Explicación del Mapa Estratégico, principales relaciones

The description of the Valkyries given by Snorri, in the section dealing with Valhöll, is seen to need considerable enlargement if all the evidence in the literature is taken into consideration, and similarly the conception of Valhöll in the literature as a whole seems to indicate something much wider than a warriors’ paradise. Snorri himself,. who as we have seen is relying exclusively on Grímnismál and Vafþrúðnismál in the Prose Edda, evidently knew of one other tradition at least, since he tells us in the Ynglinga Saga that those whose bodies were burnt went, to join. Othin in Valhöll after death, and their possessions with them. In one of the later sagas, Gautreks Saga, we have a fantastic opening chapter dealing with an absurd family of misers who sacrifice themselves to Othin on the slightest provocation, and their way of reaching Valhöll is to hurl themselves over a cliff. That this was a recognised form of sacrifice seems to be indicated by the words of the missionary Hjaiti,¹ while the fact that Bede alludes to parties of men throwing themselves voluntarily over precipices² suggests a survival of the same tradition in England. Moreover it is interesting to notice that in the story in Gautreks Saga a servant was on one occasion allowed to sacrifice himself with his master as a

1 Kristnis Saga, XII (Altnord. Saga— Bib. II, 1905), p. 49.

2 Historia Ecclesiastica (ed. Plummer, 1896), IV, 13. 231.

special privilege; of him it is said: ‘He is to enjoy happiness in his [i.e. the master’s]

company. My father is quite sure that Othin will not come out to meet the thrall unless he is in his company.’

This odd story of the family who went in twos and threes ‘cheerfully and gladly to Othin’ reads like a parody or misunderstood echo of the tradition of dying by fire already discussed, which, as we have seen, appears to be connected with the conception of some kind of future life with Othin in a Valhöll which was not merely a paradise for warriors who fell in battle. We have the same note of fierce joy and certainty in the Krákumál,¹ the death-song of Ragnarr Loðbrók:

It gladdens me ever to know that Balder’s father makes ready the benches for a banquet. Soon we shall be drinking the ale from the curved horns. The champion who comes to Fjölnir’s dwelling does not lament his death. I shall not come into Viðrir’s hall with words of fear on my lips (V, 25).

The Æsir will welcome me; death comes without lamenting..

I am eager to depart. The dísir summon me home, they whom Othin has sent to me from the halls of the Lord of hosts. Gladly shall I drink ale in the high-seat with the Æsir.

The days of my life are ended. I die with a laugh (v, 29).

Ragnarr, it will be remembered, did not according to tradition die in battle. The poem itself as well as the saga states that he was killed by snakes at the command of Ella of Northumberland. This sounds like some kind of sacrificial death, and if so, this would explain Ragnarr’s firm conviction that he would be received by Othin, and would be in accordance with other passages dealing with human sacrifice which we have noticed.

Sometimes, though rarely, we find references to Valhöll in the Íslendinga Sögur. There are two examples in Njáls Saga. Jarl Guðbrandr exclaims after his shrine of the gods has been destroyed:

A man must have burned the house and carried the gods out. But the gods do not revenge everything at once. The man who has done this will be driven out of Valhöll and will never enter there (LXXXVIII).

Again, when Högni is taking down his dead lather’s weapon to avenge him, he says: ‘I mean to bear it to my father, and he shall carry it with him to Valhöll and bear it out to the meeting of the

1 Ragnars Saga Loðbrókar (F.A.S. I), p. 56. F. Jónsson believes the poem to be earlier than 1200 in date, but not earlier than 1100 in its present form (Litt. Hist. II, p. 153 f).

warriors’ (LXXIX). Possibly Högni’s statement is a merely ironical one; possibly, however, it is significant in the light of the fact that we know Gunnarr to be thought of as resting within his grave-mound; to this we shall return later. In Gísla Saga we are told that ‘hel-shoes’ are bound ‘on to men that they may walk to Valhöll’ (XIV); while in Egils Saga there are the puzzling words of Þorgerðr, who implies that she intends to starve herself to death by the words ‘I will have nothing, till I sup with Freyja’

(LXXVIII).¹ In Grímnismál (14), indeed, we are told that Freyja shares with Othin the power to ‘choose’ the slain, and that they share with her her all, Folkvangr. Neckel² argues that this is merely a synonym, like Valhöll, for the field of battle, but he also suggests that Freyja is the true Valkyrie, welcoming the dead with wine within the house of the gods.

It would certainly seem that we have a persistent tradition for a goddess of the dead;

since not only Hel, who will be discussed later, and Freyja, but also Gefion and Rán are connected with death. Snorri³ tells us that Gefion is attended by all those women who die unmarried; apart from this she is chiefly connected with the land, and her name appears in many place-names. Attempts have been made to identify her with Frigg,⁴ and also with Freyja, who is sometimes called Gefn.⁵ One rather slender piece of evidence which seems to agree with Snorri’s representation of her as the goddess of chastity is the fact that she is invoked by the girl in Völsaþáttr⁶ who opposes the phallic cult practised by the rest of her family. In some of the later sagas in the Hauksbók she is also identified with the virgin goddesses of the ancient world, in the stories of Paris and Brutus.⁷ This is certainly an argument against identifying her with either Frigg or Freyja, who were not exactly renowned for their chastity. Moreover the use of her name in place-names suggests that at one time she had a local cult of her own.

The third goddess to be connected with the dead is Rán, the wife of Ægir, the god of the sea. Eyrbyggja Saga (LIV) tells us that if drowned

1 Cf. Danish charm recorded by Grimm from Jutland (Teutonic Mythology, trans. Stallybrass, IV, Appendix, p. 1867):

A ligger mä paa mi hyver Icy Saa souer a paa vor frou Frey.

2 Neckel, Walhall, pp. 17 and 87 f. (Dortmund, 1913).

3 Gylfaginning, XXXV.

4 F. Jónsson, Lexicon Poeticum (1913-6).

5 Miillenhof Deut. Altertumskunde, II, p. 362.

6 See p. 157 below.

7 Hauksbók: Trojonararsaga, VII, p. 199; Breta Sögur, VII, p. 241.

men attended their own funerals it was looked on as a sign that Rán had received them well. We obtain little information about Rán from other sources. The most detailed allusion to her reception of the drowned comes from the late Fridþjófs Saga (VI) where, when the hero and his companions seem doomed to perish in a storm, lie divides all the gold he has between them, saying that it will be better if they have some gold to show when they come to the hail of Rán, The verse that follows contains the same sentiment:

So shall the guests be seen

gold-adorned, if we need lodging such as befits brave warriors

within the halls of Ran. (Altnord. Saga-Bib. p. 25).

A variant of the shorter version from Landbókasafn (used by Ásmundarson in his edition) has another verse on the same theme:

Now has the sea destroyed the lives of our comrades, who should have lived; but Rán, that ill-bred woman, offers brave warriors seats and benches.¹

In the Sonatorrek (7) Egil seems to be using Rán for nothing more than a mere personification of the destroying sea. What picture lies behind the widespread use of her name by the skaldic poets it is hard to say, but at least in the Edda it would seem that no distinction can be made between the halls of Rán and the assembly of the gods in Ásgarðr under the leadership of Othin. In Grímnismál XLV Othin declares that

All the Æsir shall enter in To the benches of Ægir

To drink with Ægir.

Hymiskviða ends with a promise that the Holy Ones shall drink together in Ægir’s halls, while in Lokasenna² it is in the halls of Ægir, again, that the famous ‘flyting’ takes place, although it is noticeable

1 Although the saga as we have it is late, the verses are likely to be older than 1300, and F. Jónsson is inclined to accept the whole as one of the earliest of the Fornaldar Sögur, although it has undergone much editing (Litt. Hist. II, p. 812).

2 E.g. vv. 3, 4, 10, 14, 16.

that neither Ægir nor Rán take any part in the discussion. Whatever early cults may have been connected with the name of Rán, it certainly seems in these poems as if personification of the sea, at once destroyer and welcomer of the seaman, which has been visualised as a woman by poets of all time; has merged with the idea of a home of the gods to which the dead may come and in which certain supernatural women receive them.

The distinction which must be drawn between the ‘house of the gods' and the ‘hall of the slain’ in the literature dealing with Valhöll has already been pointed out by Chadwick in The Cult of Othin, and by Neckel in Walhall. The former suggests that there has been confusion between Valhöll and Ásgarðr, the court of the Æsir. Neckel emphasises the heavenly house of Othin, which he believes to be a conception originally separate from that of Valhöll. Both have noticed, too, the distinction between two different kinds of Valkyries; Chadwick emphasises the implications of the Anglo-Saxon word walcyrge, that of a creature of the werwolf class rather than of the heavens, while Neckel argues that the idea of a Valkyries possessing werwolf characteristics is found in certain Norse passages where the word is used also. The conception of the Valkyries has already been discussed in some detail, and will be treated further in chapter v, where the subject of the dísir will be considered. The chief difficulty seems to be that the idea of the Valkyries as the servants of Othin, welcoming the souls of the slain into his halls, does not seem to fit in easily either with the conception of the fierce creature delighting in blood and slaughter, or with that of the supernatural guardian who attaches herself to certain warriors. But a great deal obviously depends on our knowledge of Othin himself. As the ruler of the heavenly halls, dwelling in the midst of the gods, it is hard to reconcile him with his Valkyrie attendants; to a god of the dead in earlier belief, however, to whom the bodies of the slain were offered, the bloodthirsty women may well have formed a fitting following.

These two different conceptions of Valhöll discernible in the literature are reminiscent of the two contradictory conceptions of the life after death, suggested by a study of both archaeological and literary evidence: the departure to the home of the gods, and the sojourn within the howe. Valhöll as the realm of the gods is in keeping with the ideas associated with cremation, human sacrifice and to Valhöll, according to the

account used by Snorri in the Ynglinga Saga, that the Swedish worshippers of Othin believed they would journey when their bodies were burned on the pyre, together with all possessions burned with them or buried in the earth. Moreover the idea of the Valkyries in the role of the bearers of the dead to Othin is suggested by the language of Þjóðólfr's poem, although the sense is obscure.¹ Whether the other conception, with its emphasis on life within the howe, should be associated with the god Freyr, who according to Snorri was the first in Sweden to be laid in howe without burning, is a question which will be considered later.