RAGNARK

(Old Norse: Doom of the Gods), in Scandinavian mythology, the end of the world of gods and men. The Ragnark is fully described only in the Icelandic poem Vlusp (Sibyl's Prophecy), probably of the late 10th century, and in the 13th-century Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson (d. 1241), which largely follows the Vlusp. According to those two sources, the Ragnark will be preceded by cruel winters and moral chaos. Giants and demons approaching from all points of the compass will attack the gods, who will meet them and face death like heroes. The sun will be darkened, the stars will vanish, and the earth will sink into the sea. Afterward, the earth will rise again, the innocent Balder will return from the dead, and the hosts of the just will live in a hall roofed with gold. Disjointed allusions to the Ragnark, found in many other sources, show that conceptions of it varied. According to one poem two human beings, Lif and Lifthrasir (Life and Vitality), will emerge from the world tree (which was not destroyed) and repeople the earth. The title of Richard Wagner's opera Gtterdmmerung is a German equivalent of Ragnark meaning twilight of the gods.