Yggdrasil · Described Without a Place on the Map
Vígríðr
The plain where the gods and Surtr meet at Ragnarök.
In Thorpe’s translation
18. Vigrid the plain is called where in fight shall meet Surt and the gentle Gods; a hundred rasts it is on every side. That plain is to them decreed.
- Benjamin Thorpe (translator), The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson (the Poetic Edda) (opens in a new tab) (19th c.; Norroena ed. 1906), Vafþrúðnismál, stanza 18 (Thorpe’s numbering; other editions differ) Rights: Public domain. Nineteenth-century translation, in the public domain. Text as published online by Project Gutenberg (ebook #14726).
What the sources say
Vafþrúðnismál says Vígríðr is the plain where Surtr and the gentle gods will meet in battle, and that it is a hundred rasts across on every side. Gylfaginning gives the same size as a hundred miles on every side. In Gylfaginning the sons of Muspell ride toward it, led by Surtr, and the wolf Fenrir, the Midgard serpent, Loki, the followers of Hel and the frost giants gather there too.
The sources say how big it is, not where it lies, so it has no dot on the map.
- Vafþrúðnismál (Poetic Edda), stanza 18 (Thorpe’s numbering; other editions differ)
- attributed to Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda: Gylfaginning (13th century), the passage on Ragnarök
Names and background
The name Vígríðr is usually glossed as battle-surge, or the place on which battle surges. A second name, Óskópnir, is less certain: scholars have proposed readings such as the not-yet-created, not made, and mismade.
The two Eddic poems that name the battleground disagree on its shape. Vafþrúðnismál speaks of a plain, while in Fáfnismál Fáfnir calls the place Óskópnir and an island. The famous size, a hundred in each direction, is translated differently as rasts, miles or leagues, and Bellows notes it is a general phrase for a vast distance rather than a measurement. The poetic sources are brief; the fuller account of the battle is Snorri's.
- Wikipedia contributors, Vígríðr (opens in a new tab)
Where the sources attest it
Vígríðr is the plain where the last battle is to be fought. Vafþrúðnismál stanza 18 (Bellows’s numbering) names it as the field where Surtr and the gods will meet and gives its size as a hundred leagues in every direction; Bellows glosses the name “field of battle” and treats the figure as a general phrase for a vast distance. Snorri quotes the stanza in Gylfaginning in his account of Ragnarök.
The name is usually explained as “battle-surge”, but that is an interpretation. Fáfnismál gives the field a different name, Óskópnir, which has no settled meaning. No archaeological evidence is cited for the place.
- Vafþrúðnismál (Poetic Edda), 18
- Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, The Prose Edda (Brodeur translation) (opens in a new tab) (1916), Gylfaginning LI-LII Rights: Public domain. Chapter numbers follow this edition.