Artwork in Progress: Yggdrasil at Ragnarök

I thought I’d tie this week’s Metal History into one of the artworks I’m working on at the moment. I’d brought this huge canvas ready to create a highly detailed fantasy vision of Yggdrasil – the tree of life in Norse Mythology – with all it’s resident animals and jötunns and serpents and dragons. I started blocking in the colour on the tree as a rough outline to paint on top of, but ended up liking the way it looked – all bare and gnarled – I’ve kept going in this more free-flowing, erratic style.

Yggdrasil painting, Work in Progress, by me.

This rough style is very different from my usual method, but I’m really enjoying the experiment. As you can see, this is still in progress. I’m adding more colour, fixing the trees on the right, adding two more ravens and maybe the squirrel Ratatorsk. I’m keeping a lot of while because I think at Ragnarök there will be lots of ice.

The ash tree in the center – Yggdrasil, or the “world tree” – is groaning and dying. Yggdrasil is central to Norse Mythology and considered deeply holy. The gods go to Yggdrasil every day to preside over their courts. Yggdrasil’s branches extend into the heavens and it’s three giant roots plow and twist through the earth to holy wells and springs. Under one root lies Hel, under another, frost jötunn, and under the third lives mankind.

The most common meaning put forth for the world “Yggdrasil” is “Odin’s Horse”. As we learnt in Metal History: Runes, Yggdrasil was the tree on which Odin hung for nine days to reveal the secret of the runes. As a common idiom for the gallows is “the horse of the hanged”, a translation of “Odin’s Horse” makes sense.

Many creatures live in Yggdrasil, including an unnamed eagle, who perches on the topmost branches, four stags – Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Duraþrór who chew at the leaves, the dragon (wyrm) Níðhöggr, serpents who gnaw at the roots, and a cheeky squirrel named Ratatoskr who delivers messages between the eagle and the wyrm.

(I am imagining an adorable children’s book. Don’t steal my idea!)

Odin remarked that Yggdrasil must feel such great pain, what with the rotting and the gnawing and the chewing and holding the weight of the heavens. I’m reminded of a recent Dr. Who episode, where an alien entity was enduring great pain to keep a spaceship of humans alive.

Ragnarök – “final destiny of the Gods” is a battle foretold in Norse legends, which will kill off the gods Odin, Thor, Freyr, Heimdall and the the jötunn Loki and immerse the world under water. The earth will rise again, fertile and renewed, and the remaining Gods will meet. The earth will be repopulated by two human survivors. It all sounds rather Biblical, but it’s not. It’s metal.

Brothers will fight
and kill each other,
sisters’ children
will defile kinship.
It is harsh in the world,
whoredom rife
—an axe age, a sword age (and the sun rises)
—shields are riven—
a wind age, a wolf age—
before the world goes headlong.
No man will have
mercy on another.
Völuspá, Poetic Edda

Other events attested during Ragnarök – “the wolf” will swallow the sun and her brother the moon, and mankind will mourn their loss as a great disaster. The stars disappear. The earth shakes violently, trees are uprooted, mountains crumble, the sky splits in two.

Yggdrasil painting, work-in-progress, Steff Metal.

Fenrir’s bonds crash away and he charges across the landscape, spraying flames, his great jaws scouring the earth.

Yggdrasill shivers,
the ash, as it stands.
The old tree groans,
and the giant slips free
stanza 45,Völuspá, Poetic Edda

The gods, the demons, the creatures, Æsir and the Einherjar advance to the field of Vígríðr, an expanse measuring”a hundred leagues in each direction.” Fenrir swallows Odin, and Odin’s son Víðarr avenges him, by kicking Fenrir in the jaws and tearing them apart, till he has killed Fenrir.

Thor kills the serpent Jörmungandr, but he walks nine steps before the poison kills him. The hound Garmr (described as the “worst of monsters”) breaks free from his bonds and fights the god Týr, killing both God and beast. Loki and Heimdallr also kill each another. The world burns.

Scholars such as Hilda Ellis Davidson and Bertha Phillpotts interestingly point out the simularities between Ragnarök and a volcanic eruption. Given the unpronounceable volcano currently doing its thing over much of Europe, I can see how the Norse might have found annihilation by volcanic eruption a clear and present danger.

You can see blood and venom under the roots of Yggdrasil. The rawns represent the fallen Gods and the gnarled trees in the background also burn. But it’s a clensing of the earth, which will soon be remade again. The earth will soon appear one more from the sea, green and ready for crops. Two humans, and some Gods survive, and Sól – the personification of the Sun – has a daughter as beautiful as she, and pretty much everyone lives happily ever after.

closeup of first raven on Yggdrasil painting.

This piece – when it’s finished – will be going into an exhibition for the Franklin City Arts Festival, and, if not sold at the exhibition, will be on sale through my website. I am considering a limited run of high-quality Giclee prints (as little as 5) of this piece, depending on interest. If you think you might be interested, let me know, and I’ll consider it.

Thoughts?