{"id":13196,"date":"2016-08-04T05:30:36","date_gmt":"2016-08-04T05:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/agora\/?p=13196"},"modified":"2016-08-04T17:49:45","modified_gmt":"2016-08-04T17:49:45","slug":"wyrd-words-what-is-valhalla-and-who-goes-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/agora\/2016\/08\/wyrd-words-what-is-valhalla-and-who-goes-there\/","title":{"rendered":"Wyrd Words: What is Valhalla, and Who Goes There?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Greetings, and welcome back to Wyrd Words. Keeping the Thor in Thursdays, every other week here on\u00a0Agora!<\/p>\n

A while back I wrote a piece<\/a><\/span> about the many possible destinations found within\u00a0the Heathen concept of the afterlife.\u00a0Many aspects if our tradition end up getting oversimplified into easy-to-swallow, \u201cChristianized\u201d binaries. This is most evident in the modern\u00a0concept\u00a0of Valhalla. I so often see Valhalla, or in Old Norse:\u00a0Valh\u00f6ll, described as this kind of glorious \u201cHeathen Heaven\u201d; a golden hall in Asgard where every day is filled with Fighting and Feasting and Fff\u2026.\u2018Frolicking\u2019<\/em>\u2026 The idea of Valh\u00f6ll goes so much deeper than that, and it\u2019s such a shame to see this\u00a0fundamental part of our tradition\u2019s worldview so often be either misunderstood or blatantly misrepresented.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"(8)<\/a>
(Bellows Translation)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The single most informative description of Valh\u00f6ll that we have in the Lore is found in Gr\u00edmnism\u00e1l. There we see the words that so often shape our modern image of this realm. Odin, disguised as Gr\u00edmnir, tells us that Valh\u00f6ll rests peacefully in the golden field of\u00a0Gla\u00f0sheim; thatched with shields, and raftered by spears, where mail coats lay draped over the benches. A wolf hangs near the western entrance, and an eagle soars above. The river Thund flows nearby\u00a0\u2013\u00a0<\/b>deep, strong, and difficult to cross. The Gr\u00edmnism\u00e1l, despite its\u00a0<\/b>thoroughness, never mentions fighting or battle. In fact, while the first stanza to mention this place is often translated Valhalla arises<\/span>\u00a0or Valhalla towers<\/span>, the verb used to describe Valh\u00f6ll in that first stanza (\u00ferumir), actually meant \u2018to lay still\u2019.\u00a0<\/span>Valh\u00f6ll, as described in Gr\u00edmnism\u00e1l, is a quiet<\/em>\u00a0place.<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea of the eternal battle only comes up in Vaf\u00fer\u00fa\u00f0nism\u00e1l,\u00a0during\u00a0<\/b>a contest\u00a0of wits between Odin and a J\u00f6tunn (giant\/troll<\/em>). There, Vaf\u00fer\u00fa\u00f0nir says that Odin\u2019s champions go forth from Valh\u00f6ll each day to fight, and then return in the evening to sit together and feast. Interestingly, we have two existing manuscripts with this poem and BOTH have copy errors on the two stanzas that describe this fighting. (Marked by the break in poetic metre and the gaps in the text). So we can see the modern image of Valh\u00f6ll as an eternal battleground begins to fall apart when we examine the Lore. That being said, it would be inaccurate to claim that Valh\u00f6ll has no\u00a0connections with eternal combat; it\u2019s just not in the way that most people seem to think it does.<\/span><\/p>\n

Direct descriptions of\u00a0Valh\u00f6ll<\/span>\u00a0may be sparse, but by taking in the contextual evidence from the Sagas as well as the archaeological record, we can piece together a more complete understanding of this incredibly important element of our traditions. Understanding\u00a0Valh\u00f6ll as it was originally conceived\u00a0<\/b>requires us to step away from a lot of the\u00a0unconscious\u00a0<\/b>biases of our modern westernized culture. Death meant something very different to the old Norse and Germanic tribes than it does for most of us today. For one thing, the Norse had no concept of a soul. They didn\u2019t even have a word for it until after the conversion to Christianity. The idea of a ghost\u00a0<\/b>or some manner of spirit moving on from this world and into the next didn\u2019t really exist there. The closest thing they would have had to this concept was the fylgja<\/a><\/span>. Instead, the dead were thought to remain in their bodies. I touched on this briefly in the previous article<\/a><\/span>, with the dead often being thought to inhabit their own halls beneath the earth in much the same way they had in life. In several Sagas we see protagonists bravely entering the halls of the fallen, whether to claim the treasures therein or to eliminate the threat of a draugr (an undead corpse<\/em>). The question of whether the dead were a\u00a0positive\u00a0<\/b>or negative force varied widely depending on time, place, and the individual in question. One element remained\u00a0mostly unchanged though. The dead carry on, for good or ill, beneath the earth.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Saxo\u2019s Gesta Danorum<\/em>, the hero Hadingus is pulled under the earth by a strange cunning-woman. There he sees several parts of the underworld, including a battlefield where his mysterious guide informs him that those who fall in battle relive their deaths for eternity. In the story of Gorm and Thorkel,\u00a0<\/em>also recorded by Saxo, we see the main characters enter a dark and horrific tomb. There, two parties of dead men sit in tense silence, unable to harm one another in battle until one of the living comes down to join the fight. Interestingly, the tomb is said to have a roof of spears; an obvious allusion to the rafters of Valh\u00f6ll in reference to an eternal battle among the dead within the tomb.<\/span><\/p>\n

What really brings this all together is a passage in the poem Helgakvi\u00f0a Hundingsbana. The poem describes how the deceased Helgi is accepted into Valh\u00f6ll, and then leads a host of men from Odin\u2019s hall back out into the world for a battle. How does he accomplish this? The host comes and goes through Helgi\u2019s burial\u00a0<\/b>mound. The barrow, the hall of the dead beneath the hill, leads to Valh\u00f6ll! The grave itself acts as a doorway to the underworld.<\/span><\/p>\n

This idea is seldom discussed in the Eddas or the Sagas, but there are other written accounts and archaeological finds which help explain what this idea meant before the conversion. Ahmad\u00a0ibn Fadl\u0101n, famous for recording the classic Viking ship burial, wrote of a ritual in which a thrall that was to be burned with the dead chieftain was lifted over a mock door-frame three times. Each time she passes over it, she sees more of those who have died before her and describes the realm of the dead. The liminal space of the doorway itself was thought to have some connection to the afterlife. Some of these traditions even survived the conversion, lasting up until the modern age. One example of this is the Likl\u00faker, or \u2018cadaver-door\u2019. This was a hole cut in the wall of a home, through which a dead body would be passed on its way to the grave. The purpose of this was to<\/strong>\u00a0trick the dead, so they could not find their way back through the main door of the house. Not only do some of these doors still exist in very old houses, this practice was described in at least two of the sagas\u00a0\u2013 <\/b>Eyrbyggja saga\u00a0<\/b>and Egils saga SkallaGr\u00edmssonar.<\/p>\n

\"Five<\/a>
(Bellows again)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Back in the\u00a0Gr\u00edmnism\u00e1l, Odin makes a special point of counting the many hundreds of doors within Valh\u00f6ll. (540 to be exact) At first glance\u00a0<\/b>this would simply seem to be a brag about the immensity of Odin\u2019s hall. However, taken in the light of what we\u2019ve learned from the rest of the Lore as well as the archaeological record, this claim takes on a whole new meaning. The door-frame that gave a glimpse into the underworld, the battle in the tomb, Helgi\u2019s passage to and from Valh\u00f6ll through\u00a0his barrow mound; the 540 doors of Valh\u00f6ll lead to GRAVES<\/em><\/strong>. The Einherjar train in their tombs, traveling through the doorways of the dead to rest and replenish in the relative peace of Valh\u00f6ll.<\/span><\/p>\n

Valh\u00f6ll isn\u2019t the rowdy battlefield where partying warriors spend eternity killing each other. It\u2019s the communal hall where tired soldiers can take their rest between battles. It\u2019s not any kind of glorious \u201cHeathen Heaven\u201d, it\u2019s simply one location in a much wider underworld that exists among the barrows of the dead. Valh\u00f6ll is less like paradise and more like the agreed upon rally location of a Jarl who needs to be able to call his forces to him at a moment\u2019s notice. Think of it like a village, with Odin\u2019s abode as the Mead Hall, where the barrows of the fallen are like the surrounding homesteads, and Hel is the surrounding countryside.<\/p>\n

Pronunciation guide<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n
Valh\u00f6ll<\/strong>: (Wal\/hawl)<\/dt>\n
All of the consonants here are standard for English. The a is pronounced as one would in the word \u2018father\u2019.\u00a0\u00f6\u00a0in Old Norse made\u00a0an AW\u00a0sound similar to the \u2018au\u2019 in \u2018caught\u2019 made with rounded lips as if one was going to say \u2018O\u2019.<\/dd>\n
Gr\u00edmnism\u00e1l<\/strong>: (Greem\/nis\/mahl)<\/dt>\n
Here the\u00a0\u00e1 is an AW\u00a0sound similar to the \u2018au\u2019 in \u2018caught\u2019, but it is held longer than the\u00a0\u00f6 sound.<\/dd>\n
Vaf\u00fer\u00fa\u00f0nism\u00e1l<\/strong>: (Waf\/Throo\/th-nis\/mahl)<\/dt>\n
Both\u00a0\u00fe and\u00a0\u00f0 make an English TH sound.\u00a0\u00f0 sounds like\u00a0th<\/span>is and fath<\/span>er.\u00a0\u00fe sounds like th<\/span>rill or th<\/span>istle. If you can\u2019t tell those apart, don\u2019t worry too much.\u00a0They\u2019re very similar sounds to most English speakers.<\/dd>\n
J\u00f6tunn<\/strong>: (Yaw\/tun)<\/dt>\n
In Old Norse the J at the beginning of the word makes an English Y sound, while the\u00a0\u00f6 again makes a rounded \u2018au\u2019 sound.<\/dd>\n
Fylgja<\/strong>: (Feel\/gya)<\/dt>\n
The first y is pronounced like the \u2018ee\u2019 in seen, while the ya is a rounded sound, much like the informal you (or \u2018ya\u2019 sound) in phrases like \u2018gotcha\u2019.<\/dd>\n
Draugr<\/strong>: (Dr-ou\/ger)<\/dt>\n
The \u2018ou\u2019 as above is an OW sound, while the gr is pronounced much like one would read the written onomatopoeia for growling. \u2018grrrr\u2026\u2019<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

Further Reading:<\/h2>\n

If you want to learn more about the ideas discussed here check out these documents. (Both titles lead to a PDF)<\/p>\n