The Vikings had a terrifying myth about the end of the world. Was it inspired by a real deadly disaster?

In Norse mythology, winters without summer herald the destruction of the gods. Could this legend preserve memories of volcanic eruptions that devastated parts of Scandinavia centuries before the Viking Age?

A group of medieval Lewis chessmen carved from ivory, depicting solemn-faced warriors and other figures wearing helmets and holding swords and shields.

Published: October 23, 2026 at 10:16 AM

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The legend goes something like this: before the gods met their enemies in their final battle, an unprecedented winter would take hold. A thick blizzard would come down from every direction, blocking out the weakening sun. Three successive winters would pass, with no summer between them.

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This is the story of Fimbulwinter, the “mighty winter” of Norse mythology: the prelude to the destruction of the world at Ragnarök. It’s a story preserved in the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda; one part of a broader suite of legendary tales from these two sources of Norse mythology.

But what if Fimbulwinter wasn’t just a story, but rather, a memory?

“We know beyond any doubt now there were a series of really drastic volcanic eruptions in the mid-500s, with enormous effects on Scandinavia, that really impacted the population” says Professor Neil Price, one of the foremost world experts on the Viking Age.

Scientific evidence confirms the eruptions, but establishing what they did to Scandinavian communities is harder, and tracing their effects into stories told centuries later is harder still. Price nevertheless suspects that accounts of the disaster survived through oral storytelling, eventually becoming preserved for evermore as part of the grand Norse vision of the world’s end.

A fragmented empire

The volcanic eruptions Professor Price describes struck more than two centuries before the conventional (though contentious) beginning of the Viking Age in the late eighth century. In this early medieval period, Scandinavians then lived in farming societies connected by trade, warfare and travel to the rest of Europe, where Roman imperial power had broken down. Some historians refer to this period of turbulence the Age of Migrations. But Professor Price argues that the vast movement of peoples was only part of the upheaval.

“What we're really looking at is the disintegration of a superpower,” he says, speaking on an upcoming episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. “What happens when something like the Roman Empire begins to come apart in different ways, at different speeds, in different places, all through its territory, and what comes out of that?”

Imperial rule in western Europe fragmented during the fifth century. Scandinavia had never been a Roman province, but its inhabitants were connected to the empire’s economic and military networks. Disruption farther south affected the movement of goods, wealth and people. “There is a decline in the numbers of settlements, the numbers of cemeteries, basically a decline in human habitation in Scandinavia at this time,” Price explains.

Amid this destabilisation, Scandinavian mercenaries returning north, Price suggests, could use their military experience to strengthen their position at home, consolidating power around themselves as regional warlords. So, communities were already dealing with economic disruption, conflict and shifts in political authority when the eruptions began.

An intricately carved stone from Gotland, Sweden, featuring figures associated with Norse gods, a possible sacrificial scene and elaborate interlaced patterns.

Stone engraved with the representation of the gods Odin, Thor and Frey at the bottom. At the top a sacrifice is shown to Odin. A man standing gives a spear to a seated figure. Coming from Sanda, Gotland Island. Used as part of a coffin. Swedish History Museum. Stockholm, Sweden. (Photo by: PHAS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Changing climates

In AD 536, observers around the Mediterranean reported an unusually dim sun. The historian Procopius, writing about the wars of the eastern Roman emperor Justinian, described weak sunlight resembling an eclipse. Other accounts recorded disturbed seasons and problems with food supplies. These witnesses were far from Scandinavia, so their reports show how widely the effects were felt.

Researchers can compare those accounts with records preserved in ice and wood, thanks to archaeological science. Ice cores contain sulphate deposited after volcanic eruptions; unusually narrow tree rings can indicate poor growing conditions. Together, they help researchers connect eruptions with periods of abrupt cooling.

This evidence points to major eruptions in 536 and around 540, followed by another in 547. In a short window, the climate suffered repeated, violent disturbances. As a result, says Price, “you end up with something resembling a volcanic winter.”

For communities of early medieval Scandinavia, these eruptions would have been catastrophic. “The margins of subsistence [in this region], in terms of the regular climate, the scarcity of agricultural land and so on, they're so much narrower than they are in, say, the Mediterranean.”

Unlike in the warmer climates of the Mediterranean, Scandinavian farmers needed enough warmth to bring in their harvest before autumn. They also had to gather fodder to keep livestock alive through winter. A poor growing season threatened both sources of food. Repeated agricultural failures would make survival nearly impossible.

“Some scholars have estimated that the combined impact just of the volcanic eruptions is a 50 per cent mortality rate, not universally across Scandinavia, but in some places,” says Price. “In social terms, that's catastrophic.”

Even where communities survived, their inhabitants faced years of disruption. “An awful lot of lives were not only ended, but the lives of all the survivors were also disrupted.”

A colourful medieval Swedish tapestry showing three standing figures traditionally identified as Odin, Thor and Freyr, surrounded by decorative patterns, animals and trees.

A detail from the 12th-century Skog tapestry, discovered in Hälsingland, Sweden, showing three figures traditionally interpreted as the Norse gods Odin, Thor and Freyr. The mythology associated with these deities includes Ragnarök, the prophesied destruction and renewal of the world, preceded by Fimbulwinter | Credit: Getty Images

A legendary truth?

Price thinks those experiences of intense climate disruption may help explain the legend of Fimbulwinter. He sees similarities between the environmental crisis and the wider mythology of Ragnarök: darkness, cold, hunger and the breakdown of social order; a memory of a real environmental catastrophe, passed down across generations, possibly transformed over the course of centuries into this frosty myth of the precursor to the end of the world.

But Ragnarök, despite all the death and despair, isn’t a tale of total doom. The stories also describe a world renewed after the destruction, though scholars debate how Christian influence may have shaped the surviving accounts. For Price, the prospect of life continuing after catastrophe is another possible connection with the sixth-century experience.

“Ragnarök is not in the past tense. It's still in the future. [And] of course, in the 6th century, the world didn't actually end,” says Price. “People did get past that.”

Research into connections between natural events and traditional stories is called geomythology. These connections can be suggestive and persuasive, but similarities alone don’t prove that a story descended from a particular event. Could a culture that has had no experience of a long, harsh winter create a myth that tells of a long, harsh winter, drawn from imagination rather than reality? Logically, yes. Retaining some scepticism is important.

That’s why Price says “it's an interesting idea, but it's also a bit risky and like a circular argument because you find what you're looking for in the end.”

“But personally, I think the idea that there is an echo of that disruption, that trauma, centuries later in the Norse myth of the end of the world, I think it's very strong.”

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Neil Price was speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast.

Authors

James OsborneSenior content producer

James Osborne is a senior content producer at HistoryExtra

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