The Norse Afterlife Part I: How to Get to Valhalla

It's not as simple as dying in battle

“Walhall” by Emil Doepler, 1905.

We are told over and over again in the sources that those who die in battle are received into Valhalla (O.N. valhǫll) to become part of Odin’s army of dead warriors (einherjar) who will fight alongside him at the final, world-ending battle of Ragnarok.

Here are the passages we typically use to piece together this story:

Grímnismál 8:

Glaðsheimr heitir inn fimmti, þars in gullbjarta | Valhǫll víð of þrumir; | en þar Hroptr kýss hverjan dag | vápndauða vera.

The fifth [location among the gods] is called Gladsheim, there the gold-bright Valhalla stands widely; and there Hropt (Odin) chooses every day the weapon-dead to be (i.e., chooses who will be killed by weapons).

Gylfaginning 20:

Óðinn heitir Alfǫðr, því at hann er faðir allra goða. Hann heitir ok Valfǫðr, því at hans óskasynir eru allir þeir, er í val falla. Þeim skipar hann Valhǫll ok Vingólf, ok heita þeir þá Einherjar.

Odin is called All-father, because he is father of all gods. He is also called Slain-father, because all those who fall as slain-dead are his adopted sons. He assigns them to Valhalla and Vingolf, and they are then called Einherjar.

Gylfaginning 38:

Þat segir þú, at allir þeir menn, er í orrustu hafa fallit frá upphafi heims eru nú komnir til Óðins í Valhǫll. Hvat hefir hann at fá þeim at vistum?

You say this, that all those men, who have fallen in armed-combat since the world’s beginning are now come to Odin in Valhalla. What has he to give them for food?

Vafþrúðnismál 41:

Vafþrúðnir kvað: | ‘Allir einherjar Óðins túnum í | hǫggvask hverjan dag; | val þeir kjósa ok ríða vígi frá, | sitja meirr um sáttir saman.’

Vafthrudnir said: “All the Einherjar fight each other in Odin’s enclosed fields every day; they choose the slain and ride from the battle, to sit more together in accord.”

Gylfaginning 51:

Æsir hervæða sik ok allir Einherjar ok sækja fram á vǫlluna. Ríðr fyrstr Óðinn með gullhjálminn ok fagra brynju ok geir sinn, er Gungnir heitir.

[As Ragnarok begins] the Æsir will don their war-clothes, also all the Einherjar, and will advance onto the field. Odin rides first with the goldhelm and a fine byrnie and his spear which is called Gungnir.

Thus the story goes that every day Odin decides who shall be killed in combat, then incorporates all of them into his afterlife army, which he will lead into battle at the end of the world.

However, we have some clues that this may not be the full story. Additionally, popular media has a tendency to invent its own details. So let’s do a little Q&A on the mechanics of getting into Valhalla:

Do you have to die with a weapon in your hand?

No. This idea has been floating around in the background for a while and was recently re-popularized by Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. It has no historical or mythological basis whatsoever and we ought to toss it right out the window to be forgotten forever.

Do you have to be a Norse pagan or a “good person”?

While the Poetic Edda is somewhat ambiguous on this point, the Prose Edda (particularly Gylfaginning 38, cited above) is very clear about the idea that literally everyone who has fallen in battle since the beginning of the world ends up in Valhalla.

Snorri’s language as quoted above seems to imply that if this is how you die, this is where you go, though this may be a bit oversimplified. As per his words (i.e., “all those men, who have fallen in armed-combat since the world’s beginning”), no matter what race or religion you were in life, or what your behaviors and ideals were generally, as a slain combatant, you should expect to join the ranks of the Einherjar in death.

The implications here are rather staggering, especially when considering modern questions such as, “would there be Nazis in Valhalla?” As much as I would personally not like to see Nazis in Valhalla or anywhere else, we have to remember that ancient Norse paganism did not espouse modern, Abrahamic views about how a person’s “goodness” affects their afterlife destination. Valhalla is not a place of reward for kind and loving behavior after all, but an afterlife army barracks.

Seemingly by contrast, Snorri also asserts in Gylfaginning 3 that “all men shall live, those who are rightly mannered, and be with [Odin] himself in the place called Gimle or Vingolf, but evil men go to Hel and from there into Niflhel”¹. Assuming we ought to equate Gimle with Valhalla, and bearing in mind the fact that this particular passage is absolutely dripping with Christian-sounding language², we must continually remind ourselves that ideas about “rightness” and “evil” were not the same in the pagan period as they are today. Though there are plenty of indicators that certain, specific behaviors such as murder, perjury, and seducing another man’s wife were anciently considered evil and might disqualify a person from entry into Valhalla³, advocating and fighting for horrible, supremacist ideologies is not listed among these behaviors.

The idea that non-Norse warriors can be received by Odin is also backed up, for instance, by the poem Gráfeldardrápa⁴ composed by the 10th-century skald Glúmr Geirason about Erik Bloodaxe sending the Scottish soldiers he killed to Odin as quoted in Hákonar saga góða (Diana Whaley’s translation):

The rider of the steed of the bank [= Erik], skillful in seafaring, had in early youth made a good voyage to Skåne from there. The judicious ruler attacked Scotland with strife-fire [= sword]; he sent a sword-beaten host of the offspring of men [those he had slain] to Gautr [= Óðinn].

Does it count if you struggle with “internal battles”?

In all of our sources, whenever a person who “dies in battle” ends up in Valhalla, the “battle” in question is always literal, armed combat. The idea is never used metaphorically. When not specifically describing an army-vs-army scenario, references to those who have “died in battle” always derive from Old Norse words such as vápndauða (“weapon-dead”), valr (“corpse of a person killed on a battlefield or by weapons”), or orrusta (“armed combat”, prior to the Christian era). To reiterate, Valhalla is an afterlife army barracks, albeit a fancy one. The reason a person is selected for Valhalla is to become a member of a literal army that will fight alongside Odin in armed combat at Ragnarok. However, assuming this is the afterlife you actually want, there is still hope for you if you do not literally die in combat. Even though the sources don’t tell us your internal struggles can get you there, there may be ritual ways to achieve the same effect. We’ll come back to this.

Can women go to Valhalla?

It’s important to consider what Valhalla physically is and where it is physically located. As our sources explain, it is a very large building located within Asgard. Various deities preside over smaller locations with Asgard, and surviving myths contain attestations of characters (such as Hrungnir⁵) entering Valhalla under various circumstances, even when they might not otherwise be allowed in. For any individual who ends up at some afterlife location within the home of the gods, why should we suppose that they would not be able to enter Odin’s hall just for being female?

Snorri’s wording in Gylfaginning seems to narrow the focus to men, given his use of the phrase “adopted sons”, and the Poetic Edda offers no clarification here. Yet we also have attestations of women being present in Valhalla, for instance Freyja in the Hrungnir story, and the valkyries who serve ale there (Gylfaginning 35-36). It’s entirely possible that Snorri’s choice of words was not deliberately meant to exclude women from the building, but were simply an extension of the social expectation that nearly all combatants at the time were men, and his understanding that “coming to Odin in Valhalla” is not a physical restriction, but a role applied to the slain dead. Throughout the sources we are never given any explicit reason to believe women would have been excluded under the same circumstances by which men would have been accepted.

What is a somewhat more intriguing idea is the question of whether or not ancient-Germanic women were allowed to spiritually approach Odin directly, or whether they were required to do so via a female intermediary. Note how the interaction works, for example, in the Langobard origin myth⁶:

In this story, Odin (therein called “Godan”) has promised a battle-victory between the Vandals and the Winnili to the first army he sees when he awakes at sunrise. In order for the Winnili tribe to win this battle, a woman called Gambara turns to Frigg (therein called “Frea”) for help. Frigg advises the women to tie their hair around their faces in order to appear as bearded men, and she then turns Odin’s bed to face in their direction before waking him at sunrise. When he awakes, he sees the Winnili women and asks “who are these long-beards?” Frigg replies that as Odin has now given them a name (“long-beards”, i.e., Langobards), he ought to give them the victory as well, which he does.

A somewhat less clear (though possibly related) story can be found in the Saga of the Volsungs⁷. Here, a king called Rerir and his wife are having trouble conceiving a child. As the story is recounted, “they” implore “the gods” for a child, at which point Frigg hears “their” pleas and approaches Odin on their behalf⁸. Odin then sends Rerir a special apple by way of a crow-disguised valkyrie, which he eats, and conceives a child with his wife immediately after. In this case, it is not entirely clear which individual is supplicating which god, but it is interesting that, again, it is Frigg who approaches Odin on the couple’s behalf about a matter regarding pregnancy and childbirth.

If you subscribe to the idea that Freyja’s domain Folkvang (as mentioned in Grímnismál 14) is the same place as Valhalla (which is an idea I will discuss more in another post), then Egils saga skallagrímssonar⁹ may contain an attestation of a human woman expecting to go to Valhalla. Note the following line spoken by Egil’s daughter Thorgerd in reference to her own (ostensibly upcoming) death:

Engan hefi ek náttverð haft, ok engan mun ek fyrr en at Freyju. Kann ek mér eigi betri ráð en faðir minn. Vil ek ekki lifa eftir föður minn ok bróður.

I have not had supper, nor will I until (I do) at Freyja’s. I can not do better for myself than my father. I do not want to live after (i.e. outlive) my father and brother.

Throughout the saga, Egil shows himself to be tightly associated with the cult of Odin, and even asserts that his dead son has been received by Odin. It is fascinating then that his daughter associates herself with Freyja, whom we are told in Grímnismál 14 “chooses half the slain every day and half are owned by Odin”. What exactly this means from an afterlife perspective is hard to say. Yet with the prevalence of expectations that nobility should be destined for Valhalla, and with the various attestations of women choosing to die alongside their husbands/lovers to join them in the afterlife (more on this to come), it becomes difficult to believe that an afterlife connected to Valhalla is fully out of the question for women. Although, assuming women can find themselves there, especially for reasons other than dying in combat, it is quite possible that the roles of men and women in a place like Valhalla are not intended to be the same.

Does your social class matter?

We have a few hints that Valhalla was particularly associated with nobility. Here are some of the passages pointing us in this direction:

Hárbarðsljóð 24:

Hárbarðr kvað: “Var ek á Vallandi ok vígum fylgðak, | atta ek jǫfrum, en aldri sættak; | Óðinn á jarla, þá er í val falla, | en Þórr á þræla kyn!”

Harbard said: “I was in Valland and I followed battles, I incited rulers, but I never reconciled; Odin owns the earls (nobles ranked just below the king), those which fall as battle-slain, but Thor owns the kin of thralls!”

Eiríksmál 1 (quoted in Skáldskaparmál):

Hvat es þat drauma, | es ek hugðumk fyr dag lítlu | Valhǫll ryðja | fyr vegnu folki? | Vakða ek einherja, | bað ek upp rísa | bekki at stráa, | borðker at leyðra, | valkyrjur vín bera, | sem vísi komi.

What kind of dream is this, that I thought a little before daybreak I readied Valhalla for a slain host? I woke the Einherjar, bade them rise up to strew benches, to wash goblets, the valkyries to bear wine, as though a ruler may come.

Hákonarmál 1:

Gǫndul ok Skǫgul | sendi Gautatýr | at kjósa of konunga, | hverr Yngva ættar | skyldi með Óðni fara | ok í Valhǫll vesa.

Gautatyr (Odin) sent Gondul and Skogul (valkyries) to choose from among kings, which of Yngvi’s family (the Yngling dynasty) should go with Odin and be in Valhalla.

Gylfaginning 38:

Þá segir Hárr: “Undarliga spyrr þú nú, at Alfǫðr mun bjóða til sín konungum eða jǫrlum eða ǫðrum ríkismǫnnum ok myni gefa þeim vatn at drekka. […]”

Then said High: “You ask a strange thing now, whether All-father would bid kings or earls or other rulers to himself and would give them water to drink. […]”

However, none of these references imply that nobles are the only ones allowed in. The association with nobility is more likely an indication that Odin worship was especially popular among nobility but might have been less popular among average people in ancient times¹⁰. As we will see, Norse source material contains numerous instances of non-noble warriors being sent or given to Odin in death.

Has anyone ever gone to Valhalla without dying in battle?

Yes! And this is where we get into the good stuff.

Let us begin with Snorri Sturluson’s Ynglinga saga (which is a euhemeristic work inspired by Norse mythology, though not “real” mythology itself). Herein, Snorri tells a fascinating story in which Odin and Njord are both portrayed as historical, human kings who do not die in battle but still end up in the realm of the gods:

Óðinn varð sóttdauðr í Svíþjóð; ok er hann var at kominn bana, lét hann marka sik geirsoddi ok eignaði sér alla vápndauða menn. Sagði hann sik mundu fara í Goðheim ok fagna þar vinum sínum. […] Njǫrðr af Nóatúnum gerðist þá valdsmaðr yfir Svíum, ok hélt upp blótum. […] Njǫrðr varð sóttdauðr, lét hann ok marka sik Óðni, áðr hann dó.

Odin died of sickness in Svithjod; and when he had come to the point of death, he let himself be marked with a spear-point and claimed for himself all weapon-dead people. He said he would go to Godheim (lit., “home of the gods”) and be welcomed there by his friends. […] Njord of Noatun was then made ruler over the Sviar and upheld the ceremonial sacrifices. […] Njord died of sickness. He also let himself be marked for Odin before he died.

Here, we see Odin dying of sickness and still ending up in the realm of the gods (where Valhalla is located). He claims for himself all people who are “weapon-dead” and appears to “mark” (likely cut or stab) himself with the point of a spear in order for his own death to ritually qualify as “weapon-death”. In doing this, he essentially gives himself to himself, resembling the poetic Hávamál 138 wherein he sacrifices himself to himself in order to obtain the runes. When Njord dies he follows suit, ritually marking himself as weapon-dead “for Odin”. We are surely meant to assume then that Njord has joined Odin in Valhalla.

I should reiterate that Ynglinga saga is dangerous to take at face value. These events may be informed by ancient ideas, but Odin was not a historical, human king and the spear-marking ritual as described therein is not found in core mythological source material. However, it is not impossible that this may be the reflected memory of a real, ancient practice as it does seem to be repeated elsewhere, for instance in Skjǫldunga saga¹¹ when King Sigurd Ring kills himself alongside his dead wife (Jónsson’s translation):

He (King Sigurðr Hringr), when Alfsola had been borne to her funeral, went aboard a great ship, laden with corpses, the only living man among them. He placed himself and the dead Alfsola in the stern, and ordered that a fire should be kindled with bitumen and sulphur. Then with full sails set and a strong wind driving from the shore, he guided the rudder and at the same time slew himself with his own hand. […] For he preferred to go to King Othin in royal pomp in the manner of his ancestors — that is to the underworld — rather than to endure the weakness of a sluggish old age… (XXVI).

There are other spear-related dedications to Odin we’ll get into momentarily. But first, we find another interesting layer of complexity in Vǫlsunga saga when examining the death of Sinfjotli, the son of king Sigmund, who does not die in battle but still ends up in Valhalla:

It þriðja sinn kom hún ok bað hann drekka af, ef hann hefði hug Vǫlsunga. Sinfjǫtli tók við horninu ok mælti: “Eitr er í drykknum.” Sigmundr svarar: “Lát grǫn sía, sonr,” sagði hann. Þá var konungr drukkinn mjǫk, ok því sagði hann svá. Sinfjǫtli drekkr ok fellr þegar niðr. Sigmundr ríss upp ok gekk harmr sinn nær bana ok tók líkit í fang sér ok ferr til skógar ok kom loks at einum firði. Þar sá hann mann á einum báti litlum. Sá maðr spyrr, ef hann vildi þiggja at honum far yfir fjǫrðinn. Hann játtar því. Skipit var svá lítit, at þat bar þá eigi, ok var líkit fyrst flutt, en Sigmundr gekk með firðinum. Ok því næst hvarf Sigmundi skipit ok svá maðrinn.

The third time [Borghild] came and bade [Sinfjotli] drink, if he had a Volsung’s courage. Sinfjotli took the drinking horn and said: “Poison is in the drink.” Sigmund answered: “Let your mustache filter it out, son,” he said. The king was very drunk at the time, which is why he spoke this way.¹² Sinfjotli drank it and fell down (dead) immediately. Sigmund rose up, his sorrow brought him near death, and he took the body in his grasp and went to the forest and came at last to a fjord. There he saw a man on a little boat. The man asked if he wanted to receive passage over the fjord. [Sigmund] accepted that. The ship was so little that it couldn’t fit them all, so the body was moved first, but Sigmund walked along the fjord. And next, the ship disappeared from Sigmund and likewise the man.

We are clearly meant to understand here that Odin (disguised as a ferryman) has personally claimed Sinfjotli for himself, even though he died by poisoning outside of battle. Elsewhere, in Eiríksmál 5, Sigmund and Sinfjotli are confirmed to be present in Valhalla when they are instructed by Odin to meet a prince who is arriving there:

Sigmundr ok Sinfjǫtli, | rísið snarliga | ok gangið í gǫgn grami. | Inn þú bjóð, | ef Eirekr séi; | hans es mér nú ván vituð.

Sigmund and Sinfjotli, rise quickly and go to meet the prince. Invite him in, if it is Eirik; you know I am expecting him now.

There is one more example worth bringing up here, although I will discuss it more deeply in another post. In Egils saga skallagrímssonar, Egil’s son drowns in a boating accident. Afterward, Egil composes the famous poem Sonatorrek in memory of his son in which he discusses his own relationship with Odin at length. The poem contains the following line, comprising the second half of stanza 18:

burr Bileygs¹³ | í bæ kominn, | kvánar sonr, | kynnis leita.

[My] son has come in to Bileyg’s (Odin’s) estate, [my] wife’s son, to visit.

Obviously, a boating accident hardly qualifies as dying in combat or being killed by weapons, and thus we are led to assume that Egil must have had some other reason for believing his son had been received by Odin. Schjødt asserts that “it seems probable that any king who was initiated to Óðinn was supposed to go to Valhǫll”¹⁴. In terms of how that works, he concludes, “It is thus possible to go to Goðheimr, which is undoubtedly here a parallel to Valhǫll, if one is marked with a spear”¹⁵.

This idea of being “marked with a spear” as a dedication of a person to Odin shows up in other ways as well. In both Styrbjarnar þáttr Svíakappa¹⁶ and Eyrbyggja saga¹⁷ we are given accounts of characters who initiate battles by throwing a spear over the opposing army (explicitly to dedicate them to Odin in Styrbjarnar, and “according to ancient custom” in Eyrbyggja), which hearkens back to the Æsir-Vanir war which begins when Odin hurls a spear into the opposing army. Schjødt believes that:

Underlying the statement that all who die in battle will go to Valhǫll, however, is the knowledge that these men had been dedicated to the god. According to the sources, this could be brought about either by throwing a spear over the enemy or, if a person were to die in bed, by marking him with a spear. The spear is an attribute of Óðinn, a detail that supports this idea. Thus, both the marking and the throwing are variant dedications to Óðinn and so, of course, is the initiation that surely preceded acceptance into the war-band. There is no reason, therefore, to believe that everybody in Valhǫll were kings or members of war-bands, since it seems that whole armies could be dedicated. If this idea is accepted, Snorri’s statement should not be taken literally but rather symbolically: those who were in various ways ‘initiated’ to Óðinn and therefore warriors of various kinds, became his friends and would join him in Valhǫll after their death.¹⁸

If Snorri’s idea is informed by any kind of reality at all, and if Schjødt’s idea is correct (or even close to correct), that initiation or dedication to Odin sufficiently sanctions a person for Valhalla, it could potentially explain all cases wherein we see characters dying outside of battle still joining Odin in the afterlife, (apart from the even simpler explanation that if Odin wants you, he’s probably just going to take you as he did Sinfjotli, no matter how you died). It also ties in very well with evidence that the cult of Odin was probably more popular among nobility and less so among average people¹⁹.

One last interesting example comes from Hákonar saga góða²⁰ in which Hakon the Good dies outside of battle from a wound that was inflicted while in battle:

Vinir hans fluttu lík hans norðr á Sæheim á Norðhǫrðaland, ok urpu þar haug mikinn ok lǫgðu þar í konung með alvæpni sitt ok hinn bezta búnað sinn, en ekki fé annat. Mæltu þeir svá fyrir grepti hans, sem heiðinna manna siðr var til, vísuðu honum til Valhallar.

His friends moved his body north to Sæheim in Nordhordaland, and raised there a great mound and laid the king in it with all his weapons and his best gear, but no other property. They so spoke over his burial, as was the custom of heathen people, they directed him to Valhalla.

In this case, we have another dead king, this time “directed” to Valhalla by what appears to be some kind of spoken ritual at his inhumation. Hakon is interesting in that he is attested as having abandoned Christianity for pagan practices in Historia Norwegie²¹. Whether he was ever formally initiated into a cult of Odin is impossible to say, and I am not aware of any other more detailed records of an inhumation ritual directing a person to Valhalla. If this story does reflect any kind of real pagan practice, the most interesting detail we can glean from it is the idea that the ritual actions of the living may have sometimes held some influence over where the dead ended up.

Has anyone ever died in battle and not gone to Valhalla?

Also yes! Although Snorri claims that “all those men, who have fallen in armed-combat since the world’s beginning” have gone to Valhalla, the sources are actually riddled with exceptions, especially when it comes to gods and jotuns. Thor (whose hammer seems to send its victims exclusively to Hel²²) threatens to knock Odin into Hel in Hárbarðsljóð 27, Baldr winds up in Hel after being shot by Hod’s mistletoe “wand” in Gylfaginning 49, and Hod likewise ends up in Hel after being killed by Vali in revenge for Baldr’s death in Gylfaginning 53.

But perhaps the gods and jotuns are excluded from Valhalla for whatever reason. In that case, here are a few more examples of non-Æsir, non-jotun characters (mostly humans) going to Hel instead of Valhalla after dying in battle or being killed with weapons:

• In Ragnarsdrápa (quoted in Skáldskaparmál 50), Bragi writes: “[Hildr] always pretended to be against battle, though she was inciting the princes to join the company of the quite monstrous wolf’s sister (Hel).”

• In Fáfnismál 34, a bird suggests that Sigurd should cut off Regin’s head and thus send him to Hel.

• In Guðrúnarkviða I 6-8, the queen of the Huns tells Gudrun that “my seven sons, in a southern land, [my] husband the eighth, fell as slain-dead; […] I myself had to handle their Hel-journey.”

• Sigurd himself is stabbed by Guthorm in his sleep but is able to wake up and slice Guthorm in half before dying. However, there is an entire poem called Helreið Brynhildar in which Brynhild, the human valkyrie who loved Sigurd, journeys to Hel to be reunited with him after their deaths. The fact that he ends up there is also confirmed by Guðrúnarhvǫt 20.

• Multiple people are described as being sent to Hel after dying in battle throughout Atlamál in grǿnlenzku.

It would seem either that not everyone believed a weapon’s wound was enough to send a person to Valhalla after all, or that there may be some way to reconcile the two ideas. In fact, in the most perplexing of all afterlife-related lines in the Poetic Edda, Sigurd tells us in Fáfnismál 10 that:

[…] einu sinni skal alda hverr fara til Heljar heðan.

At one time shall every man travel from here to Hel.

Why do some people who die in battle end up with Hel?

It’s really anyone’s guess, although I will discuss Hel more at length in another post. This could very well be prime territory where we are running into incongruence of belief among Norse people. It’s interesting to note, for example, that the majority of these instances are tied to the story of Sigurd in some way. And the fact that Sigurd ends up in Hel rather than Valhalla is already perplexing on its own.

It’s also possible that there is some hidden mechanism at play that could explain some of the conflicting information. We could suggest any number of creative explanations²³, but there’s just no way to reconcile all of these attestations with full confidence. Fortunately, Norse religion was an organic and evolving system so we don’t actually have to. That said, I do believe Schjødt may be on to something with his ideas about dedication and initiation. It’s the one idea that shows up without fail in Eddas, sagas, and euhemeristic histories from both Iceland and Denmark, even if it can’t fully reconcile every instance of seemingly contradictory information.

To back up Schjødt’s idea, we can look to Gesta Danorum²⁴, another euhemeristic work written by Christian-Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus roughly around the same time as the Prose Edda. In discussing Harald Wartooth, Saxo gives us this interesting tidbit (Fisher’s translation):

Because he was of amazing beauty and outstanding size and since he surpassed his contemporaries in strength and height, he had enjoyed such fondness from Odin, whose oracle appears to have been responsible for his birth, that no blade could impair his unscathed condition. Thus weapons injurious to others were rendered futile and could cause him no hurt. This benefit did not go unrecompensed; he is said to have promised Odin all those souls which his sword had cast out of men’s bodies.²⁵

If Odin had automatic rights to everyone who died in battle or was killed by weapons as Snorri asserts, one wonders why Harald would have needed to promise the souls of everyone he killed to Odin, and why this would have been considered repayment for the favors Odin had given him. The implication seems to be that the dedication is necessary for Odin to receive those souls.

Are we reyling too much on euhemeristic works?

If we were deriving the entire idea of spears and “giving” a person to Odin from Ynglinga saga I would say yes. However, this theme shows up in lots of ways, particularly in accounts of human sacrifice, which often incorporate an element of hanging as well. Earlier I mentioned Hávamál 138, wherein Odin gives himself to himself:

Veit ek at ek hekk vindga meiði á | nætr allar níu, | geiri undaðr ok gefinn Óðni, | sjálfr sjálfum mér, | á þeim meiði er mangi veit | hvers hann af rótum renn.

I know that I hung on a windy tree nine whole nights, wounded by a spear and given to Odin, myself to myself, on that tree which no person knows of what roots it runs from.

Human sacrifice among Germanic people, sometimes by hanging and sometimes involving a spear, has been attested by various third-party sources as a way of giving a person to Odin ever since Tacitus wrote about it in Germania²⁶ in the first century A.D. (Church/Brodribb’s translation):

Mercury is the deity whom they chiefly worship, and on certain days they deem it right to sacrifice to him even with human victims.²⁷

For various reasons I won’t get into here, we typically agree that Mercury in this passage is a reference to *Wōðanaz (the Proto-Germanic precursor to Odin) by way of interpretatio romana. As a necessary caveat, there is some discussion about bias and reliability of some of these third-party authors. However there is a lot that Tacitus got right, and human sacrifice is attested in the North Germanic corpus as well, which we’ll see in a moment.

In the 11th century, a German Christian named Adam of Bremen wrote a supposedly second-hand account of worship that occurred at a pagan temple in Uppsala, Sweden. He tells us that libations were poured to idols of Odin, Thor, and Frey at the temple under different circumstances and that, at a nine-year festival, sacrifices were made. As Adam puts it (Tschan’s translation):

The sacrifice is of this nature: of every living thing that is male they offer nine heads with the blood of which it is customary to placate gods of this sort. The bodies they hang in the sacred grove that adjoins the temple. […] Even dogs and horses hang there with men.²⁸

Whether spears were involved in this case is left to the imagination.

In Gautreks saga²⁹, as well as in Gesta Danorum we get a description of the death of King Vikar who is sacrificed to Odin by the character Starkad. In the saga, a human sacrifice is required by Odin in order for a ship to obtain a fair wind. Lots are cast to determine who should be sacrificed and the lot falls upon king Vikar. Nobody wants to sacrifice their king, so they decide to hold a mock sacrifice instead, comprised of all the necessary ritual components: a fake gallows made from a low-hanging pine branch, a fake noose from some animal intestines, and a fake spear from a reed stalk. Starkad puts the noose around Vikar’s neck, proclaims, “Now I give you to Odin” and stabs at him with the reed stalk. As he does, the stalk transforms into a real spear and pierces the king. The noose becomes real as well and the pine branch shoots high up into the tree, hanging the king after he has quite explicitly been wounded with a spear and given to Odin. The account is less magical in Saxo’s version, but the king is likewise both hung and stabbed as part of the event.

In light of this, it would appear that dedicating your opponents to Odin before a battle is, in a way, a form of human sacrifice. However, the simpler point is that there seem to be various ways to “give” a person to Odin (many, but not all of which involve a spear), and any hypothetical ritual initiating a king (or anyone?) to Odin is probably sufficient to get them to Valhalla.

Does that mean valkyries don’t actually choose who goes to Valhalla? And what about Freyja choosing half the slain for Folkvang?

Valkyries (and Freyja) do indeed choose the slain! But if a person simply needs to give themselves or be given to Odin to arrive in Valhalla, how do the valkyries and the idea of being “chosen” factor into the equation? And how should we interpret Grímnismál 14’s claim that Freyja chooses half the slain every day and the other half are owned by Odin? These are big questions that require a post of their own, so please check out “The Norse Afterlife Part II: Folkvang & Valkyries”.

1. The original language here is ok skulu allir menn lifa, þeir er rétt eru siðaðir, ok vera með honum sjálfum þar sem heitir Gimlé eða Vingólf, en vándir menn fara til Heljar ok þaðan í Niflhel.

2. The passage in question is as follows: Þá mælti Þriði: "Hitt er þó mest, er hann gerði manninn ok gaf honum ǫnd þá, er lifa skal ok aldri týnast, þótt líkaminn fúni at moldu eða brenni at ǫsku, ok skulu allir menn lifa, þeir er rétt eru siðaðir, ok vera með honum sjálfum þar sem heitir Gimlé eða Vingólf, en vándir menn fara til Heljar ok þaðan í Niflhel." (Then spoke Third: “It is most important, though, that [Odin] made man and gave him a soul, which shall live and never perish, though the body may decay to dirt or burn to ash, and all men shall live, those who are rightly mannered, and be with him himself in the place called Gimle or Vingolf, but evil men go to Hel and from there into Niflhel.”) Consider this in light of passages such as Genesis 2:7 “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul,” Genesis 18:27 “Abraham answered and said, ‘Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes,’” and Matthew 25:46 “And [the wicked] shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.”

3. Consider Vǫluspá 37-38 (Pettit’s translation, parentheses and emphasis added by me): “She (a seeress) saw a hall standing far from the sun, on Nástrǫnd (“corpse-beach”), the doors face north; venom-drops fell in through the roof-vent; that hall is wound with the spines of snakes. There she saw wading swift currents perjured people and murder-wolves, and the one who seduces another’s wife; there Niðhǫggr (a dragon) sucked the corpses of the deceased, the wolf tore men. Would you know still [more], or what?” Also see my post “Norse Cosmology Part I: The Nine Realms are Wrong”.

Pettit, E., trans., The Poetic Edda: A Dual Language Edition, (Open Book Publishers, 2023), p. 47

4. Diana Whaley (ed.) 2012, ‘Glúmr Geirason, Gráfeldardrápa 2’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 249.

5. The story as related in Skáldskaparmál 17 is that Odin challenges the jotun Hrungnir to a horse race that begins in Jotunheim and ends in Asgard in front of Valhalla. Hrungnir is invited into the hall for a drink, whereupon he begins making threats, one of which is to physically remove Valhalla from Asgard into Jotunheim.

6. Roberto, Umberto. “Origo Gentis Langobardorum”. Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle. Ed. Graeme Dunphy & Cristian Bratu. Brill Reference Online. Web. 26 Feb. 2024.

7. Byock, Jesse. The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer. Penguin UK, 2004.

8. The original language here is Þat hugnar þeim báðum illa, ok biðja þau goðin með miklum áhuga, at þau gæti sér barn. Þat er nú sagt, at Frigg heyrir bæn þeira ok segir Óðni, hvers þau biðja. (Lit. “It did not bode well for their being pleased, and they bid the gods with mighty intent, that they would get themselves a child. This is now said, that Frigg hears their prayers and says to Odin what they bid.”)

9. “Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar.” Heimskringla.no, https://heimskringla.no/wiki/Egils_saga_Skalla-Gr%C3%ADmssonar. Accessed 26 Feb. 2024.

10. Schjødt, Jens Peter. "Óðinn" The Pre-Christian Religions of the North: History and Structures, vol. III, edited by Jens Peter Schjødt, John Lindow, and Anders Andrén, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1171-1181.

11. Jónsson, A. Skjðldunga Saga, A.f.n.O. 1894, p. 132 f.

12. Fun fact: the saga tells us that Sigmund is so tough that he can not be harmed by any kind of poisons. We are told that Sinfjotli is also tough, but that he is only immune to external poisons, not ingested ones.

13. Following Nordal’s reading, 1933.

14. Schjødt, p. 1167.

15. Schjødt, p. 1168.

16. “Styrbjarnar þáttr svíakappa.” Heimskringla.no, https://heimskringla.no/wiki/Styrbjarnar_%C3%BE%C3%A1ttr_Sv%C3%ADakappa. Accessed 28 Feb. 2024.

17. “Eyrbyggja saga.” Heimskringla.no, https://heimskringla.no/wiki/Eyrbyggja_saga. Accessed 28 Feb. 2024.

18. Schjødt, p. 1168.

19. Schjødt, pp. 1171-1181.

20. “Saga Hákonar góða.” Heimskringla.no, https://heimskringla.no/wiki/Saga_H%C3%A1konar_g%C3%B3%C3%B0a. Accessed 28 Feb. 2024.

21. Ekrem, Inger, and Lars Boje Mortensen. Historia Norwegie. Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006. p. 83

22. For instance Gylfaginning 42: Galt hann þá smíðarkaupit ok eigi sól eða tungl, heldr synjaði hann honum at byggva í Jǫtunheimum ok laust þat it fyrsta hǫgg, er haussinn brotnaði í smán mola, ok sendi hann niðr undir Niflheim. (“Then [Thor] paid the smith’s wages and not the sun or moon, rather he stopped him from living in Jotunheim and struck the first blow, such that the skull was broken into small pieces, and sent him down under Niflheim.”)

23. For instance, perhaps the word hel can be used to describe burial in general, given that it is derived from earlier words with meanings such as “cover” and “conceal”. Perhaps Sigurd broke faith with Odin by awakening Brynhild from a curse Odin placed upon her. Again, these are simply creative, poorly-evidenced guesses.

24. Saxo. Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes. Edited by Karsten Friis-Jensen. Translated by Peter Fisher, vol. 1, Clarendon Press, 2015.

25. Saxo, VII. 1O.3

26. Church, A.J. and Brodribb, W.J. trans., Publius Cornelius Tacitus: Germania.

27. Church and Brodribb, s. 9

28. Francis J. Tschan (trans). Adam of Bremen: History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen. Columbia University Press, 1959. p. 208

29. “Gautreks saga.” Heimskringla.no, https://heimskringla.no/wiki/Gautreks_saga. Accessed 29 Feb. 2024.