If you're like me, the word "valkyrie" brings to mind that omnipresent song (and not the 2008 Tom Cruise movie). Valkyries were an important part of Viking beliefs because they were the ones who decided who won battles, and who died fighting in them.
In the Norse belief system, valkyries were supernatural women who determined who lived and died on the battlefield. Subsequently, they would take a select group of the slain warriors on horseback to Odin’s hall, Valhalla, where they would join the einherjar, the exclusive retinue who fight for sport during the days and feast at night. It is easy to see the attractions of such an afterlife, in which a man never goes hungry and fighting is a form of entertainment with no consequences, at least for those who belonged to the warrior class.
The Edda, a textbook about Norse mythology written in the 13th century by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, claims that the valkyries served drink to fallen warriors in Valhalla. But older sources, which are closer to what the Vikings thought and believed, usually emphasise the valkyries’ warlike aspects and their agency over life and death. Viking poets refer to them as ‘sword girls’, ‘spear maidens’ and ‘goddess of the spear/sword’. One poem, preserved in Njáls saga, even visualises a battle as the earthly manifestation of the valkyries’ weaving in the otherworld, using weapons as their tools and guts as yarn.
But most of the Vikings' raids and wars were fought by men, so why were the outcomes decided by women? Read about the nature of valkyries and some of the stories about them at History Today. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: Hans Makart)