by Neil Gaiman
Thor grunts in pain and then falls lifeless to the earth, poisoned by the creature he slew.
Odin will battle Fenrir bravely, but the wolf is more vast and more dangerous than anything could possibly be. It is bigger than the sun, bigger than the moon. Odin thrusts into its mouth with his spear, but one snap of Fenrir’s jaws, and the spear is gone. Another bite and a crunch and a swallow and Odin, the all-father, greatest and wisest of all the gods, is gone as well, never to be seen again.
Odin’s son Vidar, the silent god, the reliable god, will watch his father die. Vidar will stride forward, as Fenrir gloats over Odin’s death, and thrust his foot into the wolf’s lower jaw.
Vidar’s two feet are different. One of them has a normal shoe on it. The other wears a shoe that has been constructed since the dawn of time. It is assembled from all the bits of leather that people cut from the toes and the heels when they make shoes for themselves, and throw away.
(If you want to help the Aesir in the final battle, you should throw away your leather scraps. All thrown-out scraps and trimmings from shoes will become part of Vidar’s shoe.)
This shoe will hold the great wolf’s lower jaw down, so it cannot move. Then with one hand Vidar will reach up and grasp the wolf’s upper jaw and rip its mouth apart. In this way Fenrir will die, and so Vidar will avenge his father.
On the battlefield called Vigrid, the gods will fall in battle with the frost giants, and the frost giants will fall in battle with the gods. The undead troops from Hel will litter the ground in their final deaths, and the noble Einherjar will lie beside them on the frozen ground, all of them dead for the last time, beneath the lifeless misty sky, never to rise again, never to wake and fight.
Of Loki’s legions, only Loki himself will still be standing, bloodied and wild-eyed, with a satisfied smile on his scarred lips.
Heimdall, the watcher on the bridge, the gatekeeper of the gods, will also not have fallen. He will stand on the battlefield, his sword, Hofud, wet and bloody in his hand.
They walk toward each other across Vigrid, treading on corpses, wading through blood and flames to reach each other.
“Ah,” Loki will say. “The muddy-backed watchman of the gods. You woke the gods too late, Heimdall. Was it not delightful to watch them die, one by one?”
Loki will watch Heimdall’s face, looking for weakness, looking for emotion, but Heimdall will remain impassive.
“Nothing to say, Heimdall of the nine mothers? When I was bound beneath the ground, with the serpent’s poison dripping into my face, with poor Sigyn standing beside me trying to catch what venom she could in her bowl, bound in the darkness in the intestines of my son, all that kept me from madness was thinking of this moment, rehearsing it in my mind, imagining the days when my beautiful children and I would end the time of the gods and end the world.”
Heimdall will still say nothing, but he will strike, and strike hard, his sword crashing against Loki’s armor, and Loki will counter, and Loki will attack with fierceness and intelligence and glee.
As they fight, they will remember a time they battled long ago, when the world was simpler. They had fought in animal form, transformed into seals, competing to obtain the necklace of the Brisings: Loki had stolen it from Freya at Odin’s request, and Heimdall had retrieved it.
Loki never forgets an insult.
They will fight, and slash and stab and hack at each other.
They will fight, and they will fall, Heimdall and Loki, fall beside each other, each mortally wounded.
“It is done,” whispers Loki, dying on the battlefield. “I won.”
But Heimdall will grin then, in death, grin through golden teeth flecked with spittle and with blood. “I can see further than you,” Heimdall will tell Loki. “Odin’s son Vidar killed your son Fenris Wolf, and Vidar survives, and so does Odin’s son Vali, his brother. Thor is dead, but his children Magni and Modi still live. They took Mjollnir from their father’s cold hand. They are strong enough and noble enough to wield it.”
“None of this matters. The world is burning,” says Loki. “The mortals are dead. Midgard is destroyed. I have won.”
“I can see further than you can, Loki. I can see all the way to the world-tree,” Heimdall will tell him with his last breath. “Surtr’s fire cannot touch the world-tree, and two people have hidden themselves safely in the trunk of Yggdrasil. The woman is called Life, the man is called Life’s Yearning. Their descendants will populate the earth. It is not the end. There is no end. It is simply the end of the old times, Loki, and the beginning of the new times. Rebirth always follows death. You have failed.”
Loki would say something, something cutting and clever and hurtful, but his life will have gone, and all his brilliance, and all his cruelty, and he will say nothing, not ever again. He will lie still and cold beside Heimdall on the frozen battlefield.
Now Surtr, the burning giant, who was there before the beginning of all things, looks out at the vast plain of death and raises his bright sword to the heavens. There will be a sound like a thousand forests turning to flame, and the air itself will begin to burn.
The world will be cremated in Surtr’s flames. The flooding oceans steam. The last fires rage and flicker and then are extinguished. Black ash will fall from the sky like snow.
In the twilight, where Loki and Heimdall’s bodies once lay beside each other, nothing can be seen but two heaps of gray ash on the blackened earth, the smoke mingling with the mist of the morning. Nothing will remain of the armies of the living and of the dead, of the dreams of the gods and the bravery of their warriors, nothing but ash.
Soon after, the swollen ocean will swallow the ashes as it washes across all the land, and everything living will be forgotten under the sunless sky.
That is how the worlds will end, in ash and flood, in darkness and in ice. That is the final destiny of the gods.
II
That is the end. But there is also what will come after the end.
From the gray waters of the ocean, the green earth will arise once more.
The sun will have been eaten, but the sun’s daughter will shine in the place of her mother, and the new sun will shine even more brightly than the old, shine with young light and new.
The woman and the man, Life and Life’s Yearning, will come out from inside the ash tree that holds the worlds together. They will feed upon the dew on the green earth, and they will make love, and from their love will spring mankind.
Asgard will be gone, but Idavoll will stand where Asgard once stood, splendid and continual.
Odin’s sons Vidar and Vali will arrive in Idavoll. Next will come Thor’s sons, Modi and Magni. They will bring Mjollnir between them, because now that Thor is gone it will take two of them to carry it. Balder and Hod will return from the underworld, and the six of them will sit in the light of the new sun and talk among themselves, remembering mysteries and discussing what could have been done differently and whether the outcome of the game was inevitable.
They will talk of Fenrir, the wolf that ate the world, and of the Midgard serpent, and they will remember Loki, who was of the gods yet not of them, who saved the gods and who would have destroyed them.
And then Balder will say, “Hey. Hey, what’s that?”
“What?” asks Magni.
“There. Glittering in the long grass. Do you see it? And there. Look, it’s another of them.”
They go down on their knees then in the long grass, the gods like children.
Magni, Thor’s son, is the first to find one of the things in the long grass, and once he finds it, he knows what it is. It is a golden chess piece, the kind the gods played with when the gods still lived. It is a tiny golden carving of Odin, the all-father, on his high throne: the king.
They find more of them. Here is Thor, holding his hammer. There is Heimdall, his horn at his lips. Frigg, Odin’s wife, is the
queen.
Balder holds up a little golden statue. “That one looks like you,” Modi tells him.
“It is me,” says Balder. “It is me long ago, before I died, when I was of the Aesir.”
They will find other pieces in the grass, some beautiful, some less so. Here, half buried in the black soil, are Loki and his monstrous children. There is a frost giant. Here is Sutr, his face all aflame.
Soon they will find they have all the pieces they could ever need to make a full chess set. They arrange the pieces into a chess game: on the tabletop chessboard the gods of Asgard face their eternal enemies. The new-minted sunlight glints from the golden chessmen on this perfect afternoon.
Balder will smile, like the sun coming out, and reach down, and he will move his first piece.
And the game begins anew.
A GLOSSARY
Aegir: Greatest of the sea giants. Husband of Ran, father of nine daughters, who are the waves of the ocean.
Aesir: A race or tribe or branch of the gods. They live in Asgard.
Alfheim: One of the nine worlds, inhabited by the light elves.
Angrboda: A giantess, mother of Loki’s three monstrous children.
Asgard: Home of the Aesir. The realm of the gods.
Ask: The first man, made from an ash tree.
Audhumla: The first cow, whose tongue shaped the ancestor of the gods, and from whose teats ran rivers of milk.
Aurboda: A mountain giantess, mother of Gerd.
Balder: Known as “the beautiful.” Odin’s second son, loved by all but Loki.
Barri, isle of: An island on which Frey and Gerd get married.
Baugi: A giant, the brother of Suttung.
Beli: A giant. Frey kills him with a stag’s antler.
Bergelmir: Ymir’s grandson. Bergelmir and his wife were the only giants to survive the flood.
Bestla: Mother of Odin, Vili, and Ve, and wife of Bor. Daughter of a giant called Bolthorn. Sister of Mimir.
Bifrost: The rainbow bridge that joins Asgard to Midgard.
Bodn: One of two mead vats made to hold the mead of poetry. The other is Son.
Bolverkr: One of the names Odin calls himself when in disguise.
Bor: A god. Buri’s son, married to Bestla. Father of Odin, Vili, and Ve.
Bragi: God of poetry.
Breidablik: Balder’s home, a place of joy and music and knowledge.
Brisings, necklace of the: A shining necklace belonging to Freya.
Brokk: A dwarf capable of making great treasures. Brother of Eitri.
Buri: The ancestor of the gods, father to Bor, grandfather of Odin.
Draupnir: Odin’s golden arm-ring which, every nine nights, produces eight arm-rings of equal beauty and value.
Egil: A farmer, the father of Thialfi and Roskva.
Einherjar: The noble dead who died bravely in battle, and who now feast and battle in Valhalla.
Eitri: A dwarf who forges great treasures, including Thor’s hammer. Brother of Brokk.
Elli: An old nurse who is, in fact, old age.
Embla: The first woman, made from an elm tree.
Farbauti: Loki’s father, a giant. “He who strikes dangerous blows.”
Fenrir or Fenris Wolf: A wolf. Loki’s son with Angrboda.
Fimbulwinter: The winter before Ragnarok, which does not end.
Fjalar: The brother of Galar and murderer of Kvasir.
Fjolnir: Son of Frey and Gerd and first king of Sweden.
Franang’s Falls: High waterfall where Loki hid himself in the guise of salmon.
Frey: A god of the Vanir, who lives with the Aesir. Freya’s brother.
Freya: A goddess of the Vanir, who lives with the Aesir. Frey’s sister.
Frigg: Odin’s wife, the queen of the gods. Mother of Balder.
Fulla: A goddess, Frigg’s handmaiden.
Galar: One of the dark elves. Brother of Fjalar and murderer of Kvasir.
Garm: A monstrous hound, who kills and is killed by Tyr at Ragnarok.
Gerd: A radiantly beautiful giantess, loved by Frey.
Gilling: A giant, killed by Fjalar and Galar, and father of Suttung and Baugi.
Ginnungagap: A yawning gap between Muspell (the fire world) and Niflheim (the mist world) at the beginning of creation.
Gjallerhorn: Heimdall’s horn, kept by Mimir’s well.
Gleipnir: Magical chain forged by dwarfs and used by the gods to bind Fenrir.
Grimnir: “The hooded one.” A name for Odin.
Grinder: Tanngnjóstr, or “teeth-grinder.” One of the two goats who pull Thor’s chariot.
Gullenbursti: The golden boar made for Frey by the dwarfs.
Gungnir: Odin’s spear. It never misses its mark, and oaths made on Gungnir are unbreakable.
Gunnlod: A giantess, the daughter of Suttung, set to guard the mead of poetry.
Gymir: An earth giant, Gerd’s father.
Heidrun: A goat that gives mead instead of milk. She feeds the dead in Valhalla.
Heimdall: The watchman of the gods, far-seeing.
Hel: Loki’s daughter with Angrboda. She rules Hel, the realm of the shameful dead, who did not die nobly in battle.
Hermod the Nimble: A son of Odin. He rides Sleipnir to beg Hel to release Balder.
Hlidskjalf: Odin’s throne, from which he can see the nine worlds.
Hod: Balder’s brother, a blind god.
Hoenir: An old god, who gave humans the gift of reason. One of the Aesir, sent to the Vanir to be their king.
Hrym: The leader of the frost giants at Ragnarok.
Hugi: A young giant, able to run faster than anything. In reality, thought itself.
Huginn: One of Odin’s two ravens. Its name means “thought.”
Hvergelmir: A spring in Niflheim, beneath Yggdrasil, that is the origin of many other rivers and streams.
Hymir: A king of the giants.
Hyrrokkin: A giantess, even stronger than Thor.
Idavoll: The “splendid plain,” on which Asgard was built, and to which the surviving gods will return after Ragnarok.
Idunn: A goddess of the Aesir. She is the keeper of the apples of immortality, which give the gods eternal youth.
Ivaldi: One of the dark elves. The sons of Ivaldi crafted Skidbladnir, Frey’s remarkable ship, Gungnir, Odin’s spear, and new, beautiful golden hair for Sif, Thor’s wife.
Jord: Thor’s mother, a giantess, who was also a goddess of the earth.
Jormungundr: The Midgard serpent. One of Loki’s children and Thor’s nemesis.
Jotunheim: Jotun means giant, and Jotunheim is the realm of the giants.
Kvasir: A god formed from the mixture of the spittle of the Aesir and the Vanir, he became a god of wisdom. Kvasir was murdered by dwarfs, who made the mead of poetry from his blood. Later, he came back to life.
Laufey: The mother of Loki. Also called Nal, or needle, because she was so thin.
Lerad: A tree, probably part of Yggdrasil, which fed Heidrun, the goat that gives her mead to the warriors of Valhalla.
Lit: An unfortunate dwarf.
Loki: Odin’s blood brother, the son of Farbauti and of Laufey. The shrewdest, most cunning of all the inhabitants of Asgard. He is a shapeshifter, and his lips are scarred. He has shoes that allow him to walk in the sky.
Magni: Thor’s son, “the strong.”
Megingjord: Thor’s belt of might. Wearing it doubles his strength.
Midgard: “Middle yard.” Our world. The realm of humans.
Midgard serpent: Jormungundr.
Mimir: Odin’s uncle and keeper of the spring of wisdom in Jotunheim. A giant, perhaps also one of the Aesir. He was decapitated by the Vanir, and his head still gives wisdom and watches over the spring.
Mimir’s
well: A spring or well at the roots of the world-tree. Odin traded an eye to take a sip of its water, scooped up in Heimdall’s Gjallerhorn.
Mjollnir: Thor’s remarkable hammer and most prized possession, made for him by Eitri. (Brokk worked the bellows.)
Modgud: “Furious Battler.” She was the guardian of the bridge that leads to the land of the dead.
Modi: Thor’s son, “the brave.”
Muninn: One of Odin’s ravens. Its name means “memory.”
Muspell: The fiery world that exists at the beginning of creation. One of the nine worlds.
Naglfar: A ship, built from the untrimmed finger- and toenails of the dead. The giants and the dead from Hel who will battle the gods and the Einherjar at Ragnarok will travel on this ship.
Nal: “Needle.” Another name for Laufey, Loki’s mother.
Narfi: Loki and Sigyn’s son, Vali’s brother.
Nidavellir, also called Svartalfheim: Where the dwarfs (also known as dark elves) live beneath the mountains.
Nidhogg: A dragon who devours corpses and chews on the roots of Yggdrasil.
Niflheim: A cold, misty place, there at the start of everything.
Njord: A god of the Vanir, father of Frey and Freya.
Norns: The three sisters, Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld, who tend the well of Urd, or fate, and water the roots of Yggdrasil, the world-tree. They, along with other norns, decide what will happen in your life.
Odin: The highest and oldest of the gods. He wears a cloak and a hat and only has one eye, having traded the other for wisdom. He has many other names including all-father, Grimnir, and the gallows god.
Odrerir: A kettle for brewing the mead of poetry. “Ecstasy-giver.”
Ran: Wife of Aegir the sea giant, goddess of those who drown at sea, mother of the nine waves.
Ratatosk: A squirrel who lives in the branches of Yggdrasil and takes messages from Nidhogg the corpse-devourer at the roots to an eagle who lives in the upper branches.
Rati: The auger or drill of the gods.
Roskva: Sister of Thialfi, Thor’s human servant.