Episode 10: Norse Mythology Part II - Ragnarok
/Break out the REM karaoke, because it's the end of the world as the Norse gods know it. Hear all about Ragnarok, apocalypse, rebirth, and more fantasy book/movie/TV references than even we can handle.
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Our music is "Danger Storm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Transcript
E. Schneider: Last time on Spirits.
JS: The world is gonna fucking burn.
AM: That's ominous.
JS: Yeah.
AM: Wow.
JS: Yeah.
AM: So, what happens?
JS: Well, next episode, we're going to talk about Ragnarok.
AM: Is this a cliffhanger?!
Intro
JS: That's right, listeners. We're jumping right back into Norse mythology with this special two-parter.
AM: But, first, welcome to our new listeners. This is Spirits, a drunken dive into myths and legends. Each week we drink and discuss a new mythological story, religious tradition, urban legend or folkloric tale from around the world.
JS: It's like 50 percent learning and like 50 percent pop culture tangent.
AM: And a 100 percent booze, and that's not high percentages work.
JS: No, it's not. Anyway, this is our 10th episode. So, we would like to thank every single one of you who's already taken the journey with us.
AM: Especially our Patreons every single week, we send them behind the scenes content and audio extras and you, listener, you right here can help out tremendously for as little as just $1.
JS: $1!
AM: Visit us at patreon.com/spiritspodcast, why don't you?
JS: And be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook @SpiritsPodcast. We have a special bonus gift that we want to share with you guys next week and you got to follow us to see it.
AM: It's a blooper reel.
JS: Amanda!
AM: What else could it be? Poor Eric cuts like 25 minutes of digressions every single time we record.
JS: Anyway, thanks to all of you who have shared your reactions and recommendations on the show on Twitter and Facebook. A special shout out to our Audio Drama Sunday and Folklore Thursday crowd, we love you guys. And we have so many new shows to listen to because of you.
AM: We also booked some very cool guests thanks to all of you who have helped us spread the word and reach new listeners so please keep it coming. iTunes reviews are also a weirdly huge help.
JS: I think that's enough for right now. We have a cliffhanger to resolve.
AM: Right, you are. Enjoy Spirits Podcast, Episode 10: Ragnarok!
JS: Ragnarok!
Intro Music
JS: Hey, Amanda?
AM: What?
JS: Did you hear?
AM: What?
JS: The world's gonna end.
AM: Uhhh. Sometime. Yeah.
JS: So, last episode --
AM: Yep.
JS: -- we talked about --
AM: Oh, right, the cliffhanger! I forgot.
JS: Yes. So, we got super familiar with Norse Mythology.
AM: We got at least passingly...
JS: I mean we went through the --
AM: We got like --
JS: -- the players.
AM: We got like one to 200 level Jeopardy familiar with the --
JS: Okay, yeah.
AM: -- with the Norse Mythology.
JS: Well, we're about to get a little bit more into the 500 level.
AM: Great!
JS: Here we go.
AM: Alex Trebek, come at me.
JS: Come at us, Alex Trebek. Today, we're going to talk about the event that lurks...
AM: I thought you were gonna say, “The Avengers.” I’m like, “Great!”
JS: Yeah, The Avengers. Yeah.
AM: Them too.
JS: The event --
AM: Okay.
JS: -- that lurks in the heart of every Norse Mythology --
AM: Oh, boy.
JS: -- story.
AM: The end of the world.
JS: Yeah. We're going to talk about Ragnarok.
AM: Okay. Is this a place, an event?
JS: It's an event.
AM: Okay.
JS: It literally means The Doom of the Gods.
AM: Great.
JS: It represents the end of time.
AM: Okay.
JS: But not really the end of time, the end of this cycle of time that we're currently in.
AM: Okay, the reset button.
JS: Right. Like we talked about last episode, Norse Mythology is both linear and cyclical.
AM: Yep.
JS: The gods know that Ragnarok is coming after Odin drank from the Fountain of Wisdom.
AM: Okay, right. He saw it. Right.
JS: Ummm, they know most of them are going to die, and that the Cosmos will be destroyed and then remade again.
AM: Okay.
JS: But, as for that, the specifics are super like unclear to them, and it gets really intense.
AM: Are they, are they sort of Zen about it? Or are they like not wanting to die?
JS: So, it's really interesting when you look at like, just Norse culture in general.
AM: Yeah.
JS: There's this kind of idea. It's almost like – it's not pessimism so much, but like realism. Like we know this is coming. We know this is our plight-
AM: Yeah.
JS: -but we're going to continue on anyway, because otherwise what's the point of living.
AM: I respect that.
JS: Which is really – it's a, it's a good kind of --
AM: Listen, it's a harsh environment out there in, in the Nordic Heartlands of Scandinavia.
JS: It's interesting. It's like apocalyptic, but not quite apocalyptic.
AM: Okay.
JS: We're going to start with the signs that Ragnarok was coming.
AM: Okay.
JS: The first sign --
AM: Are there like locusts, blood, rain --
JS: Not really.
AM: -- floods?
JS: It was kind of like, when these things happened, that was when Odin was like, "Oh, shit."
AM: Okay.
JS: We're all gonna die soon, this sucks.
AM: Yes. So, it's like the onset of symptoms if you will.
JS: So, the first sign of Ragnarok coming is Baldr being killed by Loki. We talked about that last episode.
AM: We did. At the – at the Scandinavian Red Wedding.
JS: Yes. Basically, it's the mistletoe spear thrown by Hodr, his blind brother.
AM: Fucking Mistletoe.
JS: Loki arranged the whole thing. What a dick. So, this action kind of proves the mortality of the gods to the gods. Like they knew they were mortal --
AM: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
JS: -- but they kind of forgot about it.
AM: Right. It's like the first, the first --
JS: Right.
AM: -- sign.
JS: Until the best of them dies, because Baldr is the golden child.
AM: Yeah.
JS: At this point, this is when Odin starts choosing to bring on human warriors to fight – to bring to Valhalla to fight in Ragnarok later on.
AM: Now, what's the benefit of humans?
JS: They're like pawns.
AM: Oh, okay.
JS: The gods are going to fight, but the humans are going to help fight like too.
AM: So, they're literal pawns in that they're like the first line of defense and they get mown down before the gods.
JS: Pretty much.
AM: Cool. I would do that too. No love lost, Odin.
JS: Up until this point, the gods were kind of living in an age of debauchery and kind of saw over the mortals.
AM: Okay.
JS: Oaths were being broken, which is like a really fucking big deal. Some people were being cowardly, also a big deal because you know how much Odin likes courage. And then, leading up to Ragnarok, there were three winters without summer --
AM: Oh.
JS: -- which was known as Fimbulwinter or the great winter.
AM: Narnia style.
JS: Yeah. Super Narnia style.
AM: Long/Game of Thrones style.
JS: I was going – I was gonna say Game of Thrones.
AM: Yeah. Winter came --
JS: There's long winters and long summers.
AM: And [5:58 inaudible] came and did not leave.
JS: So, the last sign that Ragnarok is coming is the escape of Loki and his son, Fenrir.
AM: Loki from the cave where he was imprisoned...
JS: Yes. After – with the poison on his head.
AM: And was there like a famous werewolf named Fenrir? Is that a --
JS: Fenrir Greyback from Harry Potter.
AM: Oh, fucking, yes, from Harry Potter!
JS: We literally cannot make it through an episode without fucking Harry Potter.
AM: JK Rowling, get in touch.
JS: So, they were both being imprisoned in some like, underground cavern. They both end up escaping, and they come together with the giants and the demons from the two other realms.
AM: Right. That aren't Asgard and Midgard.
JS: Right, and they're going to fight against the gods.
AM: All right.
JS: They're pissed about it. The gods have been, you know?
AM: But like whose side are they on? Like what's, what's the end game like?
JS: It's like – it's the gods have been having it too good. They've been like coming – like Thor killed a bunch of fucking giants over a fucking hammer.
AM: Oh, yeah.
JS: Like no one's – no – no one's pleased with the gods.
AM: So, sort of like reality check
JS: Right.
AM: Okay.
JS: They're like, "You guys are being douchebags."
AM: Yeah.
JS: We're going to destroy you all. And we're going to have all of your land to ourselves. They start leaving their realms. Yggdrasil starts to shake and tremble as the giants and the demons head towards Asgard.
AM: Wow. That's a bit of an image.
JS: The first thing that happens is Fenrir --
AM: Yeah.
JS: -- the giant wolf dude.
AM: Not Greyback.
JS: The, the son…
AM: That's good, god. [7:22]
JS: He is the son of Loki.
AM: Okay.
JS: I don't know why he has a wolf son.
AM: I don't know.
JS: I don't really remember.
AM: Who was the mom? No one knows. Maybe a wolf. Fine.
JS: Maybe. Sure. That sounds right. He begins to consume everything on Earth by dragging his lower jaw along the ground and his upper jaw along the sky.
AM: Ooh...
JS: Yeah. He's like that fucking big. He just like, "Hom, nom, nom. Homme nom nom,” giant Pacman style.
AM: Yeah. Wow.
JS: Yeah.
AM: That's a lot.
JS: So, he even swallows the sun.
AM: Wow.
JS: Like she gets intense. Everything goes dark because Fenrir swallowed the sun.
AM: That's a pretty effective way to exact revenge.
JS: Yeah. Well, I mean he was trapped down in like, you know --
AM: In the cave. Great.
JS: -- in the underworld a very, very long time.
AM: I don't have sun, neither do you.
JS: Meanwhile Surtr, who is a giant with a flaming sword --
AM: Okay.
JS: -- sweeps it across the world leaving an inferno and scorched Earth in his wake.
AM: So, neither sun nor agriculture.
JS: Yeah. Everyone's kind of fucked at this point even if – even if they do survive.
AM: Wow.
JS: Which they probably won't. We'll get to that.
AM: I wouldn't want to.
JS: So, the gods and the giants begin to square off. Heimdall has warned everyone that they're coming.
AM: Okay.
JS: And like, you know, the fight's about to go down.
AM: Go down.
JS: All the warriors in Valhalla are like, ready to go. They're like, you know --
AM: Yeah. Most excitement we've seen in decades blah, blah, blah.
JS: They're shooting back – shooting back their mead, grabbing their axes. They're ready to go. They square off. Thor is actually the first one to be killed --
AM: Oh, no.
JS: -- while slaying a giant dragon called Jormungandr.
AM: What?
JS: Yeah,
AM: One, Thor can die. Two, there are dragons?
JS: Yes.
AM: What don't they have?
JS: Everything. They have everything.
AM: Is this where all of our mythology comes from?
JS: I mean --
AM: Like our – our like high fantasy, fantasy creatures?
JS: Yeah. A lot of Tolkien's work comes from North – Norse mythology.
AM: Wow.
JS: So, the dragon that Thor faces off with actually --
AM: Right.
JS: -- is what Tolkien based --
AM: Smaug.
JS: -- Smaug off of.
AM: Ahh, hey, any Tolkien experts, get in touch. Let us know about the mythological origins of --
JS: We’d love to hear that.
AM: -- Tolkien verse. We would.
JS: Surtr dies fighting the god Freyr, the brother to Freya --
AM: Okay.
JS: -- who's the goddess of love and whatnot.
AM: Oh, that one.
JS: The beauty. The good --
AM: The good stuff.
JS: Yes. He is the god of kingship, prosperity, and fertility.
AM: All good things.
JS: Yeah. Like very like things that a --
AM: Lineage.
JS: -- king would pray to. He like --
AM: Keep it in the families. Give it – give me a boy. Give me a boy. Listeners, I will spare you the visual that Julia just gave us right there.
JS: Sorry.
AM: I get it, babe. Don't worry.
JS: And then Loki is killed while fighting Heimdall.
AM: Okay.
JS: The blingy watchman.
AM: Yes, Idris Elba.
JS: Yes. Odin is killed by Fenrir before Fenrir is killed by Odin's son, Vidar --
AM: Oh, man.
JS: -- who like – he wasn't the God of anything until the moment that he kills Fenrir --
AM: Oh, shit.
JS: -- and then she's the goddess of vengeance – the god of vengeance.
AM: Wow.
JS: So, he’s like he’s kind of cool.
AM: Defining his own legacy, in the moment. Yeah. I respect that.
JS: With most of the sides dead, the land becomes – begins to sink into the ocean.
AM: Okay.
JS: And darkness falls across the realms.
AM: Okay.
JS: Very sad.
AM: Fitting. Right.
JS: Quiet moment.
AM: All right. Some grieving period.
JS: Yeah. No one's – no one's happy because everyone's dead.
AM: Okay.
JS: But the world doesn't end here; not necessarily at least.
AM: Well, I mean, with no sun, no soil, and no land, how does it continue?
JS: The Earth slowly begins to rise out of the ocean again. When the land emerges, the golden child, Baldr, reappears out the other realm.
AM: Fucking Baldr. Where did you come from?
JS: He's the god of everything good and light and pure.
AM: And, apparently, rebirth.
JS: Yes, and then all of the living things, that survived up until this point, begin to thrive and blossom again.
AM: Okay.
JS: And then these two humans, who also survived named Lif and Liftraser --
AM: Okay.
JS: -- they were like hiding in some magic forest that doesn't get touched by this for whatever reason.
AM: Convenient.
JS: They survived on morning dew and helped repopulate the Earth.
AM: Awww.
JS: And then a new --
AM: Adam and Eve style.
JS: Yeah, exactly. And then a new sun is born from the goddess who was the sun previously. Like her dead body gives birth to another child, and then she becomes the sun.
AM: Aww. Pretty- pretty fitting in terms of the cycle of rebirth.
JS: And then it's, it's not necessarily explicitly said in the mythology, but Baldr kind of takes the place of Odin, and then the cycle continues again.
AM: Aww.
JS: It's really, really cool when you think about it.
AM: And, so, is there any kind of like moral cause for why this universe had to reset? Or is it just like, "Listen, y'all, everything dies, everything is reborn. Like, it's just the cycle of life."
JS: I think for the Norse that is like the obvious way that things would go.
AM: Yeah.
JS: For the Norse people, you know, there's just such cyclical moments and there's such highs and lows.
AM: Right.
JS: That, when something good happens, naturally, something bad has to follow. And then, when something bad happens, naturally, something good will follow.
AM: But that's not like fraught, right? Like it's not like a --
JS: No.
AM: -- terrible thing to think about. But it's just a natural way of things --
JS: Right.
AM: -- where there are highs, there are low. When there are wins, there are losses. When there are gigantic, you know, apocalyptic battles of the gods, there are, you know, two people hiding in the forest ready to, you know, lick some leaves and repopulate the Earth the next morning.
JS: That's quite a like – that's quite a survival technique too.
AM: It is y'all.
JS: They're like, "Wow, like most of the world is dead. There's some water on that like half-burnt leaf though."
AM: Hash – whoa. #condensation.
JS: It's an interesting hashtag. I'm not sure anyone has ever used that.
AM: Listen, condensation is annoying if you have a bathroom with poor ventilation or very convenient if you're waking to a post-apocalyptic dawn.
JS: Amanda is speaking from experience there.
AM: With the bathroom, not with the post-apocalyptic dawn.
JS: I wasn't sure.
AM: I lived in England for a year. I know poor ventilation in bathrooms.
JS: So yeah, that's a – that is the story of Ragnarok.
AM: And, so, what does the word Ragnarok mean itself?
JS: It means the end of the gods, but it's interesting because --
AM: All right. You said that. I forgot.
JS: -- there's – no. But – it's – I'm glad you brought it up. Because there's actually two translations for it.
AM: Okay.
JS: It's the, the Doom of the Gods, but also the Twilight of the Gods.
AM: Huh.
JS: Meaning like, you know, the middle of the night kind of thing. Like the, the darkest point of the evening.
AM: Uhuh.
JS: But, also, with the assumption, that there's going to be light afterwards.
AM: Yeah. Yeah. Like we're standing here poised on the precipice where things are bad, but afterwards it's going to get better.
JS: Exactly, which is --
AM: I like it a lot.
JS: Isn't that so cool? Like, that's like probably one of my favorite like apocalyptic stories.
AM: Right.
JS: Because it's so like positive at the end.
AM: It is, and it's also like, "Listen, y'all, we're gonna have to work this out."
JS: Yeah.
AM: You know, like sometimes when you see people fighting when you kind of feel something brewing with a friend or something, you're like, "We're gonna have to just, you know, play this out, get to the other side. And, from there, we'll sort of see what's next."
JS: Yeah. Like just doing it anyway, even though, you know like this shitty stuff is going to happen, but knowing that you're probably going to come out the other side too.
AM: And you know what, what character trait is forged when going through these things?
JS: Courage.
AM: Fortitude.
JS: Ohhh.
AM: Bringing it back to the New York Public Library, bitches.
JS: The last episode.
AM: With Patience and Fortitude, our two lion sentinels. So, I look forward to doing a review of whatever Thor movies upcoming.
JS: The literal title of the next Thor movie is Thor: Ragnarok.
AM: Convenient. Hopefully, any of you who have connections at Marvel or the press can, you know, promote us.
JS: Send us a screener.
AM: All right. Seriously. But, when our listeners go to the movies and watch Thor: Ragnarok, just upcoming Thor movie, you can go in with the knowledge that, you know, this is what the battle, is this who the characters are, and, you know, Baldr, the Playboy, is ultimately the one victorious.
JS: And please note that there are no Hulks in the original story.
AM: There are no Hulks in the original Norse Mythology.
JS: But Mark Ruffalo makes everything better. So, we're not going to be opposed.
AM: But Bruce Banner is always welcome. And that he's gonna be a welcome addition to this movie.
JS: Oh, the Fluffulo.
AM: Aww!
JS: The Fluffulo.
AM: I haven't heard that before.
JS: You haven't heard The Fluffulo before?
AM: No. My corner of Tumblr doesn't use Fluffulo.
JS: Fluffulo.
AM: Adorable.
JS: Look at his fluffy hair and the sideburns, anyway.
AM: Yeah, I get it.
JS: Ragnarok!
Outro
AM: Spirits was created by Julia Schifini and, me, Amanda McLoughlin. It's edited by Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by Allyson Wakeman.
JS: Subscribe to Spirits on your preferred podcast app to make sure you never miss an episode. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr @SpiritsPodcast.
AM: On our Patreon page, patreon.com/spiritspodcast, you can sign up for exclusive content like behind the scenes photos, audio, extras, director's commentary, blooper reels and beautiful recipe cards with custom drink and snack pairings.
JS: If you like the show, please share with your friends and leave us a review on iTunes. It really does help.
AM: Thank you so much for listening, ‘til next time.
Transcriptionist: Rachelle Bacharo
Editor: Krizia Casil