No one is quite sure how big it is, but suffice to say it’s enormous. The ceiling is made of golden shields, with rafters made from spears. With infinite food and drink, and a constant supply of endless war, what’s not to love? What does Valhalla look like?Īs you might expect for a glorious afterlife hall, Valhalla is said to be quite stunning to behold. It’s little wonder that warriors are literally fighting to get into Valhalla. Washing all that delicious boar meat down, they’ll need millions of bees to make enough honey for their mead, right? Well, no! In fact, they simply need the goat, Heiðrún, whose udders are able to produce an infinite supply of the finest mead known to man. Instead, the huge boar Saehrimnir is big enough to feed all of the men and luckily it too regenerates at night. And thankfully it doesn’t take a herd of wild animals to keep them fed. If you’re thinking they must get hungry then you’re right. Fortunately, in Valhalla, all your wounds are healed every night and you can begin the day fighting fresh. Of course, all of this fighting is still likely to hurt, even if you’re undead. This gives warriors the best training to defeat the Jotnar. The fighting, in fact, is pretty endless and takes a lot of the day. With all those warrior souls around you can guarantee there’s a lot of fighting. Well, as you can imagine it’s a pretty tough life preparing to fight the final battle at the end of the world. In fact, most people now believe that, far from simply picking from the dead, the Valkyries actively chose those who would die in the battle and sealed their fates to ensure that the very best warriors took their place in Valhalla, ready to fight alongside Odin in the battle of Ragnarök. Others, however, think it’s much more twisted than that! Some people believe this means that, after the battle they pick the ones they want to go to Valhalla. Valkyrie translates roughly as ‘chooser of the slain’. The rest we’ll deal with later but for now we get to meet the Valkyries. ![]() Only half of those killed on the battle fields go to Valhalla. Instead, you must bring glory to the battle on your way to meet your grizzly end!īut even that may not be enough. You can’t simply fall on your own sword during a battle, or hang around waiting for someone to do you in. The prime factor is generally believed to be ‘die a glorious death’. There’s some disagreement between scholars on exactly how you get to Valhalla. The surviving gods meet and the world is repopulated by two survivors. After Ragnarök the world is refreshed and renewed. Many of the familiar gods, such as Odin, Thor, Heimdall and Loki lose their lives. In particular, all those slain come back to life and there’s a huge battle between the Gods of Asgard on one side and the Jötnar, or giants, on the other side. ![]() Usually taken to mean ‘the final destiny of the Gods’, a series of events, are foretold, including natural disasters and the world being submerged in water. Ragnarök, another well-known but poorly understood Norse concept, is similar to armageddon or the end of days. ![]() ![]() They have to prepare for the events of Ragnarök. Instead of sitting around on clouds, playing lutes, the Einherjar actually have important work to do. This is the plural of Einheri, literally ‘army of one’, so they’re the most fearsome and brutal of warriors.Įven though they may be dead, and passed on from the living realm, that’s not the end of their days. The people who reside in Valhalla are known collectively as the Einherjar. All mythologies have afterlife components and Norse mythology is no exception. So, What is Valhalla there for?Īt its simplest, Valhalla is where warriors killed in battle go after death. So, join me as we take a deep dive into faith in the Viking Age and look at what really goes on in glorious Valhalla. Valhalla is a hall of the slain, this is true, but it’s not simply a passive, eternal afterlife kinda deal. Most people imagine this as some kind of ‘Viking heaven’, and honestly, that’s a reasonable start.īut Valhalla is so much more than simply a Viking heaven. If you’re up to date in the world of video games, or you binge everything the streaming services have to offer, you’ll no doubt have heard of the Norse concept of Valhalla. What is it, and how is portrayed in popular culture? An introduction to Valhalla, often referred to as the Viking heaven.
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