Chapter XXXVI: Section XVII: The Valkyries (valkyrjur)

As the god of war, Odin sends out his maids to choose the fallen heroes (_kjósa val_). They are called valkyries and valmaids (_valmeyar_). The valkyries serve in Valhal, where they bear in the drink, take care of the drinking-horns, and wait upon the table. Odin sends them to every field of battle, to make choice of those who are to be slain and to sway the victory. The youngest of the norns, Skuld, also rides forth to choose the slain and turn the combat. More than a dozen valkyries are named in the Elder Edda, and all these have reference to the activities of war.

This myth about Odin as the god of war, about Valhal and the valkyries, exercised a great influence upon the mind and character of our ancestors. The dying hero knows that the valkyries have been sent after him to invite him home to Odin’s hall, and he receives their message with joy and gladness. That the brave were to be taken after death to Valhal was one of the fundamental points, if not the soul, of the Norse religion.[54] The Norsemen felt in their hearts that it was absolutely necessary to be brave. Odin would not care for them, but despise and thrust them away from him, if they were not brave. And is there not some truth in this doctrine? Is it not still a preëminent duty to be brave? Is it not the first duty of man to subdue fear? What can we accomplish until we have got rid of fear? A man is a slave, a coward, his very thoughts are false, until he has got fear under his feet. Thus we find that the Odinic doctrine, if we disentangle the real kernel and essence of it, is true even in our times. A man must be valiant—he must march forward and acquit himself like a man. How much of a man he is will be determined in most cases by the completeness of his victory over fear. Their views of Odin, Valhal and the valkyries made the Norsemen think it a shame and misery not to die in battle; and if natural death seemed to be coming on, they would cut wounds in their flesh, that Odin might receive them as warriors slain. Old kings, about to die, had their bodies laid in a ship; the ship was sent forth with sails set, and a slow fire burning it, so that once out at sea it might blaze up in flame, and in such manner bury worthily the hero both in the sky and in the ocean. The Norse viking fought with an indomitable, rugged energy. He stood in the prow of his ship, silent, with closed lips, defying the wild ocean with its monsters, and all men and things. No Homer sang of these Norse warriors and sea-kings, but their heroic deeds and wild deaths are the ever-recurring theme of the skalds.

The death of the Norse viking is beautifully described in the following strophe from Professor Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen’s poem, entitled _Odin’s Ravens_:

In the prow with head uplifted
Stood the chief like wrathful Thor;
Through his locks the snow-flakes drifted
Bleached their hue from gold to hoar.
Mid the crash of mast and rafter
Norsemen leaped through death with laughter
Up through Valhal’s wide-flung door.

Regner Lodbrok thus ends his famous song, the Krákumál:

Cease, my strain! I hear a voice
From realms where martial souls rejoice;
I hear the maids of slaughter call,
Who bid me hence to Odin’s hall:
High-seated in their blest abodes
I soon shall quaff the drink of gods.
The hours of life have glided by,
I fall, but smiling shall I die.

And in the death-song of Hakon (_Hákonarmál_) we find the valkyries Gondul and Skogul in the heat of battle:

The god Tyr sent
Gondul and Skogul
To choose a king
Of the race of Ingve,
To dwell with Odin
In roomy Valhal.

The battle being described, the skald continues:

When lo! Gondul,
Pointing with her spear,
Said to her sister,
Soon shall increase
The band of the gods:
To Odin’s feast
Hakon is bidden.

The king beheld
The beautiful maids
Sitting on their horses
In shining armor,
Their shields before them,
Solemnly thoughtful.

The king heard
The words of their lips,
Saw them beckon
With pale hands,
And thus bespoke them:
Mighty goddesses,
Were we not worthy
You should choose us
A better doom?

Skogul answered:
Thy foes have fallen,
Thy land is free,
Thy fame is pure;
Now we must ride
To greener worlds,
To tell Odin
That Hakon comes.

An interpretation of the valkyries is not necessary. The god of war sends his thoughts and his will to the carnage of the battle-field in the form of mighty armed women, in the same manner as he sends his ravens over all the earth.

Ethically considered, then, Odin symbolizes the matchless hope of victory that inspired the Norsemen, and from which their daring exploits sprang; and we know that this hope of victory did not leave the hero when he fell bleeding on the field of battle, but followed him borne in valkyrian arms to Valhal, and thence he soared on eagle pinions to Gimle on the everlasting hights.

Footnote 35:

Compare _Shakespeare_—Shylock and the pound of flesh:

... No jot of blood;
The words expressly are “a pound of flesh.”

Footnote 36:

Freyja, whom the gods had promised the giant, was Oder’s wife.

Footnote 37:

Jack the Giant-killer.

Footnote 38:

The vala, or prophetess.

Footnote 39:

Odin.

Footnote 40:

Odin.

Footnote 41:

See Vocabulary under the word _Mimer_.

Footnote 42:

He who hardens the hide.

Footnote 43:

Fence-breaker.

Footnote 44:

Compare with this myth Dido and the founding of Carthage.

Footnote 45:

Rind was daughter of Billing.

Footnote 46:

The goddess of the sea.

Footnote 47:

Suttung.

Footnote 48:

Ygdrasil.

Footnote 49:

Roots of trees were especially fitted for hurtful trolldom
(witchcraft). They produced mortal wounds.

Footnote 50:

The old heathen Norsemen sprinkled their children with water when they
named them.

Footnote 51:

The waker of the people.

Footnote 52:

Odin.

Footnote 53:

If the _North American Review_, or anybody else, thinks this is proof
of barbarism, we can refer them to the monks in Trier, who preserved
the skull of Saint Theodulf and gave sick people drink from it; and we
know several other such instances. Our Norse ancestors were not, then,
in this respect any more savage than the Christian bishops and monks.
See _North American Review_, January, 1875, p. 195.

Footnote 54:

See Thomas Carlyle’s _Heroes and Hero-worship_.

CHAPTER II.
HERMOD, TYR, HEIMDAL, BRAGE, AND IDUN.

SECTION I. HERMOD.

Odin’s sons are emanations of his own being. As the god of war, warlike valor is one of his servants, and honor another. He invents the art of poetry, but the execution of it he leaves to his son Brage. He does not meddle with thunder, having left this work of a lower order to his son Thor. He is the father of light and darkness, and he leaves the beneficent light to diffuse itself and struggle with darkness independently (Balder and Hoder). Nor does he himself watch the rainbow, but let the watchful Heimdal take care of it.

Hermod (the valiant in combat) was the son of Odin and messenger of the gods. Odin himself gave him helmet and corselet, the means by which to display his warlike character, and he is sent on all dangerous missions. Of his many exploits the most important one is when he was sent on Sleipner to Hel to bring Balder back. It was Hermod and Brage who were sent to bid Hakon, the king, welcome, when he arrived at Valhal.