The modern image of the valkyries owes much to the work of Richard Wagner and to Romantic iconography: warrior maidens in winged helmets riding among the clouds. The Norse sources present more complex and more disturbing figures. The valkyries are powers of fate in battle; they choose who must die, serve the fallen heroes and, in one of the most striking texts of northern literature, weave the web of war on a loom made of bodies.
The name
Valkyrja is made up of valr, «those slain in battle», and a form of the verb kjósa, «to choose». The valkyrie is therefore «she who chooses the slain». Old English had a corresponding word, wælcyrge, used in glossaries to translate the names of the Furies or other death figures of the classical world. The term reveals the original character of these figures: not simple warriors, but agents of fate.
The host of the Völuspá
In the Völuspá the seeress sees the valkyries coming from afar, ready to ride to the people of the gods. She lists their names: Skuld with her shield, Skögul, Gunnr, Hildr, Göndul and Geirskögul. Many of these names are words meaning battle: Gunnr and Hildr both mean «battle», Geirskögul something like «spear battle». That one of the valkyries bears the name of Skuld, the youngest of the Norns, shows how close the two kinds of figure are.
The valkyries and Valhöll
In the Prose Edda Snorri explains that Odin sends the valkyries to every battle: they choose who must die and award victory. The chosen heroes are carried to Valhöll, Odin's hall, where they prepare for the last battle of Ragnarök. The valkyries serve them mead and ale there.
The Hákonarmál
The skaldic poem Hákonarmál, composed on the death of the Norwegian king Hákon the Good, stages two valkyries, Göndul and Skögul, sent by Odin to choose from among the kings the one who must come to him. The dying king reproaches them for denying him victory. Skögul replies that it was they who made him hold the field and put his enemies to flight. Then they ride to the dwellings of the gods to announce Hákon's coming.
The terrible loom of the Darraðarljóð
The most powerful text on the valkyries is a poem embedded in Njáls saga, the Darraðarljóð, «The Song of Dörruðr». The saga places it on the day of the battle of Clontarf in Ireland, fought on Good Friday 1014. That morning, in Caithness in the north of Scotland, a man named Dörruðr sees twelve riders heading for a stone hut. He looks through a crack and sees women at work on a loom.
The description is chilling:
| Part of the loom | Material |
|---|---|
| warp weights | men's heads |
| warp and weft | human entrails |
| beater | a sword |
| shuttle | an arrow |
As they weave, the women sing. Their song says they are weaving the web of war, that they will decide who will win and who will fall, that one king will find death and another victory. At the end they tear the cloth apart: six of them ride north, six south.
The poem takes up an image deeply rooted in Germanic tradition: fate as fabric. The Norns twist the threads at Helgi's birth, the valkyries weave the battle. In both cases the weaving women are mistresses of destiny.
Valkyries and swan maidens
In Eddic poetry some valkyries have different features. In the lay of Völundr, three maidens spinning flax on a lakeshore have their swan garments beside them: they are valkyries who live for some years with three brothers and then fly away. Other valkyries, like Sigrún in the Helgi poems, fall in love with a hero and protect him in battle.
The most famous valkyrie is Brynhildr, or Sigrdrífa in the poem of that name: punished by Odin for giving victory to the wrong king, she is put to sleep behind a wall of fire until Sigurðr wakes her.
What archaeology says
From the Viking Age come small silver pendants depicting women in long robes holding drinking horns, sometimes facing a horseman. Many scholars interpret them as valkyries welcoming the fallen warrior by offering him drink, in keeping with the description of Valhöll. The identification is plausible, but not certain.
A symbolic reading
The valkyries show an aspect of the sacred that modern culture finds hard to look at: the force that decides the end. They are neither cruel nor kind in a human sense, but agents of a greater order. The loom of the Darraðarljóð reminds us that every event is woven of threads we do not see, and that the choices of a moment take their place in a vast web.
In short
- Valkyrja means «she who chooses the slain» and denotes powers of fate in battle.
- The Völuspá lists valkyries whose names mean battle, among them Skuld, Gunnr and Hildr.
- In the Hákonarmál, Göndul and Skögul choose King Hákon and lead him to Odin.
- The Darraðarljóð describes twelve valkyries weaving war on a loom of heads and entrails.
- Some Eddic valkyries appear as swan maidens or as lovers who protect heroes.
