This is the moment of propecy– the foretelling of failure and rebirth. The Volva (coincidence: so close to the latin “volver” “to turn”)–
Volva: Odin, you’re going down. I know you gave your eye for knowledge, but now….I want to talk to you about the first man and woman. Every doom has an origin. And I take the long view of things….
Odin: ::blinks the good eye::
Volva: ::shifts uncomfortably near the fire:: I’ll take that as a yes. You want to hear about your upcoming demise
Odin: …If you don’t mind.
Volva: I can tell you about dwarves, too. A whole catalogue!
Odin: If you must…There is the matter about the blameless god who will be slaughtered…..
Volva:: Yes. He will. And it will be because the Gods hate him. And you, you will do nothing. And you, you will die–attacked by a wolf while your comrades are fighting.
Odin: And…
Volva: .::gasps::
Odin:: :blinks:
Volva: And the world will burn up. It will end. Except it won’t–earth will rise again from the sea. And the two last survivors will start over again.
::blinks, gasps: Oh my god….it’s a DRAGON..it’s coming..for….::drops in a dead faint::
Odin: ::looks around::
In the original text, the narrative ends with the Volva seeing a dragon approaching— even after the end of the Gods, there’s an end of the world. Even after the end of the structuring mythic narrative and the foretelling of another world, in which the God is superfluous– such is the virtue and plenty—that will also face– at the very least— disaster. The failure of these myths is acknowledged from the outset– which is for me part of their power– the system is never total, there is no need attempt to think, however frustratedly, beyond the outside of the text and the system (like in Hegel, for example): the outside is already there, threatening the errupt into the chaos that the myth barely contains. The narrative breaks, resists closure–the speaker (Volva) is seized by her vision and can no longer speak. There is some speculation that the Ragnarok satisfied the need to make sense of the frequent volcanic eruptions in Iceland.
Wagner used the idea of Ragnarok in Gotterdammerung. One wonders how we will cope with this end of a world– the end of the Masters of the Universe (Tom Wolfe).
