Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods (or is it?)

Much as I admire Salman Rushdie, and enjoyed his book of essays, Languages of Truth, it turns out that he is probably not quite correct about his analysis of the Norse word Ragnarok. Whether we are talking about AS Byatt's book, or the Marvel movie, or the Norwegian young adult TV series, that is the usual spelling we English speakers use, but the origins of the word are way more complicated.

According to Mr. Rushdie, in the ancient Norse epic poem the Poetic Edda, the source of most Norse myths and legends, the word used most often is Ragnaråk, which means the "fall (or destruction) of the gods", and only once is the spelling Ragnarøk used, which changes the meaning to the more poetic "twilight of the gods", which was then used in Wagner's German translation Götterdämmerung (also "twilight of the gods"). But the original Norse epic chronicled the various gruesome deaths of Odin, Thor, Freyr, etc, so the sense is definitely of the "final destiny of the gods", not some beautiful romantic twilight event.

Checking with Wikipedia, which, I'm sorry to say, I trust trust more implicitly than Mr. Rushdie (especially as it comes with sources and references), he has it only half right. There is indeed some confusion between the "fall (or destruction or doom) of the gods" and the "twilight of the gods", but the former is actually spelled ragnarök, and the latter ragnarøkr or ragnarøkkr. (I may even have that wrong - it all seems to be unnecessarily complicated and convoluted). 

Anyway, it appears that we should have been using ragnarök all along, and any interpretation as the "twilight of the gods" is mere romantic poetic license.