Ragnarok : the Doom of the Gods 113 



It remains to speak of the rise of the infernal powers 

 against the gods, the corollary, as we have called it, to 

 the myth of Odin and the Heroes ; and of the final battle 

 which these are to wage with the giant race, the beings 

 of Frost and Snow, with whom are allied beings of 

 Darkness and Death. To the history of this great final 

 battle — this Armageddon of the northern mythology — 

 is dedicated one long poem of the Edda, which is 

 perhaps the finest of them all. It is called Voluspd; 

 or, ' The Wise One's Prophecy,' the prophecy being of tlie 

 end of the world. In the old manuscript collection 

 called Edda, from which all subsequent translations 

 have been taken, this poem Vohisjjd stands the first. 

 It is not, however, by any means the earliest in date of 

 all the northern poems. We may surmise that it was 

 composed a little before the year 1000, for then, we 

 have said, the thoughts of Christian Europe were full of 

 the expectation of the second coming of Christ to judge 

 the world ; full of expectation, of hope, but still more 

 of dread ; and I take it that this Voluspd poem is the 

 reflection on the minds of the half-Christianized north- 

 men in the Scottish islands of this same pre-occupation, 

 of the same hope and dread. It is impossible to say 

 how much the fancies of Celts and of Christians have 

 mingled with genuine northern mythology to form this 

 poem. Certainly the result achieved has an almost 

 unrivalled beauty among creations of this order. 



Voluspd, the prophecy of the volva or sibyl, begins 

 with an account of the origin of all things; with de- 

 scriptions of the different races of the earth ; with some 

 obscure hints of past history when the world was young. 

 Then, about the middle of the poem, it passes from 



H 



