The Viking Afterlife

The Viking afterlife is more complex than “warriors go to Valhalla,” even when scholars focus on that aspect of Norse mythology. According to surviving sources, the afterlife has several places Vikings go when they die, including Valhalla, Sessrumnir, Hel, the bottom of the ocean and some earthly places on Midgard itself. Additionally, slaves, who were likely not considered Vikings at the time of their enslavement, are given to the care of Thor, according to “a single line in the Eddic Poem Harbard’s Song” (Price, p. 264).

Valhalla and Odin

Valhalla gets the most attention in the sources and in the movies. The poem Grímnismál describes it gleaming in the distance: spear shafts for rafters, golden shields for roof tiles, a wolf hanging west of the door and an eagle hovering above.

Inside, mail shirts cover the benches instead of furs. The goat Heidrun fills a vat with mead every day. The stag Eikthyrnir stands on the roof, and from his antlers drip the waters that feed the world’s rivers. Every day the boar Saehrimnir is cooked and eaten, and by evening he is whole again. The warriors are the same: they spend their days fighting and their nights feasting, and the fallen rise again. When Ragnarok comes, Grimnismal says, 800 warriors will march out through each of Valhalla’s 540 doors to fight beside Odin: 432,000 in all.

Odin splits the forces of the dead with Freya getting half. Important to note is that Freya chooses who goes to Sessrumnir with her and the rest stay with Odin.

Sessrumnir and Freya

One of Freya’s names is Valfreyja, ‘Freya of the Slain.’ Her hall is Sessrumnir, ‘Seat-Room,’ which stands in Folkvangr, ‘Field of the Host’; Snorri calls it ‘large and beautiful.’ Folkvangr appears only once in the Poetic Edda, in a single stanza of Grimnismal, and Jackson Crawford cautions against building too much on it. The stanza says Freya chooses half the slain each day, but it’s unclear whether Folkvangr is a separate afterlife or part of Valhalla itself. In the sources Odin’s wife is Frigg, not Freya, though some scholars suspect the two goddesses may once have been one. As Crawford puts it, we know very little, and it’s important to see how much is being built on how little.

Hel and Hel

Hel is both a place and the goddess who rules it. According to Snorri, she is half blue-black and half flesh-colored, and grim and gloomy of face. She is one of Loki’s children, sent below by the gods to keep the dead.

Hel’s halls are high and many, and they have little in common with the Christian Hell. Hel is grim, but it is not chiefly a place of torment. Snorri does say the wicked pass through it to a darker Niflhel, and Voluspa shows oath-breakers and murderers suffering on the Shore of Corpses. If Valhalla and Folkvangr took the chosen warriors, most ordinary people probably went to Hel. Even the god Baldr went there after his death, murdered through Loki‘s scheming. The Valkyrie Brynhildr rides to Hel in one Eddic poem, and the warrior-poet Egill Skallagrimsson, a devoted follower of Odin, ends his great lament Sonatorrek calmly awaiting Hel.

The Sea and Ran

The sea goddess Rán catches drowned sailors in her net and takes them to her hall beneath the waves. At Ragnarök, the dead will sail too: the ship Naglfar, built from the untrimmed fingernails of the dead, will break loose. Snorri says the giant Hrym steers it; Völuspá puts Loki at the helm of a ship carrying the host of the dead. (So trim your nails, or you’re adding to the enemy’s fleet.)

Midgard Homes of the Dead

Some of the dead reside in Earth’s own mountains or high places. Called “Holy Mountains” or “Helgafell,” these places are usually linked to prominent local clans. Inside, the dead are warm, feast, and drink heartily.

The Norse afterlife was varied, and it had little to do with reward and punishment. Where you went depended more on how you died, and whom you served, than on how good you had been. It’s a reminder of how different the Norse view of the world was from our own, and how much of it still waits to be understood.