The great rainbow bridge leading to Asgard will collapse under their weight.  A decisive, bloody Armageddon, fought at a place called the Plain of Vigrid, will end the old Viking order and its gods.  Even the might Odin will meet his fate, eaten by the Fenris Wolf. Thor and the Midgard Serpent, which encircles the earth, will slay each other, as will Heimdall and Loki.  On this frightening day, the entire earth, including the great world tree Yggdrasil, will be destroyed, and its charred remains will vanish into the sea:

The sun becomes dark.  Earth sinks in the sea.
The shining stars slip out of the sky.
Vapor and fire rage fiercely together,
till the leaping flame licks heaven itself.

But even after all the bitter chaos and destruction, the Viking world will not end.  Out of the sea, which will have cleansed the entire world, will appear a beautiful new earth, green and fertile.  Hunger will be no more; the fields will sow themselves, and there will be endless supplies of fish and game.  The gods who were not slain in the last, great battle will return to the site of Asgard.

A few fortunate humans will inherit the earth: a man, Lif, and a woman, Lifthrasir, who escaped the conflagration in a place called Hoddminir’s Holt.  From these two mortals, a new humanity will emerge.

Visitors wait to board a working replica of a Viking ship.

The last Viking

Despite the Vikings’ violent nature and mythology, their conversion to Christianity would gradually halt the bloodletting. The last Viking, the warlike adventurer Harald the Ruthless, was struck down in battle in a fitting, heroic finale.  Harald made a career of waging war against the Danes and the Normans in all his capacities: as a consort to the kings of Norway and the princes of Russia, in the service of the emperor of Byzantium, married to a Russian princess of Kiev, and, finally, as king of Norway.  While fighting the British at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066, he was hit by an arrow full in the chest.  With his death, the venerable lines of Norse heroes—warriors, bandits, pirates, and usurpers—ended.