Surtr

The Fire Giant of Ragnarök

Surtr appears in the Poetic Edda, a collection of Old Norse poems preserved in medieval Icelandic manuscripts, and in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda. The poem Voluspa describes a seeress telling Odin about creation, doom and renewal. Near the end, Surtr advances from the south with fire. His sword shines, mountains clash and the heavens split. This is poetry, so it gives a series of powerful images rather than a minute-by-minute battle report. Snorri places Surtr at the border of Muspelheim, the hot and bright region that exists before the world is created. Surtr guards it with a flaming sword, and beings who do not belong there cannot enter. During Ragnarök, he leads the sons of Muspell across the bridge Bifrost.

The bridge breaks beneath the riders, and they assemble with other enemies of the gods on the field called Vigrid. Surtr’s opponent is Freyr, a god connected with prosperity, peace, fertile land and good harvests. Freyr once gave away his excellent sword to his servant Skirnir as payment for helping him win the jötunn woman Gerd. At Ragnarök, the missing weapon matters. Freyr fights Surtr but falls. The contrast is dramatic: a god of fruitful life faces a being of consuming fire and lacks the sword that could have defended him. After the battles, Surtr casts fire over the earth. The world burns, but Norse Ragnarök is not only a tale of permanent nothingness. Voluspa also describes green land rising again from the sea.

Fields produce without being sown, surviving gods meet, and two human beings continue humankind. Surtr’s flames belong to destruction, yet destruction is followed by renewal. The sources do not say Surtr rules the new world. Modern entertainment often turns Surtr into a horned devil, king of all fire giants or personal enemy of Thor and Odin. Those designs can be fun, but the medieval evidence is more limited. Surtr does not have a long series of adventures before Ragnarök. He is mainly the guardian of the fiery region and the destined opponent of Freyr. “Fire giant” is a convenient modern phrase, although Old Norse sources call him a jötunn and connect him with Muspell.

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