Valkyries- Norse GroupCollective"Choosers of the Slain"

Choosers of the Slain

The Valkyries ride over battlefields on flying horses, armored and armed, choosing which warriors will die and which will live. Valkyrja means "chooser of the slain." They serve Odin, and when they mark a warrior for death, it is not random misfortune but divine selection: the fallen man has been judged worthy of Valhalla, where he will feast with heroes and train for the battle at the end of the world.

The most vivid image of the Valkyries at work comes from the Darraðarljóð, a poem preserved in Njáls saga. On the morning of the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 CE, twelve riders were seen descending toward a hut. Through a gap in the wall, men watched: twelve women sat at a loom strung with human entrails, weighted with severed heads, using swords for beaters and an arrow for a shuttle. They sang as they wove the battle's fate: "Wind we, wind we the web of spears, where the banners of brave men flutter. We shall not let his life be lost; the Valkyries choose who shall be slain." The number of Valkyries shifts from poem to poem. The Grímnismál gives one count, the Prose Edda another. The poets agreed on what they were, not how many.

The Ride to Valhöll

When a chosen warrior falls, the Valkyries descend. The Völuspá places them at the first battle among the gods: "ready to ride to the race of gods." They rode to every battle after. The poetry describes their approach: from the south they came riding, corslets spattered with blood, beams of light shining from their spears. The fallen man is lifted from his body and carried through the sky to Odin's hall, where he joins the einherjar. Each day the einherjar fight and fall on Vígríðr field. Each evening they rise, healed, and return to feast. Half of the battle-slain go to Odin in Valhalla. The other half go to Freyja in Fólkvangr. How the division is made, the sources never explain.

In Valhalla the Valkyries serve mead at the nightly feasts. Their names carry the sound of war: Hrist means "Shaker," Hildr means "Battle." The same beings who chose these men for death now pour their drinks. When Ragnarök comes and the fire giants ride from the south, the Valkyries will ride one last time, spears in hand, no longer choosing the slain but fighting among them. When the world burns and the gods fall, they will be on the field. No source says what happens to them after.

Brynhildr

Brynhildr disobeyed Odin by granting victory to a king he had doomed to defeat. As punishment, Odin pricked her with a sleep-thorn and enclosed her in a ring of fire on a mountaintop. She would sleep until a man brave enough to ride through the flames came to wake her.

Sigurðr the dragon-slayer rode his horse Grani through the fire without flinching. He cut away her mail-coat and woke her. In the Sigrdrifumál, she taught him runes: victory-runes for the sword's hilt, wave-runes for the ship's prow. They swore oaths to each other. But fate and sorcery intervened: the sorceress Grímhildr gave Sigurðr a potion of forgetfulness, and he married her daughter Guðrún instead. Worse, he helped his blood-brother Gunnarr win Brynhildr by riding through the fire a second time in Gunnarr's shape.

When Brynhildr discovered the deception, she arranged Sigurðr's murder. Then she ordered a pyre built and lay upon it beside his body. She asked that a sword be drawn between them, as on the night they first lay together on the mountaintop, and spoke her prophecy: the ruin of the house of Gjúki, the burning of Atli's hall, the grief that would shadow Guðrún to the end of her days. The flames took her. A Valkyrie who chose one last death: her own.

Sigrún and Skuld

Sigrún, in the Helgi poems, falls in love with the hero Helgi Hundingsbani and defies her father to marry him. When Helgi is killed, his burial mound opens for her. She finds him inside, his wounds still bleeding. She lies beside him all night. In the morning she leaves. The mound closes. The poems say she died of grief soon after. Helgi was reborn as Helgi Haddingjaskati, Sigrún as Kára. Their fates remained entangled across lives.

Skuld straddles two roles: she is named among the Valkyries and also among the three Norns who weave fate. Urðr spins what has been, Verðandi what is becoming, and Skuld what shall be. Her name means "debt" or "the future." That a Norn rides with the Valkyries means there is no boundary between the powers that weave destiny and the powers that carry it out on the field.