Ragnarok

The Broken Sword, XXII.

Skafloc and Mananaan take the broken sword to Bolverk, the giant who had made it and who alone can mend it. Skafloc speaks a verse that makes Bolverk think that Loki needs the sword soon for Ragnarok! Of course the giant works hastily to make the sword ready. He also does something that I think is a feature of the Eddas and Sagas. While working, he summarizes an account of the Ragnarok:

"'So it is the end,' he whispered. 'Now comes the last evening of the world, when gods and giants lay waste creation as they slay each other, when Surt scatters flame which leaps to the cracking walls of heaven, the sun blackens, earth sinks undersea, the stars fall down. It ends - my thralldom, blind beneath the mountain, ends in a blaze of fire! Aye, well will I forge the sword, mortal!'" (pp. 163-164)

Although this account is not complete, it does incorporate several elements of familiar end of the world scenarios:

last evening

last battle

flame reaching to heaven

sun, earth and moon ending

How does this specifically Eddaic apocalypse fit into the mixed mythology of The Broken Sword? This question becomes even more acute in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Season Of Mists where Lucifer Morningstar has, at least temporarily, expelled all the demons and damned from Hell and Odin hopes to acquire this now empty infernal realm so that his pantheon can shelter from the Ragnarok there!

Poul Anderson, unlike James Blish, was not focused on any imminent end of the world scenario. The universe will end eventually and that ending is reached by time travel in one work and by time dilation in another but the ending does not come to us here and now whereas Blish has:

a cosmic collision in Cities In Flight, Volume IV;

Armageddon in After Such Knowledge, Volume II;

ecological collapse of Earth in "We All Die Naked."