The myth behind Wolf Age: the Völuspá prophecy of Ragnarök

Wolf Age opens with a whisper: "the seeress wakes." That one line tells you where the song comes from. It is built on the Völuspá, "the Prophecy of the Seeress", the poem that opens the Poetic Edda in the 13th-century Icelandic manuscript known as the Codex Regius. In it a völva, a seeress, speaks to Odin and tells him how the world began and how it will end.

Wind-age, wolf-age

The title comes straight from one stanza. In Völuspá 45 (Bellows' numbering, which we follow here; other editions count the stanzas slightly differently) the seeress describes the last days before the end: brothers kill brothers, kinship bonds break, and hard times arrive. Then comes a chant of ages: an axe-age, a sword-age, shields split, and finally a wind-age and a wolf-age, before the world falls. In Old Norse the last pair is vindǫld, vargǫld. HEIDR's whispered "vargold" at the start and end of the song is an echo of that word, vargǫld, the wolf-age.

One honest footnote: scholars have long argued about this stanza. Some editors treat the axe-age and wolf-age lines as a later addition, and when Snorri Sturluson quotes the stanza in his Prose Edda he leaves them out. They may not be the oldest layer of the poem, but they are the lines that stuck.

What the seeress sees

The song follows the order of the prophecy closely:

• "Brothers break the oath they swore": Völuspá 45, the brothers who fight and kill each other.
• "Hear the horn of Heimdall call / Feel the roots of the great tree fall": in stanza 46 Heimdall raises the Gjallarhorn and blows it; in stanza 47 the ash Yggdrasil trembles and groans. In the poem the tree shakes rather than falls; the song pushes the image one step further.
• "Fenrir breaks his iron chain": the poem's refrain (stanza 44, repeated later) has the hound Garm howling before Gnipahellir while the fetters burst and the wolf runs free.
• "Serpent rises from the sea": stanza 50, where the Midgard serpent writhes in giant-rage through the waves.
• "Fire giants ride from the south": stanza 52, Surt coming from the south with fire and a sword that shines like the sun.
• "Odin rides to meet his fate": stanza 53, Odin going out to fight the wolf, and Frigg's second great sorrow. In stanza 54 his silent son Víðarr avenges him.
• "I have seen the sun turn black": stanza 57, the sun darkening, the earth sinking into the sea and the stars falling from the sky.

Snorri retells the same events in prose in Gylfaginning 51, adding details the poem only hints at: three winters of war, then Fimbulwinter, three winters with no summer between them; a wolf swallowing the sun and another seizing the moon; and Thor killing the serpent, only to walk nine steps and fall dead from its poison.

And the wheel returns

What makes the Völuspá more than a doom poem is what comes after. In stanza 59 the seeress sees the earth rise a second time out of the sea, green again, with waterfalls and an eagle hunting fish under the cliffs. Snorri adds in Gylfaginning 53 that Baldr and Höðr return from Hel, and that two humans, Líf and Lífþrasir, survive the fire hidden in a wood called Hoddmímis holt and repopulate the world.

That is the turn in HEIDR's bridge: "From the ashes, green will grow / New sun rising, soft and slow." The chorus ends on the same idea: the old world burns, and the wheel returns. Ragnarök in the sources is an end, but not the last word.

Listen

• Full song on YouTube: HEIDR - Wolf Age (Wind Age)
• On Spotify: Seiðr, the album

Lyrics

[Intro]
Vargold... vargold...
The seeress wakes

[Verse 1]
I have seen the sun turn black
Brothers break the oath they swore
Ash and ember on the wind
Nine worlds trembling at the core

[Pre-Chorus]
Hear the horn of Heimdall call
Feel the roots of the great tree fall

[Chorus]
Wolf age, wind age
Before the world is gone
Wolf age, wind age
Sing it till the dawn
When the wolves howl
The old world burns
Wolf age, wind age
And the wheel returns

[Verse 2]
Fenrir breaks his iron chain
Serpent rises from the sea
Fire giants ride from the south
Odin rides to meet his fate, not me

[Bridge]
From the ashes, green will grow
New sun rising, soft and slow
I have seen the end, I've seen the start
Heidr sings with a wolf's heart

[Final Chorus]
Wolf age, wind age
Before the world is gone
When the wolves howl
The old world burns
And the wheel returns

[Outro]
Vargold...

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HEIDR is a virtual artist: character, visuals and voice created with AI tools.