Also called Valkyrjur, Choosers of the Slain, Odin's maidens, Shield-maidens.
The tale
The valkyries rode over battlefields at Odin's command, choosing who would fall and bearing the bravest to Valhalla, where they served them mead. Some, like Brynhild, appear in the heroic poems as mortal princesses and shield-maidens who defied even Odin. In Njáls saga, a man in Caithness looks through a window on Good Friday and sees women weaving on a loom where men's heads are the weights and swords the shuttle, singing of the Battle of Clontarf. When the web is finished they tear it apart and ride away on their horses, some to the north and some to the south.
When they are met
- before a hard challenge
- at remembrance of those lost in war
- Winter Nights
Staying on their good side
- mead or ale poured in memory of the brave
- stories of courage told aloud
- keeping your word
Honouring them, or keeping safe
- Raise a cup to those who died defending others and name them aloud.
- Read the Darraðarljóð, the valkyries' weaving song from Njáls saga.
- Before something frightening, stand straight, breathe and ask for courage.
- Keep a feather as a token of choices made bravely.
What their tales teach
- courage
- facing fate honourably
- remembering the fallen
- making hard choices
Symbols
- shining armour and spears
- horses riding through the sky
- swan feathers
- a loom of weapons
- the mead horn
From Old Norse poetry and sagas; the Wagnerian winged-helmet image is 19th-century.
More Norse folklore
- Huldra The hidden woman of the forest
- Nisse The little old man of the farm
- Draugr The restless dead of the sagas
- Trolls The old dwellers in mountain and stone
- Fossegrim The fiddler beneath the waterfall
- Nøkken The fiddler in the still water
- Mara The spirit who rides sleepers
- Myling The spirit of the unburied child