How Did Kratos End Up in Midgard?

Kratos ended up in Midgard by leaving Greece behind after he destroyed it. He survived the end of God of War III, wandered far from home, and settled in the Norse lands, where he married Faye and raised their son Atreus. The games never show the trip north. They show where he started, where he ended up, and very little in between. (God of War III; God of War (2018))

Where Greece left him#

God of War III ends with Greece destroyed. Kratos has killed Zeus and most of the gods, and each death has brought a new disaster down on the land. Athena asks him for the power of Hope. Instead he drives the Blade of Olympus into his own body, and the light spreads out to the survivors. He lies dying on a cliff. (God of War III)

Then comes the scene after the credits. The camera goes back to the cliff, and the body is gone. A trail of blood leads away from where he lay. The game says no more than that. The God of War III ending explained covers the rest of that finale. (God of War III)

The gap: Fallen God#

The comic God of War: Fallen God, from Dark Horse in 2021, is set in the years after God of War III. It's the closest thing the series has to a bridge between the two sagas. (God of War: Fallen God)

In it Kratos has gone south into Egypt, trying to put Greece and his shame behind him. He tries to throw away the Blades of Chaos, but each time he wakes they are lying beside him again. Villagers flee at the sight of him, and strange figures, an old man, a baboon and a bird, bring him cryptic messages about his future. The comic hints that they are Egyptian gods in disguise. (God of War: Fallen God)

Fallen God is about Kratos fighting his own rage. It shows that he couldn't simply walk away from the God of War by changing countries, which sets up the man we meet in Midgard. (God of War: Fallen God)

The life he built in Midgard#

God of War (2018) opens many years later, and it never says how long. Kratos is living in the Wildwoods of Midgard, older and bearded, with the same ash-white skin. He had met Faye there, married her and had a son. Faye had done much of the raising of the boy. (God of War (2018))

He has tried hard to bury who he was. The Blades of Chaos are wrapped in cloth under the floorboards of their house. Atreus knows nothing about his father's past, or that either of them is a god, because Kratos agreed with Faye to keep it from him. The game opens with Faye's funeral, and the plan to carry her ashes to the highest peak in the Nine Realms is what drags Kratos back into the world of gods. See the God of War (2018) story for the whole plot. (God of War (2018))

He also didn't arrive unnoticed. The Aesir god Baldur comes to his door at the start of the game, sent by Odin to find a giant, and knows exactly who Kratos is. (God of War (2018))

Why the north?#

Here the games go quiet. Nobody explains why Kratos chose Midgard rather than anywhere else. What they do show is his reason for leaving Greece. In Ragnarök, Kratos finally tells Freya about his past, the family he killed and the fall of Olympus, and warns her that revenge brought him nothing. (God of War Ragnarök)

Our reading, and it's only that, is that the north mattered less than the distance. Kratos wanted to be somewhere nobody would expect the Ghost of Sparta, among gods who had never fought him. It didn't quite work: Odin's family found him anyway, and the giants had already painted his travels with Atreus into their prophecy. (God of War (2018); God of War Ragnarök)

For more on the land itself, see Midgard. (God of War (2018))