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Where is Ithavoll?


In the Völuspá of the Poetic Edda, Ithavoll is the mythological location of the plain where a remnant of the gods meet following the events of Ragnarök, to begin again the work of city building, the first being Gimli -said to be the most beautiful place in the world:
At Ithavoll met the mighty gods;Shrines and temples they timbered high;Forges they set, and they smithied ore,Tongs they wrought, and tools they fashioned.
A second time Ithavoll is mentioned, where the past is recalled to those present, perhaps as a warning:

The gods in Ithavoll meet together,
Of the terrible girdler of earth they talk,
And the mighty past they call to mind,
And the ancient runes of the Ruler of Gods.

 Who are "the gods" but us? Homo Europaeus. Those who carry with grace the burden of order and reason for all the world, a charge from God. Ithavoll is the place where we begin again, as in the Palingenesis of Christ, where we regain humanity from the loss of the fall. For the latter we must wait. Ithavoll, however, is patterned after its type and is situated in the temporal world. It is where the immemorial schema are re-established, and the kernel of eternity (The Gospel) is hidden as the world descends into the baptism of chaos that precedes renewal.

Picture credit: CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=354100

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