Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

THE SCENE OF MAN’S SURVIVAL, 371

The earth is Ovid’s earth; it is Asgard. It is an island, surrounded by the ocean :

“And along the outer strand of that sea they gave lands for the giant-races to dwell in ; and against the attack of restless giants they built a burg within the sea and around the earth.”

This proves that by “the earth” was not meant the whole globe ; for here we see that around the outside margin of that ocean which encircled Asgard, the mothercountry had given lands for colonies of the giant-races, the white, large, blue-eyed races of Northern and Western Europe, who were as “restless” and as troublesome then to their neighbors as they are now and will be to the end of time.

And as the Elder and Younger Edda claim that the Northmen were the giant races, and that their kings were of the blood of these Asas ; and as the bronze-using people advanced, (it has been proved by their remains,*) into Scandinayia from the southwest, it is clear that these legends do not refer to some mythical island in the Indian Seas, or to the Pacific Ocean, but to the Atlantic: the west coasts of Europe were “the outer strand” where these white colonies were established ; the island was in the Atlantic ; and, as there is no body of submerged land in that ocean with roots or ridges reaching out to the continents east and west, except the mass of which the Azores Islands constitute the mountain-tops, the conclusion is irresistible that here was Atlantis ; here was Lanka; here was “the island of the innocent,” here was Asgard.

And the Norse legends describe this “Asgard” as a land of temples and plowed fields, and a mighty civilized race.

And here it is that Ragnarok comes. It is from the

* Du Chaillu’s “ Land of the Midnight Sun,” vol. i, pp. 343, 345, ete.