After Ragnarok?

[Dustypuppy]

Just a thought, we know through fate that the earth and a new generation of Gods will continue after Ragnarok, how about the rest?Will there be Giants, will there be beasts to replace Fenrir,Mani,Skoll and Jormungad?Or is the New earth a final 'paradise?'x

[David19]

I can't contribute anything, but that's a very interesting question and something i'd like to know too.

Although, in my personal opinion and beliefs, i think you will never rid the world of evil, it always was, is and will be a part of the world.

[Lovehound]

Read the beginning of the Voluspa. You will see that the volva describes 9 worlds she has seen come and go, so this implies that worlds have been born and died, no different that the current world.

At the END of the Voluspa, she states that she sees a dragon flying overhead, implying that the forces of destruction are also inherent in the new world. I wish my partner would get on this board and answer this, because he's better at it than I am.

[David19]

That's actually really interesting, Lovehound.

If you don't mind me asking, who was/is the volva, i think she's the seer that Odin travelled to Hel to see and speak too, but was she the most powerful one, and was she an immortal being, in some way (although she was in Hel, so i'm guessing she died), if she saw 9 other worlds be destroyed.

BTW, could i just ask, were these 9 worlds different cycles of this world, or were they the 9 worlds of Norse cosmology (e.g. Jotunheim, etc).

Thanks again (even thought i'm not the original poster).

[Ulfurskona]

The Volva was actually 'a volva'. A volva being a wise woman and practitioner of norse magics. Though this particular one was, according to some sources, named Heid.

Odin did indeed go to her to find out about the beginings of things, and to the best of my knowledge she was actually already dead. According to Kveldulf Gundarsson in Teutonic religion, a volva is a holy woman who is "closer to the worlds of the gods and ghosts than other people..." so she would have been one who was already dead, or at least that was a distinct possibility, since volvas, or valedas, were no more than human priestesses or holy women who had gifts of psychic abilities.

It is probably fairly safe to assume, that since she was a volva, and was identified as such, she may have had the ability to see into the far past and future...it's also possible that after her death her abilities were multiplied.

I don't remember the part about 9 worlds, except where she was talking about the 9 realms of the universe...I would have to re-read it to be certain. At the end though she does talk about the dragon, and it has been interpreted to be the dragon Nidhogg, who chews on the root of Yggrasil in an attempt to destroy it, and once freed, could indeed be a repopulating source of evil in the "new world".

I don't imagine though, at least not in my understanding of anything I've come across thus far, that there would be such a thing as a world without some sort of strife in it. Not based on what we know about the culture of those who were responsible for the mythology.

Edited to add:

I found the passage in Voluspa: "Nine residing world I know--nine far-reaching-- World Tree to praise and decorate, before the earth was new."

Which, in reading, is only really referring to the nine worlds that make up the Norse cosmology.