ODIN
Once the doomed ship made from dead nails shall darken the world.
It shall be preceded by the three-year-long cold, howling wolf, three red roosters and many others, as cautionary signs. While he climbs his Aerial throne – an immensely tall tower that raises above all that was ever built by either gods or men – Odin watches it grow every night.
Until then, however, until that time comes, Odin will each morning look at the world with joy, from the top of his tower, he will look at that vast country of giants and people, seeing the country by the first glimmers of the morning sun.
And then on Odin's outstretched hand two birds, two ravens, will land; Thought is the name of the first and the name of the other is Memory.
The land is green and fertile now, but it was not always so. In order for this country to become a homeland for good people many hard battles with the rocky giants had to be won. The beauty of the world is perishable. There will be a time when all this will go away in the fire. Hejmdal, the keeper of the bridge that connects heaven and earth, will announce it with a single powerful blow of his horn.
It will be the moment when the giant serpent Midgard, green as the sea, wakes up, from its powerful movement the world will shake. It will be the day when the bridge Bifrost, with the terrible roar, will collapse under the weight of the celestial armies. The day when the sky wolves will devour the moon and the sun, and when the dense eclipse shall cover the world, and Odin and Thor, and many other gods, will fall in an unequal fight.
The battle will be fierce but short. The outcome of the battle at the end of the world is already pre-determined. Gods and all the people who will fight by their side - all those who have ever fought bravely in this land – cannot change it. And no matter how bravely they fight this time, black Surtus Loe, who will ride in the battle before the children of Muspel, will eventually ignite the ground with his sword brighter than the sun, whose flames will flare up on all four sides. One by one, the stars will go off. The country will eventually sink into the ocean; Anti-being shall prevail over Being. It will be the most famous and most difficult battle that will take place since the beginning of time, a battle in which the gods or people are not required to win, but only to fulfill their duty, irrespective of the outcome, to fulfill it until the end.
Odin knows that. (He knows the secret of the runes.) And he knows that by not being able to ignore the insult, he will throw his spear one day, which will bring death to many, including his son, and thus will also start a fatal chain of events that we know as the "Twilight of the Gods ". Odin knows that he will die in the first fight, swallowed, devoured by the monstrous wolf Fenrir. He knows this because nine days and nights he spent hanging upside down above the face of the deep, hung on the roots of a large ash tree, and because he has sacrificed his own eye to drink from Mimir’s spring, The Spring of memories.
Odin is prepared for all that. When the time comes, he will not, like frivolous Frej, regret for his lost sword. At dusk of the day of unspeakable eclipse he will bravely enter the battlefield; leading Einheriar (even their quarrels will be dear to him). Finally showing his face under the golden helmet, he will not hesitate to look death straight in the eye.
When, after all, on the land – resurrected like the Spring – the first people come out of the forests of memories, the survived Aesir will remember his deeds and will remember Odin’s magical runes.
It should be noted that, from the standpoint of this myth, the fact that we now no longer have a valid key to the mystery of runes is not only expected, but also legitimate. Knowledge is recollection. Remembering Fimbultir’s gold runes is knowledge from the Golden Ages, it will be restored in the fire and collapse and then resurrection of the divine and human power, in that fire will be restored the entire cosmos as well.
Boris Nad
translated by Ivana Ivanc
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