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  The twilight of the gods began, according to the Scandinavian account, after the human race had become foul murderers, perjurers, and sinners, shedding each other’s blood. Humanity’s descent into depravity is a common theme in catastrophe myths that generally stress that divine intervention was necessary to purge the world of a wicked or evil strain of humanity.

  Thus the scene is set for the coming destruction, and shortly afterward a terrible sight is seen in the skies—the wolf named Sköll opens its jaws and eats the sun. “That is, the Comet strikes the sun, or approaches so close to it that it seems to do so,”4 was how Donnelly put it.

  The Edda tells us next how another wolf named Hati Hróðvitnisson (his first name means “he who hates, enemy”5) devours the moon: “and this, too, will cause great mischief. Then the stars shall be hurled from the heavens, and the earth shall be shaken so violently that trees will be torn up by the roots, the tottering mountains will tumble headlong from their foundations, and all bonds and fetters will be shivered to pieces.”6

  These words Donnelly saw as describing the appearance of a second comet, its blazing debris now falling to earth, causing absolute devastation.7 There is a hint here also of the loosening of the bonds that hold up the sky pole, or world pillar, preventing the world from falling apart.

  After this the monster known as the Fenris Wolf, the offspring of the trickster god Loki, breaks free of his shackles, which had held him firm up to this time (see figure 15.1 on below), prompting Donnelly to comment: “This, we shall see, is the name of one of the comets.”8 Fenris himself is the father of Sköll and Hati, wolves that pursue and devour the sun and moon.

  THE MIDGARD SERPENT

  The account of Ragnarök continues: “The sea rushes over the earth, for the Midgard-serpent writhes in giant rage, and seeks to gain the land.”9 This is a mythical snake that curls around the base of the world tree, known as Yggdrasil, which unites heaven, earth (Midgard), and underworld. The Midgard Serpent is for Donnelly “the name of another comet; it strives to reach the earth; its proximity disturbs the oceans.”10 However, once again we can see here the actions of a terrible monster intent on destroying the physical world by bringing about the downfall of Yggdrasil, the Norse form of the world pillar.

  We are told next that the “Fenris-wolf advances and opens his enormous mouth; the lower jaw reaches to the earth and the upper one to heaven, and he would open it still wider had he room to do so. Fire flashes from his eyes and nostrils. The Midgard-serpent, placing himself by the side of the Fenris-wolf, vomits forth floods of poison, which fill the air and the waters.”11

  Figure 15.1. The Fenris Wolf bound with magical cord, from a seventeenth-century Icelandic manuscript in the possession of the Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland. Note the Van River emerging from the creature’s mouth.

  These then, the Fenris Wolf and the Midgard Serpent, are to be seen as the two principal comets of destruction, side by side, Donnelly suggested, “like Biela’s two fragments, and they give out poison—the carbureted-hydrogen gas revealed by the spectroscope.”12

  Biela was the name given to a short-period comet first recorded in 1772 and observed again in 1805. It was not, however, recognized as being the same object until 1822, when Wilhelm von Biela, an army officer from Vienna, finally identified it as a periodic comet with an orbit of just 6.6 years. During its appearance in 1852 the comet split in two, prompting Donnelly’s comment about the two comet fragments moving together.

  Biela’s comet was never seen again, and presumably it has now broken up into undetectable pieces that periodically fall to earth as harmless meteors whenever the earth passes through the orbit of its remaining fragments. Illustrations of the comet after its breakup into two separate fragments make for a very ominous picture indeed (see figure 15.2), helping us to understand the dread that the appearance of such celestial bodies might have instilled in the peoples of former ages.

  After this time the Prose Edda states that “Surt rides first, and before and behind him flames burning fire. His sword outshines the sun itself. Bifrost (the rainbow), as they ride over it, breaks to pieces.”13 Surt is said to have been a fire giant, although for Donnelly it is the “blazing nucleus of the comet,”14 with swords being common metaphors for comets. For example, an illustration of comet types in Johannes Hevelius’s Cometographia, published in 1668, shows them as swords and daggers of various shapes and sizes (see figure 15.3 on p. 140).

  Figure 15.2. Biela’s comet in 1846, soon after it split in two.

  THE MONSTROUS REGIMENT

  The Prose Edda account reveals next how the monstrous regiment “direct their course to the battle-field called Vigrid. Thither repair also the Fenris-wolf and the Midgard-serpent, and Loki with all the followers of Hel, and Hrym with all the frost-giants.”15

  For Donnelly this implied that “all these evil forces, the comets, the fire, the devil, and death, have taken possession of the great plain, the heart of the civilized land. The scene is located in this spot, because probably it was from this spot the legends were afterward dispersed to all the world.”16

  This is an interesting statement since it supposes that somewhere in the ancient world there existed a heartland, a place where all these great tragedies were played out and witnessed by those who survived this tumultuous ordeal.

  BATTLE OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS

  It is after this time that the gods, as the defenders of the world, begin to fight back and start to win the day against the hellish terrors, although not without casualties on their own side. Heimdal, the guardian of Bifrost Bridge, blows the Gjallarhorn, which had been hidden beneath Yggdrasil. It awakens the gods, allowing the battle of Ragnarök to commence. The sky god Odin takes flight to Mimir’s Well, a sacred pool at the foot of Yggdrasil. Here lurks the head of his friend Mimir, which he asks to grant him advice. After that we are told the “ash Yggdrasil begins to quiver, nor is there anything in heaven or on earth that does not fear and tremble in that terrible hour.”17 It is a hint once more that the world pillar is being shaken, tilted even, by the events transpiring both on the ground and in the air.

  Figure 15.3. A page from Johannes Hevelius’s Cometographia of 1668 showing comets as daggers and swords.

  Thereafter, the gods enter Vigrid and engage in battle: “That day the dog Garm, that had been chained in the Gnipa-cave, breaks loose. He is the most fearful monster of all, and attacks Tyr, and they kill each other.”18 At the same time, the god Thor is able to slay the Midgard Serpent but dies as a consequence of the poisonous venom the monster breathes on him. Inevitably, Donnelly saw Garm, described as a bloodstained hound that guards “Hel’s gate,” as alluding to yet another comet fragment.19 Its appearance marks the entry of a fourth canid into the Ragnarök story.

  THE EARTH SINKS

  At this point in the battle Odin takes on the Fenris Wolf but is swallowed by the monster, which he himself had helped to rear (is this “because Odin had a connection with wolves?” asks one commentator20). On seeing the death of his father, Odin’s son Víðarr rushes at the beast and, wearing a magic boot prepared specially for the confrontation, stamps his foot into the Fenris Wolf ’s mouth and holds open its lower jaw. He then uses brute force to pull up on the beast’s jaw, an action that brings about its instant demise (see figure 15.4).

  Figure 15.4. Shaft of the Gosforth Cross in Cumbria, England, showing Odin’s son Víðarr killing the Fenris Wolf. Note its knotted serpentine tail.

  The Fenris Wolf ’s father, Loki, comes up against the god Heimdal, and they kill each other, at which: “Surt flings fire and flame over the world. Smoke wreathes up around the all-nourishing tree (Yggdrasil), the high names play against the heavens, and earth consumed sinks down beneath the sea.”21 Once more, this is a clear sign of some kind of global conflagration, as well as an all-encompassing deluge that begins to engulf the earth, making it appear as if it is sinking beneath the waves.

  THE FIMBUL-WINTER

  Just in these few lines
we see telltale signs of the aftermath of a major cataclysm that is set to decimate the earth and everything upon it, a surmise affirmed by the fact that the Prose Edda speaks also of the world being plunged into an age of ice:

  The growing depravity and strife in the world proclaim the approach of this great event. First there is a winter called Fimbul-winter, during which snow will fall from the four corners of the world; the frosts will be very severe, the winds piercing, the weather tempestuous, and the sun will impart no gladness. Three such winters shall pass away without being tempered.22

  Donnelly easily recognized these words as describing the onset of a glacial age, following the impact of the comets. This great freeze, which seems to come on quickly, does eventually begin to thaw, as the clouds of darkness disappear and a new sun and moon are born. The floods recede also, leading to a complete renewal of nature.

  Thereafter emerge the sole human survivors:

  During the conflagration caused by Surt’s fire, a woman by name Lif (life) and a man named Lifthraser lie concealed in Hodmimer’s forest. The dew of the dawn serves them for food, and so great a race shall spring from them that their descendants shall soon spread over the whole earth.”23

  Donnelly suggested that it was from a cave that Lif and Lifthraser emerged because caves feature worldwide in the regeneration of humankind in the wake of catastrophes, while the reference to them giving birth to a great “race” implies that, in Scandinavian tradition at least, the current human population derives from these two individuals. Others survive the cataclysm as well, including Víðarr and Vale, the sons of Odin, and Mode and Magne, the sons of Thor. Yet these are not mortal beings like Lif and Lifthraser. They are offspring of the Æsir, who are destined to dwell on the plains of Ida, where stands the world tree, Yggdrasil, alongside Mimir’s Well and Asgard, the home of the gods.

  DONNELLY’S DATES

  From what we read here, it does seem possible that the Eddas, like very similar myths and legends from around the world, contain echoes of a devastating catastrophe that engulfed the world during some distant epoch. Donnelly envisaged this sequence of events beginning around thirty thousand years ago, at the height of the last ice age, and culminating around eleven thousand to eight thousand years ago.24 As we shall see, his later dates correspond pretty well with the proposed timescale of cosmic catastrophes now believed to have taken place globally toward the end of the last ice age, triggered by a major impact event around 10,900 BC (see chapter 17).

  Donnelly was convinced that a comet, or indeed a series of comets, was responsible for these cataclysms, and once again he was bang on the money, as we shall see soon enough. His proposal that these global killers were portrayed in ancient myths and legends as supernatural creatures of the earth and sky also seems to be right, a theory advanced since that time by a number of different catastrophists, who have each put a unique spin on the subject.

  NUCLEAR WINTER

  In the Ragnarök account, various monsters are cited as being responsible for destruction in this world, including the Midgard Serpent, the fire giant Surt, and at least four canids, three of them wolves. Two of the wolves are accused of having swallowed the sun and moon, and this quite possibly describes the temporary disappearance of the heavenly bodies that would inevitably follow a catastrophe of this scale. A comet or asteroid impacting the earth would create unimaginable clouds of smoke, dust, and microparticles of various kinds that would be thrust into the upper atmosphere, creating what is known as a nuclear winter, a total blackout of available light. This debris, which would probably remain airborne for some considerable length of time, would be joined by a thick layer of toxic ash produced by the intense firestorms that would engulf entire regions of the planet in the days, weeks, and months after the initial event.

  To our ancestors this period of absolute darkness might have led them to assume that the sky wolves, in other words, the comet fragments, had quite literally devoured the sun and moon. Clearly, the lack of any sunlight heating up the planet would have resulted in an immediate drop in temperature, helping to trigger the onset of an ice age in a matter of days. Indeed, it would have happened in a manner quite similar to that portrayed in Roland Emmerich’s disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow (2004). Although fiction, this film adequately shows what would happen under such severe weather conditions and how quickly our world would be turned on its head by an initial catastrophe of global consequences.

  The effect of all this would have been to bring humankind to its knees as it strived to survive from day to day, all this being “caused” by the intrusion into their midst of perceived supernatural creatures, including deathly serpents and terrifying sky wolves that could quite literally swallow the sun and moon whole.

  It must have been an unimaginably frightening time to live in. Never would this dreadful age be forgotten; nor should it be forgotten. As Donnelly so aptly put it:

  What else can mankind think of, or dream of, or talk of for the next thousand years but this awful, this unparalleled calamity through which the race has passed?

  A long-subsequent but most ancient and cultivated people, whose memory has, for us, almost faded from the earth, will thereafter embalm the great drama in legends, myths, prayers, poems, and sagas; fragments of which are found to-day dispersed through all literatures in all lands.25

  The peoples of Northern Europe almost certainly preserved their memory of this “unparalleled calamity” in their accounts of Ragnarök. Its existence helps strengthen the case for canids—wolves, hounds, and foxes—being seen by our ancestors not just as dangerous cosmic tricksters with the power to bring about death and destruction but also as outright enemies of the world pillar, or sky pole, that connects this world with both the underworld and sky world. Yet as we see next, these myths existed not only in “legends, myths, prayers, poems, and sagas”26 handed down from some forgotten age. They lingered on in fragmentary sky lore that once again reveals the great threat that the sky wolves were seen to pose in destabilizing everything that we have ever held dear in this world.

  16

  THE WOLF PROGENY

  The dual relationship between order and chaos in the heavens is highlighted in the “magnificent song of Eirek,” ca. 950 AD, which has the Norse god Odin say: “Evermore the wolf, the grey one, gazes on the throne of the gods,” an allusion to the Pole Star, which in Anglo-Saxon tradition was the “divine seat where the north star Tir (or Tyr) . . . ‘never flinches.’”1

  There is a strange echo of this scenario in the Scandinavian story of Ragnarök. The main battle is most often described with Odin coming up against Loki’s son, the Fenris Wolf, and losing his life, and then how Odin’s son Víðarr is finally able to kill the demonic creature. However, less attention is paid to the story of the Germanic, Old English, and Norse war god named Tíw, Týr, or Tir. He is willing to sacrifice his life to ensure the safety of humankind by placing his arm in the Fenris Wolf ’s jaws after the gods had asked the beast to try on various fetters, or shackles, to test his strength against them, the real purpose being to trick Fenris into bondage so that he could never wreak havoc in the world (see figure 16.1).

  Fenris was easily able to break free of two sets of fetter, the second one twice as strong as the first. Yet he becomes suspicious when he sees the next fetter, which seems to be little more than a silk ribbon. So to make sure this is not a ruse, Fenris asks one of the gods to step forward and put his arm in his mouth. Tíw agrees to do so, after which the wolf is bound.

  Figure 16.1. Helmet plate die from Torslunda on Oland in Sweden showing the Norse god Tíw binding the Fenris Wolf, seventh century AD .

  Of course, it is a trick, as the silk ribbon has been forged by dark elves from six different magical substances, which when combined make an utterly unbreakable fetter. Once the Fenris Wolf realizes he has been tricked, he bites off Tíw’s right arm.

  Although simply a tale, it is a story containing much deeper symbolism relating to the stability of the world, and
in particular the world pillar. In the Norse magical alphabet known as the runes, Tíw is represented by the T-rune named Tiwaz. It is composed of an upright pole at the top of which are two downward turned lines that show the rune to be an arrow. The Tiwaz rune is popularly considered to be a representation of the “vault of heaven held up by the universal column,”2 as well as the Irminsul, the “world column” of the Saxons, that “has its heavenly termination in the pole star.”3 (See figure 16.2.)

  Figure 16.2. Left, the German world pillar known as the Irminsul and, right, the Tiwaz rune, showing its likeness to the world pillar.

  This identification fits well with Tíw’s role as personification of the North Star, suggesting that originally he was the genius loci, or guardian spirit, of the axis mundi, protecting it against attacks by adversaries such as the Fenris Wolf. Even though Tíw is killed by the helldog Garm in the Prose Edda rendition of Ragnarök, in the Poetic Edda this act is never fulfilled—Tíw’s earlier sacrifice for his warriors and humanity permitting him the title “Leavings of the Wolf ”4; in other words, the one that the wolf left alone, that is, didn’t kill.

  SAVIOR OF THE WORLD

  Tíw was a very early sky god. His name is thought to derive from the same route as deus, or dei, meaning “god,”5 although he is also the “hanged” god. This suggests he is to be seen as some kind of savior who fought and won the battle against the cosmic trickster in the guise of a supernatural wolf, when it attacked the world pillar and almost brought about the destruction of not only the Æsir gods, but also humankind, an abstract memory, seemingly, of a very real comet impact event in some former age.