Sublime

Odin’s hall, and Freyja’s, hold “all men who have fallen in battle since the beginning”, but they will be too few “when the wolf comes”, as Fenrir inevitably will at the Ragnarök. Kings and their retinues are therefore especially welcome, with the Valkyries serving wine for such a royal entrance.

In revenge for Ymir’s death, the crime at the core of the Viking world, the giants’ hatred of the Aesir will extend to the Ragnarök itself when their armies of frost and fire will invade the gods’ home. There have been many attempts to understand what the giants ‘mean’. Unlike the gods, they do not seem to have impinged on the human world of

It is clear that in Valhöll are all the trappings of hall life in Midgard, but writ large. Servants gather kindling for the fires; there are pigs to be fed; horses graze outside; and hunting dogs are at the ready. The einherjar—the immortal warrior dead—drink, play board games, and fight. If they are killed, they rise again each evening in time for

The consorts of such lords, poetically exemplified by the figure of Wealþeow in Beowulf and by the Wife’s Lament of the Exeter Book, played critical roles in the management of the comitatus, as anthropologist Michael Enright has argued.24 A noble wife managed the elaborate drinking rituals through which the comites were bound into their lord’s

He is the Doomsman of the Valar; but he pronounces his dooms and his judgements only at the bidding of Manwë. Vairë the Weaver is his spouse, who weaves all things that have ever been in Time into her storied webs, and the halls of Mandos that ever widen as the ages pass are clothed with them.

The Greek poet Hesiod names the three sisters as Alecto — “unceasing in anger,” the punisher of moral crimes; Megaera — “jealous one,” the punisher of infidelity, oath-breaking, and theft; and Tisiphone — “avenger of murder.”