![]() ![]() Hel – A grey land under the earth in the fog-world of Niflheim ruled by the goddess Hel and where the majority of souls would go. Little mention is made of Folkvangr in Norse tales but Freyja is usually depicted as benevolent, giving, and kind and so it is thought this realm would reflect her personality. (150)įolkvangr – 'The Field of the People' which was presided over by the fertility goddess Freyja. They too could be strangled and stabbed and burned after death in the name of the god. In spite of Snorri's picture of an exclusively masculine Valhalla, there are grounds for believing that women too had the right of entry into Odin's realm if they suffered a sacrificial death. When a Viking warrior died, the soul was believed to go to Odin's hall where he – or she – would meet old friends, talk and drink, and fight in preparation for the final battle of the gods at Ragnarok. These omissions suggest to scholars that more specifics may have been altered, exaggerated, or omitted by later Christian scribes who found Norse beliefs and practices distasteful. Writers like Sturluson preserved the Norse beliefs but omitted some details which survive from fragments of pre-Christian runic works, through physical evidence from graves, or are alluded to in other works from the Christian era. Knowledge no longer depended on the comprehension and memory of individuals, and changeability was no longer, as in oral culture, a natural consequence of communication. This was revolutionary, as it made it possible to preserve and transmit knowledge from remote parts and times. The most important tool of the church was the book. Scholar Preben Meulengracht Sørensen writes: ![]() ![]() Prior to Christianity, Norse religion was transmitted orally but, afterwards, Norse Christians such as the Icelandic mythographer Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241 CE) wrote the changeable sagas and beliefs down in a structured way. Even so, what precisely they would have expected is unclear.Ī difficulty in understanding Norse beliefs in the modern-day, as noted, is that Viking Age Scandinavians left us no written record (with the exception of inscriptions in runes, most importantly on runestones) until their interaction with and eventual spiritual conquest by Christianity (c. A Viking – or any Scandinavian warrior – may have expected to wake up in Valhalla after death but the farmer or weaver who had never picked up a sword or axe would not. There were, however, a number of possible destinations for Scandinavian souls in the afterlife and boats, because they were so costly, seem to have been rarely buried or burned. These descriptions come from works preserving Norse mythology and other types of literature (as well as physical evidence) which show that burying boats and ships as biers, or setting them on fire as pyres, did happen and such images have been popularized in media (most recently through TV series such as Vikings and The Last Kingdom). 790-1100 CE) as that of the Viking funeral in which a boat is decked out as a pyre with the corpse surrounded by treasures, and either buried or set on fire. This image is as deeply associated with Norse beliefs from around the Viking Age (c. The best-known vision of the Norse afterlife is that of Valhalla, the hall of the heroes where warriors chosen by the Valkyries feast with the god Odin, tell stories from their lives, and fight each other in preparation for the final battle of Ragnarök, the end of the world and death of the gods. ![]()
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