Valhalla is Odin's hall of the slain, standing inside Asgard, where half of the honored dead feast by night and train for Ragnarok by day.
At a glance
- Old Norse
- Valhöll ("hall of the slain")
- Meaning
- The hall where Odin's chosen dead are gathered
- Type
- A hall within Asgard, not one of the nine realms itself
- Lord
- Odin
- Inhabitants
- The einherjar, half of those slain honorably in battle
- Structure
- Roofed with shields, rafters of spears
- Contrasts with
- Freyja's hall Folkvangr and Hel's realm Helheim
- Sources
- Poetic Edda, Prose Edda
Valhalla is Odin's hall of the slain, a single great structure standing inside Asgard rather than a realm of its own. Half of those who die honorably in battle are carried there to feast each night and fight each day, training for the war that will end the world.
A hall built from war
The poem Grimnismal describes Valhalla in vivid, almost architectural detail: its roof is shingled with golden shields, its rafters are spears, and a wolf hangs before its western doors with an eagle hovering above. Every surface of the hall announces what it is for. This is not a place of rest so much as a barracks disguised as a palace, built entirely around the war still to come.
The einherjar
The warriors gathered in Valhalla are called the einherjar, and their days follow one unbroken pattern. Each morning they arm themselves and fight one another in the courtyard, and each one who falls rises again by evening, wounds healed, to walk back inside. There they feast on the boar Saehrimnir, cooked fresh every night yet never running low, and drink mead drawn from the udder of the goat Heidrun, who grazes on the hall's roof.
Not one of the nine realms
Because Valhalla is so often pictured on its own, it is easy to mistake it for a world in its own right. It is not. Valhalla is a hall within Asgard, built by and for Odin, standing alongside Asgard's other halls rather than beside the nine realms as a tenth.
Valhalla among the halls of the dead
Norse myth scatters its honored and ordinary dead across more than one hall, and each has a different ruler and a different claim on the fallen.
| Hall | Ruler | Who goes there |
|---|---|---|
| Valhalla | Odin | Half of those slain honorably in battle |
| Folkvangr | Freyja | The other half of the battle-slain, by Freyja's first choice |
| Helheim | Hel | Those who die of sickness or old age |