roughly into three parts which I hope will connect in the end – first I’ll look at the motif of the sound of the beginning and the end, then to the structural comparison of ON cosmogonic and eschatologic motifs and finally I’ll try to contextualize the proposed interpretation within the framework of existing interpretations and show what does it imply.

0.1 Context, Sources, Theme Before I start, I should make just a brief excursus into the historical context and the nature of sources, just for the sake of good manners: As you all probably know, our knowledge of ON mythology is based on poems and prosaic works written down on Iceland two hundred years or more after the christianization, which took place around the year one thousand. The majority of the eddic and skaldic poems were composed and transmitted orally sometimes for hundreds of years before they were written down, nevertheless the exact dating of (especially) the eddic poems is still being debated. One of the prominent themes of the ON mythology is ragnarök, the eschatological battle of the gods against the monsters and giants followed by the beginning of a new cosmos. The name ragnarök can be translated as „the fate of the powers“ but a less common variant version ragnarökr means „the

1

twilight of the powers“ which is nowadays the favourite rendering in the popular culture.

1.0 Sound - Shofar I’m going to start with the passage that originally inspired this paper, which is a psychoanalytical interpretation of sound of shofar, I quote from Slavoj Žižek’s book The Indivisible Remainder: „In a classical essay from the 1920s, Theodor Reik drew attention to the painfully low and uninterrupted trumpeting of the shofar, a horn used in the Yom Kippur evening ritual which marks the end of the day of meditations. Reik links the sound of the shofar to the Freudian problematic of the primordial crime of parricide (from Totem and Taboo): he interprets the horrifyingly turgid and leaden drone of the shofar, which evokes an uncanny mixture of pain and enjoyment, as the last vestige of the primordial father's life-substance, as the endlessly prolonged scream of the suffering-dying-impotent-humiliated father.“ Those freudians, aren’t they cute!

1.1 Sound – Old Norse However biased by the freudian framework this observation points out the motif of the magnificent or terrifying sound and connects it with the cosmogonic sacrifice. When I read this passage I recalled several disconnected facts like the fact that during the classical greek animal sacrifice there was a collective scream at the very moment of the killing of the victim, which can be complemented by the fact that every animal finds a voice in its violent death, (that is the animal usually screams or cries as it is killed). Then I turned to the Old Norse mythology itself and looked at the motif of the mighty sound in the context of cosmogonic and eschatologic killing. In the case of eschatology, the search didn’t take long, because the description of ragnarök in the famous eddic poem Völuspá is filled with the imagery of strange sounds: the ominous cocks are crowing, the monstrous wolfs are howling, the god Heimdallr blows his mighty horn and the world tree Yggdrasill 2

itself is emitting a scream: Skelfr yggdrasils askr standandi, ymr iþ aldna tré (stanza 47), „the Yggdrasil’s ash is shaking, the old tree is howling“. Here the verb describing the sound is ymja, „to cry, howl, echo, resound“. This verb brings us back to the cosmogony. According to eddic poems and Snorra Edda in the beginning there was a gigantic being called Ymir which was the forefather of the race of jötnar (usually translated as „giants”). He was killed by the god Ódinn and his two brothers, the divine triad, and his slaughter or sacrifice was the beginning of the ordered cosmos, because the parts of the universe like the mountains, seas, clouds etc. were created from parts of his body. He had so much blood in his veins that his exsanguination caused the flood which exterminated almost all giants with the exception of one who survived it using a strange instrument that will be discussed later. Now the name Ymir has a well known etymology from the IE root yem- with the meaning „twin“ (I hope it didn’t change while I wasn’t looking :-). However from the vernacular point of view this („twin“) etymology is not transparent. The apparent relationship within the Old Norse language provides us with a clear association of the name Ymir with the aforementioned verb ymja, „to cry, howl“, so for the tradents of the culture the name would clearly mean something like „Crier, Howler, Bellower“. The emic validity of this semantic etymology (to use the term coined by Johannes Bronkhorst) is further illustrated by the fact that Ymir has several other appelatives (called heiti in ON) which associate him with the same idea of shouting or howling (for example the name Brimir, meaning „Roarer“ and others). Is it hard to tell in what exact sense was the howling or roaring connected to this primordial being, whether it was because of his dying howl or because the oceans of blood rushing forth from his veins were roaring, but the close connection of mighty sound with the primordial victim is clear. This interesting association of motifs connect the beginning of the world with its end, but the connection of those two points of mythical time is nothing new in itself. The idea that the end is somehow repetition of the beginning was even explicitly expressed by the author of the old norse prophetic poem Völuspá, where similar descripitons and similar verses repeat at the beginning of the poem and then at the new beginning after the ragnarök. Sér hún upp koma öðru sinni jörð ór aegi iðjagraena She sees rising for the second time 3

the earth from the ocean (Völuspá, stanza 59)

green again

So there is a general and vague idea of repetition, of an end followed by new beginning. I would like to show, that there is much more to it, not just the basic idea of a cycle, but that the beginning and the end of the old norse mythological saeculum have very similar structure. So let’s have a look at it.

2.0 The Sequence According to both Snorri and Völuspá in the beginning there was an immense gap or abyss called ginnunga gap, this gap gaped open between two extremes of fire and ice, then emerged the primordial giant Ymir, which was later killed by the first gods, the divine triad, and his blood caused a cosmic deluvium, flood which drowned all giants except certain Bergelmir and his wife, who survived the deluge in or on something called lúðr in old norse. Lúðr can mean several things like „trumpet“ (originally made of hollowed out wood) or „flourbin“ (that is wooden vessel used for collecting flour under the mill). The common denominator of these various concrete instruments is the principle of hollow wood or hollow tree-trunk. Now let’s fast forward to the end times. There at the start of the ragnarök the universe starts to decay and all the bonds and shackles disintegrate, which leads to the freeing of the representants of destruction, especially the cosmic Wolf, who, according to Snorri „comes with jaws wide agape, his lower jaw unto the earth and the upper jaw unto the heaven; he would gape even more, if there were any space left“. Then comes the final battle where all the principal gods, the divine triad, are killed, the forces of destruction prevail and the world is first scorched by fire and then comes the flood which kills all humans except a certain Lífþrasir and his wife Líf who survive the deluvium hidden in Hoddmímis holt, the Wood of Hoddmímir. We don’t know much about this strange place, the word „wood“ is ambivalent, the same counts for the original old norse holt, which can mean both single tree, single piece of wood or a whole forest, but to me it seems far more probable that the intended image was that of single hollowed out tree trunk (or somehow the cosmic tree itself because one of its names, Mímameiðr, connects it with Hoddmímir), however it may be similar to the instrument used by Bergelmir during the first flood. 4

Now we can see the whole pattern consisting of a series of symbolic images: 1) first we have a giant gap yawning between the two extremes 2) second comes the cosmic killing of the representant of the previous dominant order 3) third: somewhere around the killing either before or during it we hear the mighty sound, be it scream, howl or roar 4) fourth: then comes the flood which kills all the remaining representants of the previous dominant order with the exception of one pair 5) fifth: the last pair survives the flood or the general destruction hidden in a hollow tree trunk What is interesting about the sequence is that what changes is the „representants of the dominant order“, whereas in the previous age it was Ymir and his giant offspring, in the mythically present age it is gods and their human offspring and worshippers. Structurally they are parallels but they are described differently, because the scene is described from the point of view of the gods and their human worshippers. So the rulers of the previous age become giants and monsters because they are opponents of the rulers of the current age. So the story is the same only in the first case described through the eyes of the winners and in the second case described through the eyes of the losers. Thus we come to the interpretation of the ragnarök as the same process as creation, only seen from opposite, that is complementary, perspective. This intepretation explains also the well known fact that during the heroic last stand of ragnarök two of the gods are performing deeds that have their comparative parallels in indian or mesopotamian cosmogony, rather then eschatology. The nine steps of Þórr and Víðar’s widening of the unwidenable jaws of the wolf are usually compared to Viśnu’s three steps or Marduk’s splitting of Tiámat into two halves. The two gods, the „Widener“ and the „NineStepper“ perform those acts of creation because at that moment it directly and fully is the Cosmogony, not a repetition of it or an echo of it, but the cosmogony as such, only seen from the other side.

5

3.0 The Conclusion The myth of ragnarök was interpreted in many ways during the scholarly history. ̶ It was interpreted as a mythical reflection of seasonal ritual of regenerating nature in the Frazerian sense ̶ It was interpreted as a reflection of the milleninal expectations inspired by christianity ̶ It was interpreted naturalistically as an impression inspired by volcanic eruption on Iceland ̶ It was interpreted in Max-Müllerian sense as a sunset-sunrise imagery, the death and rebirth of the sun, the source of light and life ̶ It was interpreted as a mythical articulation of the end of an era, saeculum, cultural milieu, the pre-christian tradition itself ̶ The jungians would interpret it as a symbol of personal transformations, symbolic death, nigredo, and rebirth in the alchemical process of individuation ̶ And freudians would of course stress the oedipal aspect of the killing of the father figures and the survival of the young generation and we could go on and on... As can be seen, my interpretation is of a different kind: I am not trying to say where did the mythematic cluster of ragnarök come from or what does it truly mean. I am just trying to stress the repeating pattern that connects the cosmogony with the eschatology. I want to show that even if the numerous motifs and the overall atmosphere of the old norse cosmogony and eschatology are different, there are certain parts and structures that are „rhyming“ so to say. These are the five motives I mentioned above. What do these „rhyming“ elements show? Why are they repeating at both ends of time? My guess would be that they are there because they connect the cosmogony and eschatology to two important phenomena: initiation and sacrifice. 1) Initiation: The water symbolism of the flood and its overcoming is typical for the initiatory journeys of norse gods and heroes. The hero must go across or through the watery barrier as a part of his initiation.

6

2) Sacrifice: The killing of the „old king(s)“ is there because it makes sense in the context of symbolism of sacrifice. Communal sacrifice and communal feast is exactly a little cosmogony, a killing of a victim, followed by happy feasting on its body. With this associations I am not trying to rule out the other interpretations, even the ones that went out of fashion. I think there is truth in all of them in the sense that I believe that the function of myth is to function as a mirror. Myths developed as fine tuned structures that provoke many emotions and can accomodate many interpretations. Every myth has its family of interpretations made from different perspectives which, if reflected consciously as a product of reflective ability of mythical structure, can help us understand the core of a given myth. I hope my interpretation might contribute to the understanding of the reflective core of the ragnarök myth. Thank you for your attention! :-)

7