The story of Ragnarok. There is no known surviving text, any archaeological finds or any artwork on a possible end-of-times event in the Germanic faith until the early medieval ages. There are some stone carvings from heathen times that certain folk claim to be about Ragnarok but those claims are very subjective.
The story of Ragnarok is very similar to the xtian book of revelations. There is also the theory that Ragnarok was written down to describe the death of the pagan Gods yet the Christian God can't die therefore he must be the one true God, another trick to convert pagan people.
The Ragnorok narrative plays very well into the xtian idea that paganism will bring about end times and only the love of that jebus fella can 'save' you (lol). The description of Ragnarok in the Eddas, especially the prose Edda sounds very similar to some descriptions of what happens when the (fictional) devil gets out of hell with all his demons. The xtian even use the proto Germanic word for the afterlife 'Hel' which means 'hidden' as the word for their bad place where non believers go....... (They did the same in Hellenic countries using 'Hades' for the same place)
The main sources for ragnarok are Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda Gylfaginning and the poems Völuspá and Vafþrúðnismál in the Poetic Edda. These were all written down 300 years after xtianity had taken over and were written down by xtians. Some scholars have suggested the verses that mention ragnarok use a more modern rather than archaic style of language than other parts of the text that they are contained within. It is worth noting that Roman sources such as Tacitus Germania from the 1st century and old skaldic poems do not mention ANYTHING like Ragnarock. It is also worth noting that the later the sources get into the middle ages, the more Ragnarock sounds like the xtian revelations. E.g. in earlier sources of ragnarok there is no mention of a rebirth. They just describe destruction. In later sources some of the Gods and humans survive and live happily in a new world reborn!
For many years Ragnorol was widely accepted by scholars as being xtian propaganda so to speak. It wasn't until the resurgence of heathenism in America in the 70's where those new heathens pushed ragnarok as truly pagan that folk started to think of ragnarok as pagan again. In their defence, they didn't have internet or the huge number of books that we have now to study. They were also heavily influenced by xtianity as xtianity was still going strong in America where it was dying down all over Europe as it continues to do to this day.
Let's not forget that xtians have had a thousand years to destroy any information about heathenism. Just like the Taliban blowing up statues of Bhudda in Afganistan. They wanted folk to know only of jesus.......... in addition to this there are very few heathen sources from heathen times as our ancestors didn't use the written word to pass on our culture.
I'll keep an open mind on Ragnarok but it is not easy to believe. One would think some kind of artwork or carving / archaeological find etc that could be OBJECTIVELY described as Ragnarok would have survived or been found by archaeologists. You would also think that xtians would gleefully keep such artefacts as it fits so nicely into their narrative.
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