Column | Netflix series ‘Ragnarok’ once again highlights the enduring appeal of Norse mythology 

Ragnarok, a Netflix show based on Norse mythology, excels in building up to Ragnarok, the final battle between gods and giants. Norse mythology is popular, with Marvel's Thor movies and Neil Gaiman's works reimagining it. Ragnarok's appeal lies in its reset of all resets, with gods dying and being reborn.

At a particularly high-intensity moment during the third and final season of Netflix’s Norwegian-language mythological drama Ragnarok, protagonist Magne (David Stakston), a high-school student, is asked by Signy (his girlfriend, played by Billie Barker), “Isn’t it insane, knowing that you have all this power?” 

Magne and several others in and around the fictional Norwegian town of Edda are reincarnations of Norse deities and other supernatural beings. Magne is Thor, the god of thunder, while his brother Laurits is Loki, trickster supreme. The local Jutul family, rich industrialists whose factories are destroying Edda’s ecosystem, is actually jötnar or giants, who in Norse mythology stood against the gods. Mythology meets eco-fable, then, in this very agreeable modern-day update of the Norse myths. 

While earlier seasons focused on introducing characters (this is a slow-burning show) and telling us the story of how Thor’s hammer Mjolnir was forged, the last season is about two things, primarily — how all that power is getting to Magne/ Thor’s head, and whether Magne can rally the rest of the gods, including the mighty Odin himself, in a final showdown against the giants. And while the second angle worked for me, the first one didn’t.

Ragnarok is a show that flies in the face of traditional Hollywood/ TV wisdom — it takes its own sweet time to make its ecological points, it’s not obsessed with cliffhangers, and there are plenty of stretches where not much is said by the characters. In other words, there is room for subtext and for a story to breathe. In such a show, Magne’s whole ‘gifted teenager develops a big head and acts flashy’ comes across as far too American, far too mainstream a plot line, straight from late 90s high-school romcoms like 10 Things I Hate About You. 

The show is on much surer ground when it is building up towards the titular Ragnarok, the final battle between the gods and the giants, in which several deities are killed and a new world is reborn out of the ashes of the old one. The atmospherics, music, visual effects all come together harmoniously in the battle scenes themselves, but the apocalyptic build-up is impressive, too. 

Bjørn Sundquist’s performance as Wotan, the reincarnation of Odin (Norse god of war and wisdom, king of the gods) must be singled out for praise here. He had a tough act to follow, it has to be said — screen legend Ian McShane’s performance as Odin from the series American Gods is still fresh in our minds. Sundquist is very good at communicating why Odin isn’t really what you call a beloved deity, even if he is a feared and respected one. He’s vicious, acerbic and contains within his silences a sense of controlled chaos. 

Norse mythology has long been a staple of Western popular culture. Most recently, of course, Marvel’s Thor movies have used stories from this corpus, including the myth of Ragnarok itself in the Taika Waititi action comedy Thor: Ragnarok (2017). The reasons behind Ragnarok’s appeal as a mythological incident are not difficult to see. It is the reset of all resets, narratively speaking.