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Everyone knows about Odin's halls in the sky called Valhalla. It is the belief of the Norse people around the times of the Vikings. In my opinion, Odin may be their perception of God, and that the angels are usually female and are called Valkyries.

So, let's talk Valhalla.

Why? We're not talking about undead and extremely dark stuff here. Valhalla is the Hall of Heroes to which the souls of fallen warriors go, the Norse warriors equivalent of Heaven. Valhalla is said to be in the sky, and this is where we discuss such topics.

It's easy to find out information about Valhalla as well.

Valhalla

I don't really know a great deal about it, so I am not sure about those who didn't die bravely or heroically. That's something I think we'll have to look up.

Let's bug him then.

I'll send Hod a poke; he will dive into this with both feet, since his thesis (for his history and philosophy degree) was on this very sort of topic, pointed toward the death and resurrection myth structure of Baldr and Hodur's tale. (He took two degrees, the wacky little wonk... and what he does for a living bears NO resemblance to what he wags on about ALL the time. Pretty keen in a weird way...)

He's been out of the country for the last little while so none of us have heard anything except short, uninformative e-mails. smile But he's due back this coming weekend.

Still, Valhalla is "heaven" for those who fought and died with valour.


Here's Wikipedia's analogy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valhalla

It says that it is the HOME of those who died with great honour in battle. Therefore it is the "heaven" for heroes. Heaven or the Heavens is/are the place(s) where the righteous go when they die. If you are evil, then of course you do not go to any form of Heaven. Valhalla can be compared to the Christian Heaven, because it's the Norse version, and there are different areas of it.

Gods archangels are warrior angels, and the valkyries, though female, serve the much the same purpose, only in Norse mythology. They have their differences, agreed, but they are the Norse "equivalent" of angels.
There is a difference between saying they are angels and calling them that country/religion's equivalent of.

smile Mr Hod got stuck abroad (hey that rhymes!) longer than he expected, but I'm back now. For all the computers I worked with while I was there, I had surprisingly little time to do anything personal--I apologize for being away so long. Especially when Ms. Jasta told me this chat was going on. smile

I'll need to read back a bit and see what the discussion is all about, but yeah, I definitely want in on this topic. *grins*

OK I'm back now. Again. And awake. Sort of.

DM, I take your point that Valkyries have *certain* qualities in common with angels--but realistically speaking, the Norse would not have seen it that way--they didn't have the viewpoint to make the comparison. Valkyrie are warrior maidens whose ONLY function is to choose between gallant dead and non-gallant dead, and to bring the gallant ones to Valhalla (which is not where all the good dead go, like the Christian heaven). The ONLY reason gallant dead go to Valhalla is to be available during Ragnarok to fight to protect the gods and their reign. So while it's their home until then, it's really a place of indentured servitude, unlike Christian heaven.

I completely agree there are cognates, but it all has to be looked at from the Norse viewpoint--and their viewpoint is that the universe is not infinite. Most of the gods will actually die in Ragnarok--and curiously enough, only the ones who got messed over earlier--Baldr, Hodur, Nenna and Forseti--will be around in the end to clean up and bring in the golden era until the end of time. Hodur is the cosmic innocent, Baldr the wounded king and sacrifice; Nenna is the compassionate giving spirit (cognate sort of to the Sophia or Holy Spirit) and Forseti, the son of Baldr and Nenna, is the god of Justice.

The closest thing to the Christian heaven, in all truth, is probably not really there. Nifelheim is where ALL the non-gallant dead go, and there is no eternal rest or eternal torment, so there's no heaven or hell--there is just the Land of the Dead, the Land of the Living, and the Realms of the Gods. Not until Ragnarok will there be a true heaven--and that will be the world re-made, with one human Man and one human Woman surviving out of the cataclysm. These two will see Baldr and Hodur come forth, healed and forgiven and forgiving, to rule over the new world and bring forth new gods. Nenna and Forseti will be there too--and presumably Hel, as protector of the dead, because there's little mention of her in the Ragnarok myth structure.

The concept of Loki as Odin's blood-brother, and him being adopted by Odin, are both out of Marvel comics--which should not be taken as a definitive source. smile And yes, there are many places where the dead are divided up--but all those realms are within Nifelheim.

You also have to be careful of sources that date from the Christian interactions in Norway (Snorri Sturluson, for instance) because those are strongly coloured by the word of the missionaries. It is about that time (around 800 AD/CE) that Hod comes to be seen as a murderer, for instance, because the early Christian missionaries demonized him as a brother-killer, and said he was Cain in another guise. Nothing could be further from the truth. One of my professors made a strong case that Hod was the Judas cognate--the person who assisted the resurrection god to fulfill his destiny--but even that is not quite right.

And Loki is a trickster, not necessarily pure evil--though here the waters get downright muddy (and I start poaching on my sister's turf, *grin*) because even Satan is not wholly evil, but is in fact a functionary of Heaven's court. It's not even a name--the being's name is Lucifer--and his TITLE was Ha-Satan, which is a very old Hebrew word (probably pre-Canaanite) for "prosecuting attorney." Like Anubis and Ma'at in the Egyptian myth structure, the Ha-Satan was supposed to stand before God and tell Him all the bad things done by a particular soul--and the good--while it was the Christ's job to say "all true, but I claim this soul" (which is of course incredibly simplifying it all, but you see what I mean, I hope).

Loki serves a similar function for the Norse. He is the one who sets everything on its head--but he becomes jealous, and that is when he sets everything in motion for the End Times.

Baldr, like many a summer god before him and since, HAD to die--because his season comes to an end. And summer always dies at the hand of Winter--and vice versa. But they will both come back, and justice will rule the universe. The Baldr and Hodur story is very complicated and full of contradictions, until you look at it from the Norse viewpoint.

I'll shut up now and let someone else have a go, but yeah, this is one of my favourite topics. smile Was a good thesis, I think.