One interesting idea I've come across during my studies of the Eddas is that the story of Ragnorok is a Christian addition. Some scholars would contest, saying that Christian monks added the story to the mythos to bolster their number of converts. Something that people have to remember is that Snorri was more or less writing fanfiction when he scribbled down the Eddas.
Chaosedge you say that if a calamity occured on a metaphysical level than it would not effect us. That is not true, Magick occurs on the metaphysical to effect the physical. Sure the effects would be different however they will most certainly be evident. I am not arguing with your oppinion, rather I am pointing out the flaws of your logic.
Perhaps we are already within Ragnarok, perhaps it is over, perhaps it hasn't happened yet or perhaps it is a never ending cycle that keeps going and going.
I agree with ambro on this. To me, the whole 'everything resets and they all live happily ever after' thing doesnt really add up. Thats just me, though *shrug*
I'm not sure if it's meant to be taken literally and not in a metaphorical sense. It makes more sense if you take it as a metaphor, because natural enemies that oppose one another fight and are equally defeated by the other. At the end the deaths of innocents became inpermanent, and so what happened before is undone.
Even if it is not entirely Christian in origin, I'm not sure it really matters for practitioners. I don't feel that time is exactly linear on the subtle level, so one could experience a being before, after, and during Ragnarok within days of each other and not in a straight order.
A end is just a new beginning, if it will hapen, and I seriously doubt that, and im prety shour that te post aboat ragnarok just being a cristan "fan-fiction" is true, so if a practiser of Norse paganism didn't even make it than why should a practiser of Norse paganism take it seriously?
You can still find spiritual value in a text despite its origins. I can't tell you how many fiction books I've read that have changed my world view. What pagans, especially Norse pagans, need to keep in mind is who's writing this. You have to be careful about reading the Eddas and automatically assuming that those pages were written by pagans for pagans. Most of the time those pages were written by Christians for Christian converts.
I read something somewhere that suggested that at the end, when all is gone and the Gods go to their "death" that Baldr comes up from Hel and becomes kind of like the Christian God... This coming from the description that Baldr is good and Him being the God of light and purity and soo loved,kind of the way the Christian God is described and perceived by the Christians... So Ragnarok is the beginning of the Christian way so to speak... (this is just what I read ,not a personal opinion, as I don't really have one on the subject, believing in the here and now idea I suppose)
