In Norse mythology’s Ragnarok, water covers the earth before the land rises renewed from the sea. The Poetic Edda describes the world sinking after the final destruction and then emerging again, green and fertile.
This image gives Ragnarok a cycle of destruction and renewal rather than a permanently empty ending. The sun’s daughter continues the light, surviving gods gather, and the human pair Líf and Lífþrasir emerge from hiding to repopulate the world.
The flooding is not the same event as the earlier Fimbulwinter. Fimbulwinter is the terrible winter preceding Ragnarok, while the water appears during the world’s collapse and later renewal. Norse mythology therefore combines fire, battle, darkness, and flooding in its account of cosmic transformation.