Record #145
Valkyries
Armed maidens who guide the souls of fallen warriors to the afterlife.
Original Text
Valkyrie means, in early German languages, the ‘chooser of the slain’ . We do not knowhow the people of Germany and of Austria imagined them; in Norse mythology they are lovely maidens who bear weapons. Their usual number was three, though in the Eddas the names of more than a dozen are given.
In popular myth they took the souls of those slain in battle and brought them to Odin’s epic paradise. There, in the Hall of the Slain, Valhalla, whose ceiling was of gold and was lighted by drawn swords and not lamps, the warriors battled from daybreak to sunset. Then those of them who had been killed were brought back to life, and all shared a divine feast in which they were served the meat of an immortal wild boar and inexhaustible hornfuls of mead. This idea of an endless battle seems to be Celtic in origin.
An Anglo-Saxon charm against the pain of sudden stitches I;I
describes the Valkyries without naming them; the lines, as translated by Stopford A. Brooke, run this way:
Loud were they, lo! loud, as over the land they rode; Fierce of heart were they, as over the hill they rode!
For the mighty maidens have mustered up their strength . . .
Under the spreading influence of Christianity, the name Valkyrie degenerated; in medieval England a judge had burned at the stake an unlucky woman charged with being a Valkyrie, that is to say, a witch.
In popular myth they took the souls of those slain in battle and brought them to Odin’s epic paradise. There, in the Hall of the Slain, Valhalla, whose ceiling was of gold and was lighted by drawn swords and not lamps, the warriors battled from daybreak to sunset. Then those of them who had been killed were brought back to life, and all shared a divine feast in which they were served the meat of an immortal wild boar and inexhaustible hornfuls of mead. This idea of an endless battle seems to be Celtic in origin.
An Anglo-Saxon charm against the pain of sudden stitches I;I
describes the Valkyries without naming them; the lines, as translated by Stopford A. Brooke, run this way:
Loud were they, lo! loud, as over the land they rode; Fierce of heart were they, as over the hill they rode!
For the mighty maidens have mustered up their strength . . .
Under the spreading influence of Christianity, the name Valkyrie degenerated; in medieval England a judge had burned at the stake an unlucky woman charged with being a Valkyrie, that is to say, a witch.