Ragnarok, or the “Twilight of the Gods,” is a prophecy that recounts the inevitable and unavoidable apocalypse in Norse mythology. The Aesir gods, led by Odin, are destined to face an army of giants, led by Loki and the fire giant Surtr, with the two sides destroying one another completely.
The actions of the gods create the preconditions for Ragnarok, and then Loki’s actions set events in motion. But the reason that neither side seems to be able to win at Ragnarok lies with Sigyn. The Aesir goddess of victory in battle, her loyalties are split between her Aesir family and her husband Loki. As the decider of victory, she can fully support neither side, and therefore neither side can win.
This is the story of Ragnarok from Sigyn’s perspective.
Who is Sigyn? The Aesir Goddess of Victory
The name Sigyn means “victorious girlfriend” in Old Norse, and she was probably a goddess of victory in Norse and Germanic paganism, similar to Nike in Greek religion and Victoria in the Roman pantheon.
In the Greco-Roman pantheon, these goddesses were personifications of victory, and therefore often partnered with other gods associated with choosing winners. For example, Zeus was often depicted holding an image of Nike, as they worked together to decide the fate of wars.
Sigyn may similarly have been connected to Odin, the Norse god of war among other things, who was said to decide the fate of battles with the help of the Valkyries. There were many Valkyries, and it is possible that Sigyn was considered among their number. Some scholars also suggest that the goddess Freyja was a Valkyrie because she is described as choosing the bravest fallen warriors to live in the afterlife of Folkvangr. Since taking brave warriors to teh afterlife was something associated with the Valkyries, perhaps Freyja was the principal Valkyrie associated with this task.
Meanwhile, Sigyn may have been the principal Valkyrie associated with victory. This would be consistent with what we know of the Valkyries. According to another story, Odin ordered Brynhildr to grant victory to the elder warrior King Hjalmgunnar in a fight against a younger King named Agnar. Believing Agnar to be the more noble leader, Brynhildr disobeyed Odin’s direct command and struck down Hjalmgunnar instead, securing Agnar’s victory. Brynhildr was punished, but it is also clear that she was not compelled to obey Odin’s orders.
The Wife of Loki
We know very little else about Sigyn. Like most female goddesses, she is only mentioned in passing in the surviving sources, while the male gods get quite a few epic adventures. This is a reflection of the interest and priorities of the male writers, mostly Christian, who wrote down the oral Norse myths that we know today.
The only other important thing we know about Sigyn is that she was the Aesir wife of the trickster giant Loki, though she was not his only wife. According to old Norse mythology, Loki also had three children with the giantess Angrboda. These were the serpent Jormungandr, the wolf Fenrir, and the half-living and half-dead giantess Hel. But Loki did not live in Jotunheim. Due to a blood brotherhood pact with Odin, he lived in Asgard among the Aesir, and Sigyn was his Aesir wife.
This is not strange in Norse mythology, in which many of the Aesir gods, such as Odin and Thor, had Aesir wives and giant mistresses with whom they had powerful children. Thor himself was the son of Odin with the giantess Jordr.
Sigyn and Loki had two children, Narfi and Vali, but very little is said of them in Norse myth beyond their deaths.
Creating the Preconditions for Ragnarok
Odin received the prophecy of Ragnarok from a powerful seeress, and from his perspective, it describes the ultimate doom of the gods. But Odin has no one to blame but himself. In the telling of the prophecy and the way events are connected, it is clear that Odin created the preconditions for Ragnarok through his relentless efforts to control the giants, or jotun, especially Loki’s children.
This hostility between the gods and the giants can be traced back to the beginning of time and the Norse creation myth. When the universe emerged from the primordial goop that solidified in the Ginnungagap, the first being to emerge was the primordial giant Ymir, followed by the first god, Buri. While Ymir was able to reproduce asexually and quickly gave birth to the giant race, Buri seems to have had to procreate the old-fashioned way, presumably with giant women. He had a son Bor, who mated with the giantess Bestla and had three sons: Odin, Vili, and Ve.
Odin and his brother soon became preoccupied with how quickly the giants were multiplying and how outnumbered they were, so they killed Ymir, flooding the cosmos with his blood to kill many of his offspring, and then used his dead body to create Midgard, the world of men, and mankind to occupy it. It also seems that while they were organizing the cosmos, creating things like the afterlife, they sealed the fire giants in the realm of Muspelheim. There, their leader Surtr sits at the gates, looking out over the cosmos, waiting for his opportunity to break out. In this way, Odin created one of the mortal enemies that he would face at Ragnarok.
Later in Norse mythological history, Odin learned of the existence of Loki’s children with Angrboda. He and the other Aesir gods decided that the fruits of such an abominable union were too dangerous to be left to their own devices, so they decided to place each somewhere in the cosmos where they could do the least harm.
Hel was sent off to oversee the underworld of Helheim in Niflheim. While she was given complete control over the souls of the dead there, she was banished, reportedly because her half-living and half-dead visage was too horrible to look upon.
Meanwhile, Jormungandr was thrown into the great sea surrounding Midgard. While the beast stays submerged, the vastness of the sea allowed it to grow to such an enormous size that it can encircle the entire world and hold its own tail in its mouth.
In the cruelest of the stories, the gods knew that they did not have the strength to overpower the mighty wolf Fenrir, and that they would have to trick him into allowing himself to be imprisoned. They lured him to a deserted island and convinced the arrogant wolf to show off his strength by donning heavy chains to show how easy they were to break. He did this twice successfully with chains made by the gods. But the gods went to the dwarves, the master craftsmen of the Norse cosmos, and asked them to make an unbreakable chain. They did this by making it from impossible things: the sound of a cat’s footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish, and the spittle of a bird. The chains looked like a ribbon, but were unbreakable.
Fenrir was naturally suspicious when he was presented with the ribbon and asked to show his strength again. He only agreed if one of the gods put their hand in his mouth as a guarantee that they would free him if he could not free himself. Naturally, none of the gods wanted to agree, knowing it was a trap, but the just god Tyr did. When Fenrir realized that he had imprisoned himself, he bit off Tyr’s hand and began to howl. The gods wedged his mouth open with a sword to stop the sound. The saliva that flowed from his mouth created a great river called Expectation, a direct reference to Ragnarok.
In short, the gods pissed off a group of very powerful enemies and put them in places in the world where they may not be able to do harm now, but would be in the future.
Setting Events in Motion with the Death of Balder
With these prerequisites in place, what set the events of Ragnarok in motion was the death of Balder, the beloved son of Odin and Frigg. Balder was so good, special, and beloved by the gods that, to protect her son, Frigg secured a promise from everything in existence never to hurt or participate in hurting her son. As a result, Balder was invincible. This entertained the gods, who often entertained themselves by throwing things at Balder and watching them bounce off harmlessly.
According to the myth, Loki wanted to discover if Balder really was invincible, so he used his shapeshifting abilities to disguise himself as an old woman and infiltrate Frigg’s court. He got her to reveal that she may have forgotten to get the promise from the humble mistletoe plant. He immediately used this information and created a mistletoe dart. Then, the next time the gods were playing their game, he asked Balder’s blind brother Hodr why he did not participate. Hodr replied it was because he could not see. Loki offered to help him and tricked Hodr into throwing the mistletoe dart at Balder, killing him instantly.
We are not told why Loki wanted Balder dead, but revenge for the treatment of his own children seems a likely scenario. In the panic that followed, Hermodr was sent to Helheim to ask Hel to return Balder to the realm of the living because he was the most beloved of all beings. She said that she would only if they could prove that he was universally loved by having all things in existence weep for him. The gods then went around and asked everything to weep for Balder, and they did, with the exception of a single witch called Thokk, believed to have been Loki in disguise. Thus, Balder was trapped in Helheim.
Meanwhile, Odin had a son with the giantess Rindr who instantly grew to adulthood with the express purpose of killing Hodr for his role in Balder’s death.
Loki was not immediately punished. It is unclear whether his role in the crime was not initially known. But eventually the gods turned against him and stopped inviting him to feasts. He then showed up at a feast uninvited, insulted all the gods, and admitted that he was behind the death of Balder. After this, he fled, but was tracked down by Thor and the other gods for punishment.
The Imprisonment of Loki and Sigyn’s Burden
Once they had hunted down Loki, they also decided to punish his sons with Sigyn, despite the fact they played no apparent role in the crime.
Vali was turned into a wolf, and, losing his senses, he tore his brother Narfi apart and then ran off to his own death. The Prose Edda says that the gods used Narfi’s intestines to tie Loki to three rocks in a deserted cave.
The gods then placed a poisonous snake over Loki’s head to drip venom onto his face for eternity. This causes him extreme pain and makes his entire body convulse. This is what causes earthquakes across the Norse cosmos.
Sigyn tries to protect her husband from the worst of this. She sits beside Loki in isolation, catching the poison in a bowl. But every so often, she is forced to leave to empty the bowl, which is when earthquakes occur. This is why Loki is referred to in the Prose Edda as “the burden of Sigyn’s arms.”
With Loki imprisoned, the last piece of the puzzle is in place that allows for Ragnarok to happen. His convulsing body is likely the principal factor that destabilizes the world before the apocalypse, allowing the enemies of the gods to break their chains.
Decider of Fate at Ragnarok
Great earthquakes at Ragnarok allow Loki and Fenrir to break their chains. It also causes the temperature of the water in the Midgard Sea to increase, making Jormungandr uncomfortable, so he emerges from his waters. Meanwhile, Loki travels to Helheim, where he joins with his daughter to raise an army of the wicked dead to sail to Asgard in ships made from the toenails and fingernails of the dead. The disruption also causes whatever is keeping the fire giants in Muspelheim to crack, allowing them to pour out into the world. Surtr, carrying a flaming sword, sets much of the world on fire.
So begins the final battle in which the two sides annihilate one another. Odin is devoured by Fenrir, along with his army of brave dead warriors. But Fenrir is killed by Odin’s son Vali, who has special shoes that allow him to stand in Fenrir’s mouth without being devoured. Thor and Jormungandr fight. Thor kills the serpent with his hammer, but the serpent has spewed so much venom into Thor that he also dies. Surtr and Freyr fight to the death, as do Loki and Heimdall.
The destruction wrought by these battles is so great that the universe is destroyed and sinks back into the waters of chaos. Some versions of the prophecy end there. Others have the world re-emerge, and a new generation of gods rebuild the world. This is likely a later Christian addition to the original story to better align with their own beliefs.
None of the surviving sources, which do not tell us the fate of any female gods or giants at Ragnarok, tell us what role Sigyn played in this great battle. But if her role in Norse myth was really that of the goddess of victory and the decider of success in war, she may have had a very important role to play. It may have been up to her to decide the victor of the battle, and she may have been unable to do so. She was one of the Aesir and likely sided with them in principle, but after their treatment of her husband and children, her loyalties may have been split. Declaring neither side a winner, the only alternative was complete and utter destruction.
This is a possible telling of the Ragnarok myth from Sigyn’s perspective, though we cannot know how much truth it holds, especially since it is not even entirely clear whether Ragnarok is something that is meant to have already happened, or is something still to come.
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