Ragnarok

/rahg"neuh rok'/, n. Scand. Myth.

the destruction of the gods and of all things in a final battle with the evil powers.

Also, Ragnarök /rahg"neuh rok', -ruek'/.

[1760-70; < ON Ragnarok, equiv. to ragna, gen. of regin gods + rok fate, misread by some as Ragnarökkr lit., twilight of the gods; cf. GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG]

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In Scandinavian mythology, the end of the divine and human worlds.

As described in the 10th-century Icelandic poem Völuspá and other sources, Ragnarök will be preceded by cruel winters and moral chaos. Giants and demons will attack the gods, who will 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. The title of Richard Wagner's opera Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods) is a German equivalent of Ragnarök.

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▪ Scandinavian mythology

      (Old Norse: “Doom of the Gods”), in Scandinavian mythology, the end of the world of gods and men. The Ragnarök is fully described only in the Icelandic poem Völuspá (“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 Völuspá. According to those two sources, the Ragnarök 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 Ragnarök, 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 Götterdämmerung is a German equivalent of Ragnarök meaning “twilight of the gods.”

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