The Fimbul Winter
Ragnarök. That was the name. But it did not come with a bang. It came with cold.
Anyone who has lived in the North knows what winter is. Short light, long cold, earth hard as stone, and a sky that looks as if it never intends to grow bright again. But there has always been a spring afterward. Always. That was what made it bearable: the knowledge that it turns, that the snow melts, that the earth softens. Always.
This time no spring came. The winter continued. The sun rose lower and lower, pale and feeble, like a candle someone forgot to blow out, slowly burning down. The harvests froze in the ground. The animals starved. Livestock died standing in their pens, stiff with cold with their eyes open. People huddled together in their houses and waited for a warmth that did not come. Then came the next winter, with no summer between. And then another. Three winters in a row without a single summer day. The Fimbul Winter. The great winter. The last winter.
Hunger came first. It crept through the villages like a disease and took the weakest first: the children, the old, the sick. Then desperation. People stole. People fought over the last bread, the last grain, the last kernel. Then came what is worse than hunger and desperation: people turned on each other. Brother killed brother for a handful of grain. Sister's sons broke the bonds of kinship. Fathers slaughtered sons and sons struck down fathers. Oaths broke like twigs in the cold. Loyalties dissolved like frost in the hand. It was as if the moral order froze apart along with the earth, and those who survived the winter lost something else instead, something that could not be warmed back.
Three roosters crowed. Fjalarr, the fire-red, crowed in Jötunheim and woke the giants. Gullinkambi, golden-comb, crowed in Valhöll and woke the Einherjar. And the third, the soot-red, crowed in the depths of Helheim and woke the dead. Three crows in three worlds, and every crow said the same thing: it begins.
Garmr, the bloody hound at Hel's gate, burst his chain and howled. The howl was heard in all the worlds, and it was a sound that carried no hope.
The wolves Sköll and Hati, who had chased the sun and moon since the beginning of time, running and running in eternal pursuit, finally caught up. Sköll swallowed the sun. His jaws closed around it and the light died and the warmth died and everything the sun had given since the beginning of the world ceased in a single moment of darkness. Hati swallowed the moon. The stars went out and fell from the sky like sparks from a dying fire, and the world went dark, completely dark, and the darkness filled everything.
Yggdrasil shook. The ancient tree that bore all nine worlds groaned and swayed, and its roots loosened in the earth. Níðhöggr gnawed faster, as if he knew this was the last chance. The squirrel Ratatoskr had stopped running. The stags had stopped eating. Everything knew.
Fenrir broke his bonds. Gleipnir, which the dwarves had forged from six impossible things, which had held all these years while Fenrir lay on Lyngvi and howled, snapped like a thread. The wolf rose, shook off the remnants of the bond, and opened his jaws so wide the upper jaw reached the sky and the lower jaw scraped the earth, and fire burned in his eyes and flame shone in his throat. Jörmungandr rose from the sea, and the ocean surged over every shore, and the waves were black and cold and carried with them everything that had once stood by the coast, and the serpent's venom poisoned the air until it burned to breathe.
Loki broke his bonds. The entrails that had hardened to iron split apart, stone after stone came loose, and Sigyn no longer had anyone to catch the venom for. Loki rose from the cave, free for the first time since Baldr's death, and he was no longer the beautiful trickster god who had cheated and joked and tied his bollocks to a goat. He was vengeance with a body around it. His face was disfigured by venom and his eyes were without light.
Naglfar broke free from its mooring. The death-ship, built from dead men's nails through all the ages, fingernails and toenails from every corpse that had gone untended to the grave. That is why you trim the nails of the dead. That is why you should always trim your nails. Every nail you leave gives Naglfar one more plank. The ship set sail with Loki at the helm, he who had at last broken free. And from the east came the giant Hrymr with his shield and the host of the frost giants.
From the south rode Surtr with his hosts of fire, the sons of Muspelheim who had been burning since before time existed, and his sword was older than the gods, older than Ymir, older than everything, and it burned brighter than the sun that no longer existed. The sons of Muspell rode over Bifröst, and the rainbow bridge, the most beautiful thing in all the worlds, shattered beneath their weight and their fire, and the fragments fell like rainbows in death.
Heimdallr blew the Gjallarhorn. That was what he had been waiting for, day and night, year after year, century after century, standing at the bridge's foot in rain and sun and snow, and now, at last, he raised the horn to his lips and blew. The horn was heard in all the worlds, in every corner of everything that exists, and it said one thing: now. Now it is now. There is no after.
The gods armed themselves. Odin set the helmet on his grey head and took Gungnir in his hand. The Einherjar, the fallen warriors who had fought and died and eaten and drunk in Valhöll since the beginning of ages, received their swords and their shields and rode out through Valhöll's five hundred and forty doors, eight hundred men through each door, and it was an army that should have been enough, but everyone knew it would not be. Thor raised Mjolnir. Freyr reached for his sword and his hand closed on nothing, because he had given it to Skírnir in exchange for Gerðr, and that second came back now, and it struck harder than any sword.
They rode toward the plain of Vígríðr. Behind them the sky burned. Ahead of them the darkness waited.