Ragnarok Quotes

Australia. The only continent designed with a difficulty rating of “ha ha fuck you no.

On the day the Gjallerhorn is blown, it will wake the gods, no matter where they are, no matter how deeply they sleep. Heimdall will blow Gjallerhorn only once, at the end of all things, Ragnarok.

I learned the Norse gods came with their own doomsday: Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods, the end of it all. The gods were going to battle the frost giants, and they were all going to die. Had Ragnarok happened yet? Was it still to happen? I did not know then. I am not certain now.

ALL GLORY TO THE SCIENCE RULES OF SCIENCE!

Okay, cool,” said Jack. “As long as you realize you’ll probably all die in agony and start Ragnarok, I’m down. Let’s do this!

The reading eye must do the work to make them live, and so it did, again and again, never the same life twice, as the artist had intended.

Being smart isn't good enough. You need to be educated, and you need to be open-minded, and you need to remember that what you don't know can most definitely hurt you.

He was beautiful, that was always affirmed, but his beauty was hard to fix or to see, for he was always glimmering, flickering, melting, mixing, he was the shape of a shapeless flame, he was the eddying thread of needle-shapes in the shapeless mass of the waterfall. He was the invisible wind that hurried the clouds in billows and ribbons. You could see a bare tree on the skyline bent by the wind, holding up twisted branches and bent twigs, and suddenly its formless form would resolve itself into that of the trickster.

I know you,” said Maddy. “You’re -“ “What’s a name?” Loki grinned. “Wear it like a coat; turn it, burn it, throw it aside, and borrow another. One-Eye knows; you should ask him.” “But Loki died,” she said, shaking her head. “He died on the field at Ragnarok.” “Not quite.” He pulled a face. “You know there’s rather a lot the Oracle didn’t foretell, and old tales have a habit of getting twisted.” “But in any case, that was centuries ago,” Maddy said bewildered. “I mean - that was the End of the World, wasn’t it?” “So?” said Loki impatiently. “This isn’t the first time the world has come to an end, and it won’t be the last either.

Rules only matter if everyone understands them, agrees to them, and can be trusted not to break them. Bearing these irrefutable facts in mind, rules never matter at all.

Let's go commit senseless acts of science.

They say a witch used to live in these woods, a long long time ago,” she began. And this is what the little girl would tell her children and what they would tell their children long after the ones who came before were gone. “They say an old witch lived in the east, in Iron Wood. And there, she bore the wolves who chase the sun and moon. They say she went to Asgard and was burned three times upon a pyre and three times she was reborn before she fled. They say she loved a man with scarred lips and a sharp tongue; a man who gave her back her heart and more. They say she loved a woman too, a sword-wielding bride of the Gods; as bold as any man and fiercer still. They say she wandered, giving aid to those who needed it most, healing them with potions and spells. They say she stood her ground against the fires of Ragnarok, until the very end, until she was burned a final time. All but her heart reduce to ashes once more. But others say she lives yet.

Lindworms are a sign of a healthy ecosystem,” I said, straightening. “Now let’s get out of here before the healthy ecosystem eats us.

But if you write a version of Ragnarok in the twenty-first century, it is haunted by the imagining of a different end of things. We are a species of animal which is bringing about the end of the world we were born into. Not out of evil or malice, or not mainly, but because of a lopsided mixture of extraordinary cleverness, extraordinary greed, extraordinary proliferation of our own kind, and a biologically built-in short-sightedness.

Give me the purple smoke, rising higher and higher into my brain until I dance with the purple butterflies.” -Girl with the violet eyes.

She was a thin, sickly, bony child, like an eft, with fine hair like sunlit smoke.

As the venom streamed down once more, he heard the unmistakable sound of a wolf howling. It would not be long now. Ragnarok had come, and he would see Asgard crushed and burned till he trod on the ashes of all of those who had wronged him.

Ragnarok. Is that all the North ever thinks about? Is that what you want, Snorri? Some great battle and the world ruined and dead?” I couldn’t blame him if he did. Not with what had befallen him this past year, but I would be disturbed to know he had always lusted after such an end, even on the night before the black ships came to Eight Quays. The light kindling on my torch caught him in midshrug. “Do you want the paradise your priests paint for you on cathedral ceilings?” “Good point.

If you find something you truly love, stick with it. There's nothing else in this world that will make you half as happy. There's nothing else that will make you half as miserable, either, but you can't have one without the other.

Try your best. That's always been good enough for the people who love you.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It's much easier to be brave when you don't believe that the monster under your bed is real.

She was a thinking child, and worked this out. It hurt her, unlike most knowledge, which was strength and pleasure.

Ragnarok is coming. When the sky splits asunder and the dark powers of Muspell march out on their war journey, Frey

She grew up in the ordinary paradise of the English countryside. When she was five she walked to school, two miles, across meadows covered with cowslips, buttercups, daisies, vetch, rimmed by hedges full of blossom and then berries, blackthorn, hawthorn, dog-roses, the odd ash tree with its sooty buds.

The movement of light and dark, the order of day and night and the seasons, was thus, the thin child understood, a product of fright, of the wolves in the mind. Order came from bonds and threatening teeth and claws.

Blackadder was fifty-four and had come to editing Ash out of pique. He was the son and grandson of Scottish schoolmasters. His grandfather recited poetry on firelight evenings: Marmion, Childe Harold, Ragnarok. His father sent him to Downing College in Cambridge to study under F. R. Leavis. Leavis did to Blackadder what he did to serious students; he showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to, or change it. The young Blackadder wrote poems, imagined Dr Leavis’s comments on them, and burned them.

Expectations are dangerous things. They've probably killed more people than any creature or cryptid you care to name.

Love doesn't care what you want. Love doesn't care if it's convenient. Love pursues its own agenda, and there's no bullet in the world that can take it down. More's the pity.

Cousin Jimmy says that a man in Priest Pond says the end of the world is coming soon. I hope it won't come till I've seen everything in it.

Everything ends. Summer ends. Happiness ends. Days of joy are followed by days of sorrow. Even the gods will meet their end in the last battle of Ragnarok when all the evil of the world brings chaos and the sun will turn dark, the waters will drown the homes of men, and the great beamed hall of Valhalla will burn to ashes. Everything ends. I drew Serpent Breath and walked towards the scouts.

It will never end. Till the world ends in the chaos of Ragnarok, we will fight for our women, for our land, and for our homes. Some Christians speak of peace, of the evil of war, and who does not want peace? But then some crazed warrior comes screaming his god's filthy name into your face and his only ambitions are to kill you, to rape your wife, to enslave your daughters, and take your home, and so you must fight.

The black thing in her brain and the dark water on the page were the same thing, a form of knowledge. This is how myths work. They are things, creatures, stories, inhabiting the mind. They cannot be explained and do not explain; they are neither creeds nor allegories. The black was now in the thin child’s head and was part of the way she took in every new thing she encountered.

Therefore,' said Loki the mockery, to the snake his daughter, 'we need to know everything, or at least as much as we can. The gods have secret runes to help in the hunt, or give victory in battle. They hammer, they slash. They do not study. I study. I know.

Lif and Lifthrasir will have children. Their children will have children. There will be life and new life, life everywhere on earth. That was the end; and this is the beginning.

Yes, that’s a brilliant idea. Choose the career path most likely to lead to an early, painful death, and you’re sure to find job satisfaction.

Once upon a time there was a little boy who lived with monsters, and the monsters swore that they would never hurt him, because even monsters dream of living happily ever after.

Hell hath no fury like a centuries-old organisation of zealots scorned.

Ragnarok will begin in the next few days, and it won’t end well for anyone, because apocalypses tend not to include happy endings.

Ragnarok is coming.

Did you just say Ragnarok is poppycock?

THE DAY THE SAUCERS CAME “That day, the saucer day the zombie day The Ragnarok and fairies day, the day the great winds came And snows, and the cities turned to crystal, the day All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the Computers turned, the screens telling us we would obey, the day Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars, And all the bells of London were sounded, the day Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day, The fluttering capes and arrival of the Time Machine day, You didn’t notice any of this because you were sitting in your room, not doing anything not even reading, not really, just looking at your telephone, wondering if I was going to call.

She was a logical child, as far as children go. She did not understand how such a nice, kind, good God as the one they preyed to, could condemn the whole earth for sinfulness and flood it, or condemn his only Son to a disgusting death on behalf of everyone. This death did not seem to have done much good.

It was easier than I expected, maybe because I was too angry and too afraid to really pay attention to what I was doing. Things are always easy when you refuse to let yourself remember how dangerous they are.

The sea was as black as basalt, covered with churning foam, ice-green, clotted cream, shivering high walls full of needles of air going up and up and crashing down on other walls of water on the crumbling coasts of the world.

As for how to avoid going crazy here…Some do lose it, Magnus. Waiting for Ragnarok is hard. The trick is to keep busy. There’s plenty to do here. Me, I’ve learned a dozen languages, including English. I earned a doctorate in Germanic literature, and I learned to knit.” T.J. nodded. “That’s why I invited you to breakfast, Magnus.” “To learn knitting?

Even if you don’t mean it, I want you to take me somewhere and make love to me.--Dai Uie talking to Kane, from "Game Boys

Amy says. “Hitting him doesn’t help his misogyny!

Grandma married him because he was the first man she’d ever met who wasn’t affected by her telepathy. This is the sort of thing that Internet dating sites never have a field for.

there is a velociraptor equivalent of mad cow disease

The trouble with the word ‘monster’ is that it’s very much in the eye of the beholder. Show me a monster, and I’ll show you a man who just didn’t know how to explain himself to you.

In Muspell, at the edge of the flame, where the mist burns into light, where the land ends, stood Surtr, who existed before the gods. He stands there now...It is said that at Ragnarok, which is the end of the world, and only then, Surtr will leave his station. He will go forth from Muspell with his flaming sword and burn the world with fire, and one by one the gods will fall before him.

They deserved to die. He wanted them dead. He wanted their young but poisonous blood shed, and this wretched part of the world erased from the earth. Blood and soil. Yes, they were right. Ragnarok was coming down fast, but not in the way they anticipated. He'd give them their blood and soil.

I told them you almost certainly were not a serial killer, and that they were being horribly sexist by assuming that of the two of us, only you were capable of committing murder. That may have been a tactical error—it got me rather a lot more questioning that I hadn’t exactly been planning on.” “Well, yes. It’s usually unwise to tell the police you could be a serial killer if you really, really wanted to.

Be careful of him Dai, whether you agree with me or not that boy is a time bomb just waiting to explode, and when he does he’s going hit everyone in his way including you . . . or especially you.-- Benjirou Uie warning Dai about Kane from "Game Boys

He thrust his hand in the air and summoned his sword of pure white flame. The gods and goddesses cowered. Throwing his head back and laughing, Surt grew to his full giant size. “You minor, forgotten, pathetic deities! So easy to bend to my will. Not one of you would dare to defy me!” I chose that moment to shape-shift into a bee, buzz up Surt’s teeny-tiny nose, and jab him with my stinger. With a howl of pain, Surt dropped his sword and shrank to his previous size. I changed into my true form. “I dare.” I whipped one end of my golden garrote around his neck and yanked it tight. Then I snatched up his flame sword and with one upward flick, sliced off his pubescent nose. “Jack and Magnus send their regards.” Surt lunged for me. I transformed into a bighorn sheep and head-butted him right where his nose used to be. Then I changed back to human, tightened the garrote until his eyes bulged, and threatened him with his own sword. “Come at me again,” I warned, “and you’ll regret it.” I surveyed the stunned deities. “If one einherji can do this, imagine what all of us can do. And will do, come Ragnarok. We are not destined to win, but we will fight with honor. We would welcome you on our side of the fight. But, if you must side with him”—I gave the garrote a vicious tug and was rewarded with a gurgle from Surt—“know this: I will personally hunt you down on the Last Battlefield of Vigridr and see that you are sent straight to Ginnungagap. The choice is yours.” The deities vanished.

They held each other close and turned their backs upon the end. The hills that split asunder and the black that ate the skies; The flames that shot so high and hot that even dragons burned; Would never be the final sights that fell upon their eyes. A fly upon a wall, the waves the sea wind whipped and churned — The city of a thousand years, and all that men had learned; The Doom consumed it all alike, and neither of them turned" ―Tyrion Lannister and Jorah Mormont, quoting a poem about the Doom

The black thing in her brain and the dark water on the page were the same thing, a form of knowledge. This is how myths work. They are things, creatures, stories, inhabiting the mind. They cannot be explained and do not explain; they are neither creeds nor allegories.

Ze probeerde zich zondig te voelen. Maar haar geest wendde zich af, naar waar hij levend was.

So all he has to do to get cheerful and immediate obedience is use Star Wars speak? How had he not know that?

I have now said what I came to say. I had hoped to receive the fruits of a god's wisdom in reply - not the stupidity of a hammer.

It is said that at Ragnarok, which is the end of the world, and only then, Surtr will leave his station.

Heimdall will blow the Gjallerhorn only once, at the end of all things, at Ragnarok.

but since Dream Me is dressed as Hot Teacher, and Dream Chris Hemsworth is dressed as Thor (short-hair Thor: Ragnarok, to be exact), I’m willing to overlook it.

Nine days after Perreault first saw the woman in black, an Indonesian mother of four came out of her tent long enough to claim that the mermaid had risen, fully-formed, from the very center of the quake. One of her boys, hearing this, said that he'd heard it was the other way around.

Loki was now captured, and with no thought of mercy he was taken to a cave. They [the Æsir] took three flat stones and, setting them on their edges, broke a hole through each of them. Then they caught Loki’s sons, Vali and Nari or Narfi. The Æsir changed Vali into a wolf, and he ripped apart his brother Narfi. Next the Æsir took his guts, and with them they bound Loki on to the top of the three stones – one under his shoulders, a second under his loins and the third under his knees. The fetters became iron. ‘Then Skadi took a poisonous snake and fastened it above Loki so that its poison drips on to his face. But Sigyn, his wife, placed herself beside him from where she holds a bowl to catch the drops of venom. When the bowl becomes full, she leaves to pour out the poison, and at that moment the poison drips on to Loki’s face. He convulses so violently that the whole earth shakes – it is what is known as an earthquake. He will lie bound there until Ragnarok.

But the attitude that Viking society held up as the ideal one was a heroic stoicism. In the words of archaeologist Neil Price, "The outcome of our actions, our fate, is already decided and therefore does not matter. What is important is the manner of our conduct as we go to meet it." You couldn't change what was going to happen to you, but you could at least face it with honor and dignity. The best death was to go down fighting, preferably with a smile on your lips. Life is precarious by nature, but this was especially true in the Viking Age, which made this fatalism, and stoicism in the face of it, especially poignant. The model of this ideal was Odin's amassing an army in Valhalla in preparation for Ragnarok. He knew that Fenrir, "the wolf", was going to murder him one way or another. Perhaps on some level he hoped that by gathering all of the best warriors to fight alongside him, he could prevent the inevitable. But deep down he knew that his struggle was hopeless - yet he determined to struggle just the same, and to die in the most radiant blaze of glory he could muster.

[Loki] was beautiful, that was always affirmed, but his beauty was hard to fix or to see, for he was always glimmering, flickering, melting, mixing, he was the shape of a shapeless flame, he was the eddying thread of needle-shapes in the shapeless mass of the waterfall. He was the invisible wind that hurried the clouds in billows and ribbons...He was amused and dangerous, neither good nor evil. Thor was the classroom bully raised to the scale of growling thunder and whipping rain. Odin was Power, was in power. Ungraspable Loki flamed amazement and pleased himself. The gods needed him because he was clever, because he solved problems. When they needed to break bargains they rashly made, mostly with giants, Loki showed them the way out. He was the god of endings. He provided resolutions for stories -- if he chose to. The endings he made often led to more problems. There are no altars to Loki, no standing stones, he had no cult. In myths he was always the third of the trio, Odin, Hodur, Loki. In myths, the most important comes first of three. But in fairy tales, and folklore, where these three gods also play their parts, the rule of three is different; the important player is the third, the *youngest* son, Loki.

Nine is the mythical number of the Germanic tribes. Documentation for the significance of the number nine is found in both myth and cult. In Odin's self-sacrifice he hung for nine nights on the windy tree (Hávamál), there are nine worlds to Nifhel (Vafprudnismal 43), Heimdallr was born to nine mothers, Freyr had to wait for nine nights for his marriage to Gerd (Skírnismál 41), and eight nights (= nine days?) was the time of betrothal given also in the Þrymskviða. Literary embellishments in the Eddas similarly used the number nine: Skaði and Njörðr lived alternately for nine days in Nóatún and in Þrymheimr; every ninth night eight equally heavy rings drip from the ring Draupnir; Menglöð has nine maidens serve her (Fjölsvinnsmál 35ff), and Ægir had as many daughters. Thor can take nine steps at Ragnarök after his battle with the Midgard serpent before he falls down dead. Sacrificial feasts lasting nine days are mentioned for both Uppsala and Lejre and at these supposedly nine victims were sacrificed each day.

He chuckled and brought his face closer to mine, almost close enough that it was hard to focus on his features, the smell of his cologne from this close was something expensive and delicious. “Or you’ll what, Kacea? Kick my ass like you did when we were kids? I dare you to try, sweetling. I’m not the chubby simpleton I was then.” He dragged his thumb across my lower lip and his dark gaze followed it. “I’ve learned a lot of things since then. And I’d love to share them with you…” ~ Alain Reece & Kacea Meade (Lunacy, Ragnarok Legacy #1)

A video screen descended from the spear-enhanced ceiling and locked into place. He pushed another button. Images of wolves, giants, gods, and weapons flashed across the screen. Then a title: The Signs of Ragnarok: Doomed if You Know Them, Doomed if You Don’t. I groaned inwardly. I’d sat through Odin’s instructional video when I first became a Valkyrie. I saw it a second time after I helped re-shackle the dreaded killer Fenris Wolf on Lyngvi, the Isle of Heather. Then once more after I’d inadvertently aided my father Loki, a vile trickster, to escape his imprisonment. And after Loki was recaptured? Yep—got to see it again.

It's always Ragnarok. Regular mortals have the power to blow the world sky-high and all the major supernatural factions can do the same. The thing is, though, as long as people want to live then you're going to have people stepping in the way of those who want to do something to blow us up. That's the only way you can endure it.

Everything ends. Summer ends. Happiness ends. Days of joy are followed by days of sorrow. Even the gods will meet their end in the last battle of Ragnarok when all the evil of the world brings chaos and the sun will turn dark, the black waters will drown the homes of men, and the great beamed hall of Valhalla will burn to ashes. Everything ends.

Tanrı gibi yüce ve kusursuz bir varlığın nasıl olup da üzerinde yaşayanları günaha boğuldukları gerekçesiyle cezalandırmak için tüm dünyayı devasa bir tufana maruz bıraktığını ya da tek Oğlunu herkesin günahlarının ceremesini çekmek üzere korkunç bir ölüme mahkûm ettiğini bir türlü aklı almıyordu. Kaldı ki bu ölüm, pek de bir işe yaramışa benzemiyordu.

Respect is rarely the thing that gets you killed.

Animals were more adept than humans at knowing when there was danger close by them. Better senses of smell, better instincts, and less arrogance

Alex would make a terrible Martian,' said Sarah. 'He doesn’t have a giant laser and he’s not planning an Earth-shattering kaboom.

Never surprise any member of a venomous species with a home visit. It’s not only rude, it’s potentially hazardous to your health.

Never look a gift horse in the magazine well.

At least that would be a new disgusting swamp experience, instead of a disgusting swamp experience I'd already had several times that day.

Try your best. That’s always been enough for the people who love you.

It’s not easy for a young gay fabulous boy in Japan, I should know, that’s why I became a woman.” Momma Nakama

I’m nobody’s bitch.” He growled low and threatening. “But you were mine.” Kane cut in deep and matter of fact.

It was the fact that the world and the story ends, and the way that it ends and is reborn, that made the gods and the frost giants and the rest of them tragic heroes, tragic villains. Ragnarok made the Norse world linger for me, seem strangely present and current, while other, better-documented systems of belief felt as if they were part of the past, old things.

The words men used to describe the gods were the words they used for fetters or bonds, things which held the world together, within bounds, preventing the breakout of chaos and disorder.

Alex and I had already died. We would never age. We’d live in Valhalla until Doomsday came around (unless we got killed outside the hotel before that). The best life we could hope for was training for Ragnarok, postponing that inevitable battle as many centuries as possible, and then, one day, marching out of Valhalla with Odin’s army and dying a glorious death while the Nine Worlds burned around us. Fun.

All illustrate the “theory of courage,” which Tolkien called “the great contribution of early Northern literature,” meaning both Icelandic and Old English literature. It is a “creed of unyielding will”: The heroes refuse to give up even when they know the monsters—evil—will win. For that is the big difference between Snorri’s Ragnarok and the Christian Doomsday. Odin and the human army of Valhalla do not win.

I Know you are asking: What if I am wrong? What if RAGNAROK does not come? What if it does not happen the way I say it is going to happen? I suppose that is a possibility. Perhaps the Mayans WERE wrong. Maybe we WILL enter a new era of consciousness. Maybe we will NOT destroy ourselves with technology. Perhaps it will be that some new old god comes. Say his name is DOZGOTH, the 701st, and say he takes pity on us. And a thousand years after all the suffering of RAGNOROK, he will retcon us back to the very day this book was pusblished. You will remember nothing of what happened or what you did to survive. The only evidence that any of this ever happened will be this book, and the fact that ou now have a tentacle instead of an arm. But you will explain that away simply by saying you are wearing an octopus sleeve. The mind can explain so many things when it wants to close its eyes and sleep. Perhaps only one person will remember what really happened, and he will be named Jonathan Coulton. But he cannot tell anyone, for he is but an animal.

We are being inexorably drawn in by a Final cause – the Omega Point – divinity. Divinity = perfect symmetry = the total, flawless alignment of every monad in the Singularity, which equates to the resetting of every monad and the end of a cosmic cycle. This is the moment of Divine Suicide – when all the Gods die. This is Ragnarok. This is Götterdammerung. All the gods must perish. Each cyclical universe must die. Scientists talk of the Heat Death brought about by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. There’s simply no way out.

Imagining the end of things, when you are a child, is perhaps impossible. The thin child, despite the war that was raging, was more afraid of eternal boredom, of doing nothing that mattered, of day after day going nowhere, than she was of death or the end of things. When she thought of death she thought of the little boy across the road who had died of diabetes. No one at school, told of this, knew how to respond. Some giggled. They shifted in their seats. She did not, in fact, imagine this boy as dead; she went no further than understanding that he was not there and never would be. She knew that her father would not return, but she knew this as a fact in her own life, not in his. He would not be there again. She had nightmares about hangings, appalled that any human being could condemn any other human to live through the time of knowing the end was ineluctably coming.

Like any other subordinate of the hell, I've died a few times. Knife wound, explosions, minotaur-related disagreements, voluntary and incredibly athletic decisions to stop my own heart. The usual. But I've never been chewed up and digested by a dragon god. Which, I guess, is a class of experience above being eaten by a garden-variety lizard.

The bowl she holds fills slowly, one drop at a time, but eventually the poison fills the bowl to the brim. It is then and only then that Sigyn turns away from Loki. She takes the bowl and pours the venom away, and while she is gone, the snake’s poison falls on to Loki’s face and into his eyes. He convulses then, jerks and judders, jolts and twists and writhes, so much that the whole earth shakes. When that happens, we here in Midgard call it an earthquake. They say that Loki will be bound there in the darkness beneath the earth, and Sigyn will be with him, holding the bowl to catch the poison above his face and whispering that she loves him, until Ragnarok comes and brings the end of days.

Sonra birden, çekicini havaya kaldırmış vaziyette öylece dikilmekte olan Thor'un bacaklarının arasından bir Cüce geçti koşarak. Ona bir tekme savuran Thor, Cüceyi geminin alev alev yanan güvertesine fırlattı. Cücenin ismi Lit'ti. Onun hakkında bilinen tek şey, adının Lit olduğu ve Thor'un savurduğu tekmeyle havalanıp ateşin içine düşerek canlı canlı kavrulduğudur.

The Silmarillion is the history of the War of the Exiled Elves against the Enemy, which all takes place in the North-west of the world (Middle-earth). Several tales of victory and tragedy are caught up in it; but it ends with catastrophe, and the passing of the Ancient World, the world of the long First Age. The jewels are recovered (by the final intervention of the gods) only to be lost for ever to the Elves, one in the sea, one in the deeps of earth, and one as a star of heaven. This legendarium ends with a vision of the end of the world, its breaking and remaking, and the recovery of the Silmarilli and the ‘light before the Sun’ – after a final battle which owes, I suppose, more to the Norse vision of Ragnarok than to anything else, though it is not much like it. [From letter 131]

When we are young, we yearn for battle. In the firelit halls we listen to the songs of heroes; how they broke the foemen, splintered the shield wall, and soaked their swords in the blood of enemies. As youngsters we listen to the boast of warriors, hear their laughter as they recall battle, and their bellows of pride when their lord reminds them of some hard-won victory. And those youngsters who have not fought, who have yet to hold their shield against a neighbour's shield in the wall, are despised and disparaged. So we practise. Day after day we practise, with spear, sword, and shield. We begin as children, learning blade-craft with wooden weapons, and hour after hour we hit and are hit. We fight against men who hurt us in order to teach us, we learn not to cry when the blood from a split skull sheets across the eyes, and slowly the skill of the sword-craft builds. Then the day comes when we are ordered to march with the men, not as children to hold the horses and to scavenge weapons after the battle, but as men. If we are lucky we have a battered old helmet and a leather jerkin, maybe even a coat of mail that hangs like a sack. We have a sword with a dented edge and a shield that is scored by enemy blades. We are almost men, not quite warriors, and on some fateful day we meet an enemy for the first time and we hear the chants of battle, the threatening clash of blades on shields, and we begin to learn that the poets are wrong and that the proud songs lie. Even before the shield walls meet, some men shit themselves. They shiver with fear. They drink mead and ale. Some boast, but most are quiet unless they join a chant of hate. Some men tell jokes, and the laughter is nervous. Others vomit. Our battle leaders harangue us, tell us of the deeds of our ancestors, of the filth that is the enemy, of the fate our women and children face unless we win, and between the shield walls the heroes strut, challenging us to single combat, and you look at the enemy's champions and they seem invincible. They are big men; grim-faced, gold hung, shining in mail, confident, scornful, savage. The shield wall reeks of shit, and all a man wants is to be home, to be anywhere but on this field that prepares for battle, but none of us will turn and run or else we will be despised for ever. We pretend we want to be there, and then the wall at last advances, step by step, and the heart is thumping fast as a bird's wing beating, the world seems unreal. Thought flies, fear rules, and then the order to quicken the charge is shouted, and you run, or stumble, but stay in your rank because this is the moment you have spent a lifetime preparing for, and then, for the first time, you hear the thunder of shield walls meeting, the clangour of battle swords, and the screaming begins. It will never end. Till the world ends in the chaos of Ragnarok, we will fight for our women, for our land, and for our homes. Some Christians speak of peace, of the evil of war, and who does not want peace? But then some crazed warrior comes screaming his god's filthy name into your face and his only ambitions are to kill you, to rape your wife, to enslave your daughters, and take your home, and so you must fight.

It is our fate," Thorgil said. "In the spring look for us again, or if you don't find us, we'll meet in Valhalla." She looked away. Jack knew she had no real hope, or desire, now to go to Valhalla. ... "Jack leaned over and took her hand. "You are Jill Allyson's Daughter," he said, using the name Thorgil's dead mother had given her at birth. "You are not meant for Ragnarok.

Mjolnir,

who was eyeing the nearby foliage with trepidation, as if she expected it to attack at any moment. Then again, she came from Australia: she probably did expect some sort of vegetable ambush.

suck is the Army way

Things are always easy when you refuse to let yourself remember how dangerous they are.

În savuraseră, cel puțin , până când capul retezat al Malefictului a aterizat pe măsuța lor de cafea.