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5. Creation, Ragnarok, and the Cautionary Tale of Post-Conversion Norse Mythology

Eleanor Barraclough
Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age

Accessing Norse belief systems requires caution because the main textual sources, such as the Prose and Poetic Eddas, were written in the thirteenth century in Iceland, after the conversion to Christianity. Snorri Sturluson, a poet and politician murdered in thirteenth-century Iceland, composed the Prose Edda as a handbook to preserve the myths. Norse creation mythology describes life beginning in Ginungagap, the eternal void where the fire world (Muspel) met the ice world (Niflheim), forming the primordial ice giant Ymir. The mythological destruction, Ragnarok (the doom of the gods), involves the fire giant Surtr and Loki arriving on Naglfar, a ship terrifyingly constructed from the fingernails of dead people.
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