Surtr

51. “Surt from the south comes with flickering flame; shines from his sword the Val-gods’ sun. The stony hills are dashed together, the giantesses totter; men tread the path of Hel, and heaven is cloven.”

“He who sitteth on its borders (or the land’s-end) to guard it is named Surtur. In his hand he beareth a flaming falchion, and at the end of the world shall issue forth to combat, and shall vanquish all the gods, and consume the universe with fire.”

Völuspá has Surtr come from the south with flickering flame and a sword that shines like the sun of the gods; the hills crash together and heaven splits. A few stanzas later the one who killed Beli goes to fight him. Vafþrúðnismál names the plain where he and the gods will meet, Fáfnismál names an island where Surt and the Æsir will meet, and Vafþrúðnismál says that the gods’ holy places are inhabited again only once “Surt’s fire” is quenched.

Snorri’s Gylfaginning turns him into a guardian. He sits at the border of Múspell, a world too bright and hot for outsiders, with a flaming sword in his hand. At the end of the world he rides out first, fights, and sets the whole world alight. The poem gives the direction, south, and the fire; the idea of a watchman at a border is Snorri’s.

The name Surtr is generally read as meaning “black” or “swart”, and John Lindow has suggested it may point to a charred look. It is used as a personal name in the poems and as a common word for a giant in at least one skaldic verse that Snorri quotes.

Scholars do not agree on where the figure comes from. Bertha Phillpotts thought he was inspired by Icelandic eruptions, while Rudolf Simek notes that giants usually belong to the east in these sources and that a southern one is tied to fire. Andy Orchard has seen in Snorri’s sword-bearing guardian an echo of the flaming sword that guards Eden in the Bible. Surtr appears again in Fjölsvinnsmál beside Sinmara; see Lævateinn and Sinmara. His fight with Freyr has its own entry.