Evergreen Ash: Ecology and Catastrophe in Old Norse Myth and Literature

Norse mythology is obsessed with the idea of an onrushing and unstoppable apocalypse: Ragnarök, when the whole of creation will perish in fire, smoke, and darkness and the earth will nolonger support the life it once nurtured. Most of the Old Norse texts that preserve the myths of Ragnarök originated in Iceland, a nation whose volcanic activity places it perpetually on the brink of a world-changing environmental catastrophe. As the first full-length ecocritical study of Old Norse myth and literature, "Evergreen Ash" argues that Ragnarök is primarily a story of ecological collapse that reflects the anxieties of early Icelanders who were trying to make a home in a profoundly strange, marginal, and at times hostile environment.