The Norns are fear and ignorance and hate.

We kneel to them and so portend our fate.

Below the world, our refuse feeds the well

Of misery and pain by which they dwell.

And thus Hel comes for us by their decree:

Beware the Ragnarok, doom prophecy.

 

You will first know it by the scorching sun.

A Fimbulsummer tells man’s time is done.

The skies, so filled with noxious greenhouse gas,

Will fill us with regret for missteps past.

The seas will rise and furious storms awake,

The desert sands spread over land and bake

Once fertile plains in hellish flames and dust.

Three years atop a heap of blistering rust

Shall live mankind before the strain shall end

The solidarity of man and friend.

 

Then comes an age of guns and bloody knives,

As desperate hunger feeds on human lives.

Upon the other, son and father turn.

All morals washed away as cities burn.

Look up, see Skoll and Hati catch their prey!

For smoke shall blur the line ‘twixt night and day.

Great nations will exhaust themselves in war,

So resource-starved, they give a desperate roar

And break the chain that keeps the Wolf at bay,

The Wolf that Tyr and Einstein locked away.

At last the clock strikes midnight! Watch in awe

As rockets glare, each one a crimson claw

Of Fenrir, godsbane, howling doom above.

Into atomic hellfire flies the dove.

 

As shockwaves tear across the crumbling waste,

The Ship of Nails makes sail and with all haste

The traitor Loki and his monstrous crew

Parade on down the lonesome avenue

Of all that was so glorious and bright.

As goodness shrinks into the silent night.

 

What follows is not what you likely think.

When all Creation is pushed to the brink

Of ruin, there shall be no glorious stand.

No Godly war, no Gjallarhorn’s command.

No final wisdom shall the Father seek,

The Wolf has killed him early; he was weak.

The einherjar will not awake, instead

No honor shall be given to the dead.

Garm howls unhindered, Tyr shall face no foe

For slain was Justice far too long ago.

And Thor is less a champion, more a skald,

For thunder is the dirge of those who called

Out mercy! as the rains poured down to raise

The seas to quench and swallow whole the blaze.

 

So ends the world. What follows is unknown.

Likely the works of man are overgrown

With nature’s creeping roots that will reclaim,

plant Yggdrasil again, though not the same.

And maybe Lif and Lifþrasir will too

Endure the end and live to start anew.

Just hope they learn the lesson of our age,

So that the Norns might not repeat their rage.

 

For now, for us, this burden is to bear:

Do fear the end, but do not yet despair.

Through work and sacrifice we can delay

The hateful end and buy another day

For children to survive, tear out the hate,

And maybe earn a chance to change our fate.