Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Browse By

Legendary: known from narrative tradition, not the historical record

This page groups figures by whether scholars consider them to have actually existed. Wikipedia notes that "the historicity of a claim about the past is its factual status." Browsing by historicity lets a visitor separate a documented historical person from one known only through legend.

Facts
Overview
What Defines This Grouping
In 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
Directory
Category
Figures 1
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.

Legendary: known from narrative tradition, not the historical record
Filter Results3 entries
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
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.