And all the land on Earth sinks into the sea. But that’s not quite the end.

There’s a very special tree in heaven, the World Tree, or Yggdrasil. This tree possesses the essence of every living thing that ever was and ever will be on Earth. And while the world was being destroyed, two people—Lif and Lifthrasir—managed to survive by hiding in the welcoming branches of Yggdrasil. A few of the gods survive as well, including Odin’s brother and sons and Thor’s sons.

So that when a beautiful, cleansed new world rises from the sea, and the sun and moon are reborn, Lif, Lifthrasir, and the surviving gods are there to welcome it and happily take up residence there. This new world, devoid of evil and thriving in peaceful harmony, is gradually repopulated with Lif and Lifthrasir’s descendants.

As for the inhabitants of the previous world, who either died in Surt’s fire or drowned as countries and continents sank, their souls never ceased to exist. They might be living among the gods in Grimli, or in the splendor of Brimir, if they were good people during their lifetimes. If they weren’t, they’ll be exiled to Nastrond, a hideous nightmare of a dungeon, the walls and roofs of which are made entirely of live, very poisonous snakes.

I have to admit, I chuckled more than once about the preposterous series of events the Norse came up with to describe the end of the world. Then I remembered what I was taught about the Apocalypse in Catholic school and wondered if the Norse might have chuckled a little themselves at stories about locusts wearing crowns, pouring out of a bottomless pit to torture anyone who didn’t have the sign of God on their forehead. Suddenly I didn’t feel I had as much room to laugh about giant tsunami-causing snakes, and wolves that could eat the sun, and I realized we humans always have been and always will be just trying to piece together the unknowable as best we can.

CHAPTER THREE

Christians, Jews, and Catholics on the End of Days

World religions are among my passions. I studied them in college, and I’ve studied them ever since. I’m sure the seeds of this passion were planted during my childhood, when the family influences of Christianity, Judaism, and Catholicism blended to create my open-minded, loving curiosity about the variety of ways in which humankind defines, reaches out to, and worships our Creator. The differences between these three beautiful faiths are every bit as fascinating as the similarities, from their traditions to their interpretations of historic events to their beliefs about how, or if, life on Earth will end.

Christianity

The word eschatology is defined in the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary as “a branch of theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind; a belief concerning death, the end of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humankind; specifically, any of various Christian doctrines concerning the Second Coming, the resurrection of the dead, or the Last Judgment. ” And several aspects of Christian eschatology are still being debated by theologians around the world, millennia after the Bible was written.

Both the Old Testament and the New Testament of the Bible are filled with prophecies about the end of days, so it might seem logical that such a wealth of information would lead to clarity. But a lot of the Bible’s apocalyptic verses and passages were deliberately disguised in imagery and symbolism because the atmosphere in which they were written wasn’t exactly welcoming to “seers and soothsayers. ” There might also have been some reluctance to be specific about the date and time of the end of days because of Jesus’s words in Matthew 24:36:

But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.

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