Yes, full. I want to thank you very much for friendly

invitation and the opportunity to contribute something to

your research consortium and your lectures series. And of course thanks

well for the very kind introduction. I know of course that my field of research, the medieval

or more exactly the pre-Christian culture of Scandinavia, is probably rather unfamiliar

for most of you. So if things that I mention in my paper remain unclear, I hope I will

be able to clarify them in the following discussion. In any case, I'm very happy about this opportunity

of an interdisciplinary exchange. Before I begin my actual speech, I would like to say

a few words about the title of my lecture, Prophecies and Notions of the End-Time in

Old Norse Religion. In fact, I apologize for that, no prophecies in the strict sense from

ancient Scandinavia have been handed down to us. Nevertheless, I have designed the title

of my lecture in this way because the most important primary source for the Old Norse

ideas of the last days, a mythological poem from the 10th century, is described in its

title as a prophecy, the prophecy of the seeress or Völuspá. Although it probably does not

represent a real prophecy in the strict sense, its text is nevertheless designed as a prophecy

and is compared with the other medieval visionary poetry. But contrary to this limitation, however,

I would like to emphasize that this poem is not to be regarded as purely fictional literature,

but rather transports apparently widespread myths or beliefs of the Old Norse religion

of the 10th century. The concept of the end-time of the world, symbolized by the downfall of

the gods, appears in many texts of that time, often only as a highlight-like quotation,

and also seers, usually female ones, actually existed in Old Norse culture. Thus, even if

the prophecy of the seeress may be a literary text, its contents reflect end-time expectations

which actually existed in Old Norse culture and which may have been the content of real

prophecies of that time as well.

So the topics I want to talk about. First of all, I give you a short introduction. Then

we look at the North Germanic eschatology in detail, give you some general information,

we'll see the sources of the Ragnarök tradition, the actual content of it. This is subdivided

into the causes of the Ragnarök, the Ragnarök in the narrower sense, the new world after

the Ragnarök, background and origin of the Ragnarök myth will follow, which I have divided

into three parts. I will deal with the question of coherence of the myth on the issue of prevalence

and representativeness and on the question of the origin of the myth.

To start with the introduction, as you all know, of course, conceptions of the last things

of the end of times are usually called eschatology. And in the medieval traditions of Germanic-speaking

peoples, eschatological ideas occur in temporal and spatial distance in the West Germanic

and in the North Germanic area. A possible West Germanic eschatology is encountered fragmentarily

in connection with the term Muspel or Muspeli, which has not been completely clarified, this

term has not been completely clarified up to now, while North Germanic mythology has

a detailed representation of the last days in the form of the Ragnarök myth. Because

of this unequal distribution of preserved traditions, the North Germanic tradition inevitably

occupies a much larger part in every investigation of heathen Germanic eschatological concepts.

In this lecture, I will therefore concentrate exclusively on the Scandinavian Ragnarök

tradition. In addition, it should be noted that I will also concentrate on the so-called

universal eschatology, the fate of the world as a whole. The area of individual eschatology,

the personal fate of the individual after his death, unfortunately cannot be dealt with

in the narrow framework of this lecture. And yet another remark, because the term heathen

has just been used, I would like to note the following briefly. I use the terms heathen

and heathenism and the like in a neutral sense to describe the indigenous religion of the

Germanic or especially North Germanic peoples. There are no negative connotations associated

with it, as known from religious polemics. For example, as it appears in religious polemics

of the Abrahamic traditions. I nevertheless stick with this term. Firstly, because there