Female figures of Norse tradition who choose among the slain and conduct them to Odin's hall. Everything recorded of them comes from material written down in Christian Iceland in the thirteenth century, generations after the belief it describes, and the sources do not agree with one another. Brynhild moves between accounts, a valkyrie in some and a king's daughter in others, without the two being reconciled. The popular image of the valkyrie owes a great deal more to nineteenth-century opera and illustration than to the Norse texts.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingIn Norse tradition the female beings who choose which of the slain are taken to Odin's hall. The surviving evidence is medieval and largely poetic, and the mythological valkyrie and the heroic legend of Brynhild are not cleanly separable in the sources. 2 Learn More
The Valkyries
This group gathers Valkyries, in Norse myth, the female figures who choose which of the slain in battle are taken to Odin's hall of Valhalla and which to Freyja's. They are among the distinctive supernatural beings of the Germanic imagination.
The browser will find the Valkyrie figure or figures the atlas classes here. The entries describe their role in the myths, drawn from the Eddas and related sources, noting the medieval and literary character of the surviving evidence.
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Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Dictionary of Northern Mythology
Rudolf Simek, translated by Angela Hall, D. S. Brewer, 1993s.v. valkyriesView the Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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