The Battle of Ragnarok

Ragnarok, sometimes called the Twilight of the Gods, is the final cataclysm that will destroy this world and the gods. After three terrible winters, a universal war will break out and the god Loki—now an enemy of the Aesir—and his son, Fenrir the wolf, will break from their bonds. Loki will then sail with an army of the dead to the final battle, in which Fenrir will swallow the sun, and kill Odin; Thor will slay the World Serpent, but die from its poison; and the gods will perish. Finally Surt, guardian of the fires of Muspell since the beginning of time, will release them and engulf the world in flame. After this world is destroyed, a new one will arise. Only Odin’s sons Vidar and Vali, and Thor’s sons Modi and Magni, will survive, and the gods Balder and Hod will return to life. They will sit on the new earth and talk of the world that was; in the grass they shall find the golden chess pieces of the gods. Two people, Lif and Lifthrasir, will survive in the branches of the World Tree and repopulate the earth.

The World Tree Myth

According to the Norse poem The Lay of Grimnir, “Of all trees, Yggdrasil is the best.” Yggdrasil is a huge ash tree that stands at the center of the cosmos, protecting and nourishing the worlds. The gods are described as riding out each day “from Yggdrasil” to deal out fates to mankind, and it was on Yggdrasil that the supreme god Odin willingly sacrificed himself, hanging in torment for nine long nights before he could seize the runes of power. Yggdrasil supported nine worlds, set in three layers. At the top was Asgard, the realm of the Aesir, or warrior gods, Vanaheim, the realm of the Vanir, or fertility gods, and Aflheim, the realm of the light elves. In the middle, linked to Asgard by the rainbow bridge Bifrost, was Midgard (Middle Earth), the realm of mortal men, and also Jotunheim, the world of the giants, Nidavellir, the home of the dwarfs, and Svartalfheim, the land of the dark elves. Below was Niflheim, the realm of the dead, and its citadel Hel. The ninth world is sometimes said to be Hel and sometimes the primeval fire of Muspell, which will devour creation at the end of time. Yggdrasil itself will survive, and will protect in Hoddmimir’s Wood the man and woman who will re-people the world. The branches of Yggdrasil spread out over the whole world, and reach up to heaven.

Ahura Mazda and Ahriman

When it was time for the twins to be born, Zurvan promised that his first-born should rule the world. Ahura Mazda, who was gifted with foresight, told his brother this, and evil-hearted Ahriman forced his way out first, and lied to his parent, saying, “I am your son, Ahura Mazda.” But Zurvan was not deceived, and answered, “My son is light and fragrant, but you are dark and stinking.” And Zurvan wept.

Ahura Mazda Sun Emblem This glazed brick relief from the sixth or fifth century bce was found at Susa in Iran. It shows the winged sun emblem of Ahura Mazda placed above two winged sphinxes, who appear to be standing guard.

In the dualistic mythology of Zoroastrianism, twin brothers Ahura Mazda, who lived in the light, and Ahriman, who lurked in the dark, are in opposition. Between them there was nothing but air. The twins were born from the god Zurvan, “Time,” the ultimate being who existed in the primal void. Ahura Mazda, the wise and all-knowing, created the sun, moon, and stars. He brought into being the Good Mind that works within man and all creation. Ahriman (also known as Angra Mainya, meaning “the destructive spirit”) created demons and attacked Ahura Mazda. But Ahura Mazda sent him back into the darkness, saying “Neither our thoughts, teachings, plans, beliefs, words, nor souls agree.” Then Ahura Mazda created Gayomart, the first man and the first fire priest. But Ahriman renewed his attack and broke through the sky in blazing fire, bringing with him starvation, disease, pain, lust, and death. So Ahura Mazda set a limit to time, trapping Ahriman inside creation. Ahriman then tried to leave creation, but he could not. So he has remained, doing evil until the end of time.

The End of All Things

As the end of time draws near, the savior, Saoshyant, will arise. He will prepare the world to be made new, and help Ahura Mazda to destroy Ahriman. In the time of Saoshyant, people will grow pure. They will stop eating meat, then milk, then plants, then water, until at last they need nothing. Then there will be no more sin, and Az, the demon of lust created by Ahriman, will starve. She will turn on her creator, and try to swallow him up. Ahriman will beg Ahura Mazda to save him, and Ahura Mazda will cast him from creation, through the very hole he made when he broke in. Then time will be at an end, and the world will begin again. Saoshyant will raise the dead, and Ahura Mazda will marry body to soul. First to rise will be Gayomart, the first fire priest, then the mother and father of humanity, Mashya and Mashyoi, then the rest of humanity. All the metal in the mountains of the world will melt, and each man and woman will pass through the stream of molten metal and emerge purified. To the good, the stream will feel like a bath of warm milk; to the evil, it will be agony, as their sins are burned away. The new world will be immortal and everlasting, and free of taint.

Vishnu the Preserver

Vishnu and his wife Lakshmi (or Shri) are shown riding on their mount, the celestial bird Garuda. Vishnu, the “wide-strider,” measured out the cosmos in three strides. He is regarded as the protector of the world, and because of his compassion for humankind, descends to earth in various avatar forms, such as Prince Rama, to fight evil. Whenever Vishnu is incarnated, so is Lakshmi, to be his bride. Here, Garuda is taking the loving couple to their own heaven, Vaikuntha.

The Round Table

The Round Table was a gift to King Arthur from his future father-in-law, King Leodegrance, who had received it from Arthur’s father, King Uther Pendragon (see p. 84). Other sources say King Arthur himself had it made to prevent quarrels about seating arrangements. The Round Table had seats for 150 knights, and when a knight proved worthy to sit at it, he found his name set miraculously on his chair in letters of gold by the magic of Merlin the wizard. Only one seat, the so-called Siege Perilous, would remain empty, until either Sir Perceval or Sir Galahad—depending on the source— arrived to claim it. In some versions it is by sitting in this danger seat that the Grail hero dooms the land, thereby requiring the Grail Quest to put things right. This recalls the Welsh story of Pryderi, nephew of Bran, who brings desolation on Dyfed by sitting on a perilous mound after a banquet.

Book Review: The Environment and World History.

Edmund Burke III., Kenneth Pomeranz, eds. The Environment and World History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. 377 pp. $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-520-25687-3; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-520-25688-0.

Reviewed by Matthew Evenden (University of British Columbia)
Published on H-HistGeog (March, 2010)
Commissioned by Arn M. Keeling

World Environmental History and the Developmentalist Project

 

No historical geographer with an interest in world history and its environmental dimensions should miss this book. Edited by Edmund Burke III and Kenneth Pomeranz, two well-known world historians, the collection seeks to bring the fields of environmental and world history into conversation. Environmental historians, Burke and Pomeranz contend, focus their attention on regional and local studies, while world historians pay surprisingly little attention to the environment. Although these generalizations might be overstated, the book’s ambitions are important. World problems demand an environmental history, and local and regional environmental histories need to be read in the context of wider spatial scales and processes.

The global reach of the collection may best be described as a cumulative accomplishment. Only Pomeranz’s introduction, Burke’s essay on energy transitions, and a republished essay by the late John Richards on property rights develop a global analysis. The remaining seven chapters take up continental and regional problems of several varieties. Burke offers a synoptic environmental history of the Middle East over the very long term; Pomeranz explores the last five hundred years of Chinese environmental history with a particular focus on water; Michael Adas offers a reprise of previous work examining the rice frontiers of Southeast Asia under conditions of colonialism; Mark Cioc offers an essay on the Rhine as a world river; and Douglas Weiner examines the role of the state as a predatory institution in Russian and Soviet environmental history. Beyond these substantive essays, others offer crisp historiographical overviews, including William Beinart on Africa, Mahesh Rangarajan on India, and Lise Sedrez on Latin America. Although the attention devoted to regional explorations would seem to undercut the purpose of the volume, Pomeranz argues persuasively that they provide, rather, crucial underpinnings for studies of state formation and environmental change, long-term understandings of particular regions or places, and examinations of the local instantiations of global patterns and processes. 

While all of the chapters speak to the central problematic of the book linking world and environmental history, the editors propose a wider interpretation centered on the concept of developmentalism. Developmentalism, according to Pomeranz, constitutes a broad social project found in a range of societies in the early modern and modern world defined by processes of state-building, sedentarization, and resource intensification. The term is attractive in allowing analysis to move past previous debates focusing primarily on the development and spread of capitalism, with the inevitable East-West contrasts. By refocusing attention on developmental processes in the state and on the land, new, intriguing comparative problems come into view. Of course, the concept also runs certain risks, such as placing too much weight on the state apparatus as a driver, which might make sense in a case like China, but not in other regions where early modern and precolonial states were diverse in form and relatively weak. The collection’s lack of attention to North America and Europe (beyond Cioc’s elegant essay) also begs the question of how the developmentalist thesis applies in these important and influential cases. Finally, the developmentalist project is so broad in its conception that it is difficult to see why it could not also be applied to various premodern cases. Notably, only Pomeranz and Burke work with the concept, while Richard’s chapter offers complementary cases and evidence for the interpretation. Other contributors focus on different kinds of issues, such as the impact of colonialism, or change and continuity in state forms.

Geographers will ask whether this work of world environmental history engages geographical scholarship, and the answer is, rarely. Although many of the problems at the center of the developmentalist concept and of comparative and global analysis address questions of scale, none of the authors engage the theoretical literature in human geography on scale and multi-scalar processes. This is not a great shortcoming, in my view, but it does suggest the disciplinary walls that still separate historical geography and environmental history on certain problems and approaches. The greater deficiency from a geographical perspective is the rather modest use of maps. There are only two locational maps in the entire book. Several of these chapters would have been greatly enhanced by maps charting not only locations but also processes of change, linkage, and transformation. 

Reservations aside, this is a remarkable book, with no weak sections. It originated in a special seminar sponsored by the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities Institute for College Teachers. This fact may help to explain its scope and accessibility. I would not hesitate to assign it to upper-level undergraduates and would recommend it to others seeking a good introduction to area studies approaches to environmental history as well as the emerging confluence between world and environmental historiography. 

BC Worlds