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graves — the world(s) of the dead — surrounded living people. The dead, insofar as they could influence the lives of the living, constituted the sort of other beings whom we take in this work to be characteristic of a religious worldview. Worlds of the dead can be related both to various mythological death realms and to places where the dead actually rested. The extent to which there was a relation between ideas of death realms and resting places of the dead is disputed, but the possibility is not unlikely. from a spatial point of view, the living in ancient scandinavia were always surrounded by the dead, in the form of more or less visible graves. in well-preserved contexts, it is clear that graves could be placed either close to settlements (for example, liedgren 1992: 96–120) or at the borders of settlements, surrounding farms, and villages (for example, fallgren 2006: 45–86). as is clear from (è33), not all dead received a formal grave, and those who were buried in formal graves must have been
‘important dead’; above all they were presumably regarded as ancestors and other important members of the society. in the basically oral culture of ancient scandinavia, it seems likely that grave mounds of the ancestors could have been used as signs of rights to inherited land, that is, óðal (è19). Even in some medieval provincial laws, grave mounds could be used in conflicts regarding claims of land (Zachrisson 1994).
John Lindow, Professor Emeritus of scandinavian, University of California, Berkeley Anders Andrén, senior Professor of archaeology, stockholm University The Pre-Christian Religions of the North: History and Structures, Volume ii, ed. by Jens Peter schjødt, John lindow, and anders andrén, PCRN-HS 2 (Turn hout: Brepols, 2020) pp. 897–926
BREPols
PUBlisHERs
10.1484/M.PCRN-EB.5.116961
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given the commemorative function of most rune stones, the dead are a constant concern in that discursive system. However, the inscriptions in the older fuþark seem to be concerned not with any world(s) of the dead but rather with keeping the dead from re-entering the human world as revenants and in preserving the grave monuments intact; to the latter belong the formulas against
‘breaking’ grave monuments marked with runes, some of which are discussed in (è21). if the term kumbl ‘monument’ refers to the grave in which a certain Þormundr lies (assuming that is what the short inscription is about), then the imperative on the Nørre særå rune stone (fyn, Denmark, c. 900, DR 211, Samnordisk runtextdatabas), which is apparently addressed to him, ‘njót kumbls’ (use or enjoy the monument), might refer to a physical world in which Þormundr now dwells. Beyond the runic inscriptions, textual evidence must be sought in manuscript writing. With the exception of the so-called ‘eddic praise poems’ Eiríksmál and Hákonarmál, treated below, a world of the dead is not portrayed in skaldic poems, although it must be inferred in many of the references to Hel (place or person) used in these. However, eddic poetry presents several pictures of the realms of the dead, and heroes enter grave mounds in sagas of icelanders and fornaldarsögur. Christian vision literature, of course, shows visits to the world of the dead, and in some cases there may be crossing of the Christian conceptions embodied in vision literature and the older myth and religion of the North.
above all, graves reflect traces of ritual practices concerning death and burial (è33). sometimes, however, there may be allusions to ideas about the worlds of the dead in certain elements of the graves. Especially the location of the graves, the external grave markers, the internal layout, and the objects accompanying the dead could give some indications of ideas about different forms of existence after death.
Myth
hel/Hel
Early poetry refers to a world of the dead with the term hel.1 Etyma from the other germanic languages, such as gothic halja and old English hell, refer to the Christian Hell. The West germanic languages attest a clearly related verb, 1 see abram (2006) for an excellent survey of the two meanings of this term (see below) in the earliest poetry.
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helan (conceal) (de Vries 1962a: 220–21), suggesting that the conception of this realm of the dead is of a place hidden away from the view of the living and that the conception is older than Christianity.2 Perhaps curiously, the word is rare in skaldic poetry. sigvatr uses it in his Erfidrápa Óláfs helga ( c. 1040
according to conventional wisdom).
- Tolf frák tekna elfar
tálaust viðu bála;
olli Ǫ́leifr falli
eirsama konungr þeira.
svía tyggja leitk seggi
sóknstríðs (firum) ríða
(bǫl vas brátt) til Heljar
(búit mest) sigars hesti.
(i heard without equivocation that twelve trees of the pyres of the river [golD > MEN] were captured; Óláfr, the merciful king, caused their death. i saw the men of the battle-hard king of the swedes [= Óláfr sœnski] ride the horse of sigarr
While it is not wholly inconceivable that sigvatr draws on an existing poetic trope for killing people — that is, to dispatch them to the world of the dead
— it is also likely that he has the Christian Hell in mind here (abram 2006: 3), since the slain were pagans who opposed Óláfr’s imposition of Christianity.
The same uncertainty surrounds a stanza by Þjóðolfr Árnorsson ( lausavísa 9)3
since the three dead are members of the army of the swedish king steinkell and may thus have been viewed as pagans by the Norwegians, although perhaps here the trope seems more likely. The relevant helmingr runs as follows.
Ǫld es, sús jarli skyldi
ógnteitum lið veita
— sterkr olli því stillir —
steinkels gefin helju.
(steinkell’s men have been handed over to death’s realm, those who should have given support to the battle-joyous jarl; the mighty ruler [Haraldr] caused that.) (p. 173)
2 The related old Norse-icelandic verb hylja is found in burial contexts; see Uecker 1966: 17–19.
3 His lv 25 in finnur Jónsson’s edition (1912–15), but renumbered by Diana Whaley in Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages.
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later Christian poetry uses hel alongside helvíti (a loan from old English).
in the syncretistic discourse of Sólarljóð, the use of hel makes some sense; the term features in a sequence of stanzas describing the arrival of the soul in Hell.
‘Heljar reip’ (ropes of hel; that is, the bonds of Hell) encircle the soul (st. 37);
‘heljar meyjar’ (maidens of hel) bring torment (st. 38); the soul sees the sun but hears the groaning of ‘heljar grind’ (the gate of hel) (st. 39). Even the almost baroque poet of Lílja can call the abodes of Hell ‘heljar byggðir’ (st. 61).
if skaldic poetry shows the word hel as a world of the dead to be of little importance, the opposite is true of eddic poetry and related mythic and heroic materials. in eddic poetry,4 a person who has died goes to hel (the verbs are fara (travel) and ganga (go on foot)); killing someone in battle means smiting the person to hel (the verbs are lemja (batter) and drepa (strike)),5 and one can send ( hafa) or bring ( koma with object) someone there. Compounds built upon these ideas are helfǫr (journey to hel), helfúss (eager for hel), and helreið (ride to hel). in all of these expressions, hel can be understood as a realm of the dead. Grímnismál st. 31, however, suggests a different conception.
Þriár rœtr
standa á þriá vega
undan asci yggdrasils;
Hel býr under einni,
annarri hrímþursar,
þriðio mennzcir menn.
(Three roots there grow in three directions under yggdrasil’s ash; Hel lives under one, under the second, the frost-giants, under the third, human kind.) (p. 53) given the incontrovertible semantics of the verb búa (live, dwell) and the parallelism between hel and the living beings who live under the other two roots, hel must be a living being in the conception of this poem. following convention, we will refer to her as ‘Hel’ (and the world of the dead as hel). We have the gender from snorri, but the feminine grammatical gender and the presence of other female figures associated with death, such as the dísir, as well as the classical parallels, would lead observers in that direction anyway.
4 for a table cataloguing the attestations of hel in Eddic poetry, see abram (2006: 7).
5 To these expressions may be compared Widukind of Corvey’s statement that the franks killed in battle against the saxons went to infernus (simek 2006b: 90–91), as well as the axe called Hel that King Magnús inn góði carried in battle against the Wends ( Magnúsdrápa st.
10), according to some versions of Óláfs saga helga inherited from his father, Óláfr Haraldsson the saint.
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in Gylfaginning (p. 27), snorri has Hár number Hel among the children of loki and angrboða, sired in Jǫtunheimar; the others were the Miðgarðsormr (or Jǫrmungandr) and the wolf fenrir. as Chris abram (2006) has shown, the earliest skalds knew of a female personification of death and created kennings for her fitting this profile. These kennings go all the way back to Bragi Boddason inn gamli, who is traditionally reckoned the first skald. in what editors regard as stanza 9 of his Ragnarsdrápa, the poet refers to the death awaiting the warriors who fight in the eternal battle known as the Hjaðningavíg: ‘ulfs at sinna | með algífris lifru’ (to accompany the sister of the complete monster of a wolf [fenrir] [= Hel]) (p. 41).
although one might raise the argument that Bragi intended here no more than the trope of beasts of battle, the kennings ‘loka mær’ (daughter of loki) and ‘Býleists bróður mær’ (daughter of the brother of Býleistr) in stanzas 7 and 31 of Þjóðólfr of Hvín’s Ynglingatal settle the matter.6 ‘Hveðrungs mær’ (daughter of Hveðrungr or daughter of the monster) in stanza 32 also seems to be Hel, given the transparent kenning for the wolf, her brother, in Vǫluspá st. 55: ‘Hveðrungs mǫgr’ (son of Hveðrungr). Thus, there was clearly a conception of a female personification of death, a daughter of loki and sister of the wolf, among the early skalds. although they do not call her by name (and neither hel nor Hel occurs in the kenning system of the older poets),7 there is no reason to imagine that snorri has got the family relationship right while getting the name wrong. in short, Hel as a female personification of death existed in certain social circles in Viking age Norway.
The final stanza of Egill’s Sonatorrek seems to invoke both Hel and hel.
Nú erum torvelt:
Tveggja bága
njǫrva nipt
á nesi stendr;
skalk þó glaðr
með góðan vilja
ok óhryggr
heljar bíða.
(Now my course is tough: Death, close sister of odin’s enemy stands on the ness: with resolution and without remorse i shall gladly await my own.) (p. 156)8
6 We number ourselves among the majority who accept the traditional dating of Ynglingatal to the pre-Christian period.
7 in his Magnúsdrápa, a poem praising the military exploits of Magnús berfœttr, the little-known twelfth-century poet Bjǫrn krepphendi called fire ‘hel kastar’ ( hel of the woodpile) (st. 1); here, hel probably means ‘death’. No other such kennings are known.
8 The translation is not literal (and the verse is complex). in the first half-stanza, the edi-
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although the kenning in the first helmingr is difficult, the base nipt (sister) in this context can hardly anchor a kenning for anyone or anything other than Hel. The second helmingr is clear; Egill proposes to await death without com-plaint. in his lausavísa 7, Egill again seems to play on both conceptions (assuming that the verse is genuine).
svá hefk leystsk ór lista
láðvarðaðar garði,
né fágak dul drjúgan,
dáðmildr ok gunnhildar,
at þrifreynis þjónar
þrír nakkvarir Hlakkar
til hásalar Heljar
helgengnir fǫr dvelja.
(great in my deeds, i slipped away from the realm of the lord of Norway and gunnhild — i do not boast overly — by sending three servants of the tree of the valkyrie to the otherworld, to stay in Hel’s high hall.) (p. 84) according to the saga text, Egill uttered this verse to arinbjǫrn after he had escaped from the pursuit of Eiríkr blóðøx. The adjective helgengnir especially suggests motion towards the place, but ‘high halls of Hel’ might refer either to the person or to the place.
in Egill’s stanza in Sonatorrek, he sees Hel standing on the headland. Bragi says that the warriors in the Hjaðningavíg should travel with ( sinna með) Hel, and perhaps we should understand Egill’s stanza in this way: Hel will accompany him.9 The operating concept then seems to be that the personification of death functions as a kind of psychopomp. surely she brings the deceased to hel, the realm of the dead suggested by expressions like fara í hel (travel to hel) and the like enumerated above. No skaldic poet says or hints at what the journey is like, nor do the skalds express any notion of what it might be like to be in hel.
one must turn to eddic poetry for such information. We have one reference to tor and translator read ‘close sister of the enemy of Tveggi’ (i.e., of Óðinn). ‘Enemy of Óðinn’
would be the Miðgarðsormr, whose sister is Hel; the word, however, is not attested here, and the translator has added ‘Death’. in the second half-stanza, Egill says that he will gladly await Hel or hel; the editor and translator prefer the latter (although the translator omits the word) because of the lines in Hávamál st. 15 that state how every man should gladly await his bani (death).
9 This concept may also be found in a clause in Ynglingatal st. 22: ‘ok hallvarps hlífi-Nauma þjóðkonung á Þótni tók’ (and the protecting Nauma
took the mighty king in Toten) (p. 48).
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a journey to niflhel (dark hel).10 according to Baldrs draumar st. 2, Óðinn rode his horse sleipnnir down to niflhel, which is consistent with graves being located under the earth or covered by the earth of a mound. Vǫluspá st. 43 agrees with the subterranean location of hel: as Ragnarǫk progresses, gullinkambi’s crows awaken Heriafǫðr’s (Óðinn’s) men (the einherjar) for the last battle, and this is echoed by another rooster’s crowing: ‘fyr iorð neðan, | sótrauðr hani, | at sǫlum Heliar’ (a sooty-red cock in the halls of Hel (p. 9)).
Baldrs draumar likewise states that there are halls there. according to this poem, the journey down to the world of the dead is dangerous and difficult. in stanzas 2 and 3, Óðinn is beset by a bloody hell-hound, a whelp that came out of hel (‘ór heliu kom’) and howls at him. The earth resounds as he rides, and he arrives to the east of the door — thus suggesting a journey downward and westward, like that of the setting sun (cf. andrén 2012a, 2014). Upon arrival, Óðinn must awaken a dead seeress through the use of magic charms applied specifically to the dead ( valgaldr) (st.4). This seeress describes the weather in the world of the dead (or on the surface of the grave) (st. 5): ‘var ec snivin snióvi | oc slegin regni | oc drifin dǫggo’ (i was snowed upon, i was rained upon, dew fell on me (p. 235)). But although the seeress describes and emerges or speaks from a grave (‘vǫlu leiði’, st. 4), Óðinn has arrived at a hall (st. 3):
‘hann kom at hávo | Heliar ranni’ (he approached the high hall of Hel).11 This hall is decked for a feast, as the hall of a chieftain on earth might be. Challenged by the seeress, Óðinn (falsely) identifies himself and poses his first question, to which the seeress replies.
- Vegtamr ec heiti,
sonr em ec Valtams;
segðu mér ór helio
–ec man ór heimi–
hveim ero beccir
baugom sánir,
flet fagrliga
flóð gulli?
- Hér stendr Baldri
of brugginn mioðr,
scírar veigar,
10 since we use the form hel, we prefer the form niflhel to the more commonly used Niflhel.
11 Here it is not possible to determine whether reference is made to a being (Hel) or to a place (cf. ‘heljar grindr’ in Lílja), although the preponderance of the latter meaning in eddic poetry might give it preference.
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liggr scioldr yfir,
enn ásmegir
í ofvæni.
Nauðug sagðac,
nú mun ec þegja.
(6. Way-tame is my name, i’m the son of slaughter-tame; tell me news from hell12
— i bring it from the world: for whom are the benches decked with arm-rings, is the dais so fairly strewn with gold?
- Here mead stands, brewed for Baldr, clear liquor; a shield hangs above, and the Æsir are in dread anticipation. Reluctantly i told you, now i’ll be silent.) (p. 236) snorri gives additional information about Hel and her siblings. Understanding by means of prophecies that they were to inflict harm on the æsir, Óðinn had them brought to him and attempted to neutralize them. He cast the Miðgarðsormr into the sea, and, as is retold in an elaborate story, the gods bound the wolf. Regarding Hel:
Hel kastaði hann í Niflheim ok gaf henni vald yfir níu heimum at hon skipti ǫllum vistum með þeim er til hennar váru sendir, en þat eru sóttdauðir menn ok ellidauðir. Hon á þar mikla bólstaði ok eru garðar hennar forkunnar hávir ok grindr stórar. Eljúðnir heitir salr hennar, Hungr diskr hennar, sultr knífr hennar, ganglati þrællinn, ganglǫt ambátt, fallanda forað þreskǫldr hennar er inn gengr, Kǫr sæing, Blíkjanda Bǫl ársali hennar. Hon er blá hálf en hálf með hǫrundar lit — því er hon auðkend — ok heldr gnúpleit ok grimlig.) ( Gylfginning p. 27) (Hel he threw into Niflheim and gave her authority over nine worlds, such that she has to administer board and lodging to those sent to her, and that is those who die of sickness or old age. she has a great mansion there and her walls are exceptionally high and the gates great. Her hall is called Eliudnir, her dish Hunger, her knife famine, the servant ganglati, serving-maid ganglot, her threshold where you enter stumbling-block, her bed sick-bed, her curtains gleaming-bale. she is half black and half flesh-covered — thus she is easily recognizable — and rather downcast and fierce-looking.) (p. 27)
of the names snorri mentions for objects and persons in Hel’s abode, only that of her hall, éljúðnir, is not transparent.13 it is also worth noting that snorri assigns to Hel domain over multiple worlds of the dead.
12 This translation recognizes that the place rather than the individual is likely to be behind the word hel in this stanza.
13 ganglati and ganglǫt, which faulkes does not translate, are obviously masculine and
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a woman presiding over a household (let alone nine worlds) would be anomalous in terms of the gender system. such inversion appears to be characteristic of the various conceptions of the worlds of the dead in pre-Christian Nordic religion, where the dead continue to live on in some form.
as was mentioned above, hel/ Hel is related to the verb hylja (conceal), and there may have been links between this idea and the actual construction of graves. Many graves in the iron age had a cover, such as a mound, a cairn, or a stone setting, concealing the grave from the living. in a few cases, the stone cover was filled with stones laid out in a spiral in counterclockwise direction, that is, contrary to the normal movement of the sun. This can be compared to ibn fadlan’s account that the person who lit the funeral pyre was walking backwards (Nordberg 2009; see also è32). The counterclockwise direction of the stone cover may also be paralleled by the inversion of the worlds of the dead, such as a fundamentally different language of the dead (see below).
Valhǫll
according to snorri, Hel gets only those who die of illness or old age.14
Whatever the relationship between hel and Hel, and whatever the role of Hel as psychopomp, snorri clearly needed a statement like this in order to clarify the distinction between Hel and Valhǫll, an abode of the dead presided over by Óðinn and housing the best warriors. The Grímnismál poet gives information about Valhǫll:
- Valgrind heitir,
er stendr velli á,
heilog, fyr helgom durum;
forn er sú grind,
enn þat fáir vito,
hvé hon er í lás lokin.
feminine of a compound adjective meaning ‘lazy at walking, slow-moving’. according to finnur Jónnson (1931: 117 s.v.), éljúðnir compounds the obvious él (storm, hail) with an otherwise unknown form related to úði (drizzle). Thirteenth-century skaldic poetry attests both éljúðnir and Hel’s dish (hunger). The former ‘vann sólginn Baldr’ ( Málsháttakvæði st. 9) (had swal-lowed up Baldr) (p. 1223) and the latter occurs in a verse in Sturlunga saga attributed to sigvatr sturluson. The other names are not found elsewhere and may be snorri’s embellishments.
14 This raises an interesting question regarding snorri’s recounting of the Baldr story. Did snorri contradict himself, or did he regard an accidental death, or one caused by something that is not technically a weapon, as mythically equivalent to a death from illness?
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- fimm hundrúð dura
oc um fiórum togom,
svá hygg ec at Valhǫllo vera;
átta hundruð einheria
ganga ór einom durom,
þá er þeir fara at vitni at vega.
(22. Valgrind it’s called, standing on the plain, sacred before the sacred door: ancient is that gate, but few men know how it is closed up with a lock.
- five hundred doors and forty i think there are in Valhall; eight hundred Ein herjar will pass through a single door when they march out to fight the wolf.) (p. 51) The compound name Valhǫll is transparent: hall of the slain. We see the first component repeated in the name of the gate Valgrind (gate of the slain; known as a toponym only here) and elsewhere in such compounds as Valfǫðr (father of the slain, i.e., Óðinn) and valkyrjur (choosers of the slain, i.e., the valkyries).
stanza 22 puts a gate into this world of the dead, parallel to the one snorri puts outside the domain of Hel. although the multiple doors accord poorly with any archaeological evidence, they allow for a very large number of warriors to emerge quickly from the building.
Two poems assigned by tradition to the pre-Christian period portray settings in Valhǫll. according to Fagrskinna, Queen gunnhildr, the widow of Eiríkr blóðøx, commissioned the anonymous poem we now know as Eiríksmál some time after Eiríkr’s death in stainmore, Cumbria, in 954. Nine mostly partial stanzas in eddic metre survive. initially, the speaker appears to be Óðinn, and the situation is that Eiríkr is about to arrive in Valhǫll, Óðinn having allowed him to fall so as to strengthen his army for Ragnarǫk. Óðinn awakens the einherjar and tells them to prepare for celebration, queries Bragi about what is to happen, and orders the heroes sigmundr and sinfjǫtli to greet Eiríkr, who himself speaks the last extant stanza announcing the arrival of five kings beside himself. This Valhǫll, then, contains mostly the illustrious dead (for Bragi, sigmundr, and sinfjǫtli, see è36), and it is both a chieftain’s hall getting ready for an evening of drinking and an armed camp preparing for battle.
Hákonarmál, attributed to Eyvindr finnsson skáldaspillir (usually understood as ‘plagiarist’), takes up similar subject matter for King Hákon inn góði (the good), Eiríkr’s younger half-brother, who fell mortally wounded in the battle of storð c. 961. like Eiríksmál, the poem is in eddic metre (more accurately, metres, since both ljóðaháttr and málaháttr are employed), and it too describes the king’s arrival in Valhǫll, this time preceded by valkyries who have chosen him to die. Besides Bragi, the Hákonarmál poet names Hermóðr, else-
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figure 34.1. The picture stone from ardre on gotland (sHM 11118:108199), with a possible depiction of Valhǫll in the upper panel Photo: ola Myrin, statens Historiska Museum, stockholm.
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figure 34.2. Boat grave (no. 8) at Valsgärde in Uppland. The dead warrior was equipped with objects for an afterlife in a hall such as Valhǫll. By courtesy of: Uppsala University, Viking phenomenon project.
where a son of Óðinn, as inhabitants of Valhǫll, and also mentions the drinking of beer in Valhǫll.
ideas concurrent with the literary descriptions of Valhǫll are moreover found on the picture stones from alskog and ardre on eastern gotland, both dated to the ninth century. in the upper panel of both stones an eight-legged horse with a rider approaches men fighting in front of a huge building. on the alskog stone, a woman with a drinking horn also stands in front of the building. Both images have been interpreted as depictions of Valhǫll, the fighting einherjar, a valkyrie with a drinking horn, and sleipnir carrying either a dead warrior or Óðinn himself (Buisson 1976; Ellmers 1980; Nordberg 2003: 151–210).
ideas about a hall for the dead were possibly also expressed through certain external grave markers. a few large stone settings with curved sides may have been representations of houses with curved walls. These ‘houses’ are known from western Norway and a few places in southern sweden. above all, the sizeable ‘hall settings’ at askeberga in Västergötland and at Nässja in Östergötland, measuring between 45 and 55 m, could have had metaphorical links to the idea of Valhǫll (Carlsson 2015: 200–01).
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Einherjar
The warriors in Valhǫll are the einherjar. Elsewhere in Grímnismál the pig whose flesh is boiled, sæhrímnir, is mentioned in connection with their mysterious nutrition (st. 18), almost certainly whilst members of Óðinn’s retinue.
similarly, stanza 36 reports that a number of women, some of whose names we recognize as names of valkyries, serve beer to them. The noun einherjar (pl., sing. einheri) has been interpreted in various ways. if it is transparent, it means
‘those who fight alone’ or, better in this context, ‘warriors who fight as one’.
Etymologically it could also be derived from something like ‘peerless warriors’.
Grímnismál seems to presuppose either that the listener knows about the einherjar or, at a minimum, that within the conceit of the poem they form part of the experience and vision of Óðinn, who is speaking. Gylfaginning reports that those who die in battle are Óðinn’s adopted sons (‘óskasynir’, p. 21) to whom he assigns places in Valhǫll; they are then einherjar. Vafþrúðnismál st. 41
tells us that the einherjar fight in Óðinn’s yards each day, kill (‘val þeir kiósa’), and ride away from the battle; they are then reconciled. snorri further has a lengthy passage about the einherjar in Gylfaginning (pp. 32–33), spoken by Hár, which agrees with this statement and harmonizes too some of the information in the eddic poems. They eat the flesh of the boar sæhrímnir: ‘Hann er soðinn hvern dag ok heill at aptni’ (p. 32) (it is cooked each day and whole again by evening) (p. 32). a similarly endless supply of beer flows from the udders of the goat Heiðrún, which stands atop Valhǫll. The einherjar fight all
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day and then drink together in the evenings. This picture accords well with what we know and can surmise about warrior bands (è24) and might also be juxtaposed to the deposition of swords and drinking horns in Viking age graves.
as was mentioned above, einherjar are probably depicted on the picture stones from alskog and ardre on gotland. More common allusions to the posthumous lives of warriors, possibly as einherjar, are the well-equipped so-called
‘warrior graves’ from several places in scandinavia (sjösvärd 1989; Pedersen 2014). in rich boat graves dated from the sixth to the eleventh centuries at Vendel and Valsgärde in Uppland, for instance, the dead men were placed in what are basically ‘sailing halls’. Besides weapons and riding gear, the dead were equipped with large cauldrons, drinking horns, drinking glasses, board games, cushions, and birds of prey, all intended for a man’s aristocratic afterlife, such as would be expected in Valhǫll (lundström 1980a, 1980b; Herschend 1997: 49–59; Nordberg 2003: 233–38; ljungkvist 2008).
Fólkvangr
Grímnismál st. 14 says that freyja shares equally in the dead with Óðinn.
fólcvangr er inn níundi,
enn þar freyia ræðr
sessa kostom í sal;
hálfan val
hon kýss hverian dag,
enn hálfan Óðinn á.
(folkvang is the ninth, and there freyja fixes allocation of the seats in the hall; half the slain she chooses every day, and half odin owns.) (p. 50)
in Gylfaginning (pp. 24–25), snorri expands on this notion: freyja claims her half of the slain when she rides off to battle, and her hall is called sessrúmnir (Many-seated). Fólkvangr (plural Fólkvangar in snorri) means ‘battle-field’ etymologically, although the first component is the transparent word for ‘folk’.
fólkvangr as a realm of the dead is reminiscent of both Valhǫll and the realm of Hel; Valhǫll in that it houses warriors, Hel’s realm in that a woman presides over it. in all these cases, the realm of the dead resembles the realm of the living in that it consists of homesteads and halls.
another potential conception of freyja as presiding over a realm of the dead is suggested by Egils saga ch. 78, to which Egill’s poem Sonatorrek is appended.
Egill’s daughter, Þorgerðr, who tricks Egill into composing the poem, states that
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she has had no meal and expects none until she comes to freyja. Besides adding a woman to what Grímnismál and snorri suggest are a warrior-realm belonging to freyja, this passage also suggests the hospitality that was to be expected in many realms of the dead.
Rán
in stanza 7 of Sonatorrek, Egill laments that Rán had greatly wronged him (‘Mjǫk hefr Rǫ́n | ryskt um mik’). although the word sometimes seems to mean just the ‘the sea’, Rán serves as the base word of a few woman-kennings,15
so snorri’s presentation of her as Ægir’s wife in Skáldskaparmál (p. 41) seems justified. in the same passage, he also says that Rán has a net with which she catches sailors; for this reason, and with a few passages from the sagas in mind, some scholars have argued that Rán presided over a realm of those who drowned in the sea.16 The textual evidence neither supports nor denies this supposition,17
but it is perhaps worth noting that, in more recent Nordic folklore, those who were lost at sea and haunt the earth are lexically differentiated (e.g., Norwegian draug, swedish gast). it would thus not be surprising if, during some periods or in some areas, the sea was conceived as a realm of those who had drowned and that Rán, like Hel a female, ruled over this topsy-turvy world.
Green Fields?
in old English, the term neorxnawang (alternatively, neorexenewang) is used to render the Christian concept of ‘Paradise’, both the garden of Eden and Heaven. The first component remains unexplained. The second component is the noun wang (field), and the cognate in the gothic bible, waggs, is also used to translate the Christian concept of Paradise. Heliand 1303 attests the term heƀanwang (meadow of heaven). Most scholars accept that these usages reflect a pre-Christian conception of fields or plains of the gods, presumably also reflected in the mythological placenames ‘fólkvangr’ (the abode of freyja according to Grímnismál: st. 14) and ‘Þrúðvangr’ (singular) or ‘Þrúðvangar’
(plural) (the abode of Þórr according to Gylfaginning and Ynglinga saga).
15 The skald Bragi Boddason inn gamli apparently had the first such kenning, in Ragnarsdrápa st. 8.
16 This conception would be consistent with the meaning of the common noun rán (plunder).
17 Þorsteinn þorskabítr, who is seen entering Helgafell in Eyrbyggja saga ch. 11, drowned while out fishing.
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To this may be compared the vision of the slave girl in ibn fadlan’s account of a Rus funeral: as she is lifted above the door frame, she sees into the world of the dead where, she says, everything looks green and beautiful.
A (Glittering) Realm of the Immortal?
The beginning of the U-redaction of Hervarar saga tells of guðmundr, a chieftain in Jǫtunheimar, which is here described as a place where a mixed race of humans and giants lives. guðmundr lives at grund (green field) in glasisvellir.
in Skáldskaparmál (p. 41), snorri explains the gold-kenning ‘needles or leaf of glasir’ by stating that there is a grove called glasir before the door of Valhǫll, and this notion may explain the name: plains of glasir, that is, a place outside but very close to Valhǫll. for the kenning to work, the needles and leaves of the trees there must be gold. Many scholars, however, prefer to see a form of gler (glass) as the first component and thus understand the compound as ‘glittering plains’. The explanations are not mutually exclusive.
according to Hervarar saga, people in glasisvellir live for many generations.
Því trúðu heiðnir menn, at í hans ríki mundi Ódáinsakr, sá staðr, er af hverjum manni, er þar kømr, hverfr sótt ok elli, ok má engi deyja. (p. 65) (for this reason heathen men believed that in his realm must lie the land of the Undying, that region where sickness and old age depart from every man who enters it, and where no-one can die. (p. 66)18
guðmundr of glasisvellir and Ódáinsakr are mentioned in several other sources, primarily fornaldarsögur, and saxo (see below; 4.2.1) also knows of a place of exile called Undensakre, ‘nostris ignotum populis concessisse est fama’ (which is unknown to our people). There are, moreover, tantalizing traces of possible placename evidence in iceland and Ringerike, Norway (ström 1975: 192).19
Journeys to the World of the Dead
Besides Óðinn’s mythic journey to the world of the dead in Baldrs draumar, several other such journeys are described.
The version of the death of Baldr in snorri’s Gylfaginning (pp. 45–48) tells of Hermóðr’s journey to the world of the dead and his negotiations there 18 guðmundr does die, and his men sacrifice to him and call him their god.
19 an eighteenth-century source indicates that Ódáinsakr in iceland was so called because herbs able to ward off death grew there (Tolkien 1960).
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with Hel. like Óðinn in Baldrs draumar (there may well be textual influence), Hermóðr rides sleipnir. His journey takes nine days and nights, and he traverses valleys so dark and deep that he can see nothing until he arrives at the river gjǫll, which is crossed by the bridge gjallarbrú (‘bridge of gjǫll’).20
There, Hermóðr is challenged, not by a hell-hound but by a maiden guard-ing the bridge. Her name, Móðguðr (perhaps ‘brave-battle’), may suggest that she is a giantess. she notes that he apparently still belongs among the living, but she lets him pass when he declares his mission, adding that the way to Hel runs downwards and northwards (as opposed to the apparent downwards and westwards in Baldrs draumar). Hel’s domain is protected by a gate over which sleipnir and Hermóðr leap. inside the gate is a hall, which seems very like a hall among the living, with the dead Baldr sitting in the ǫndugi (seat of honour). as might happen in the realm of the living, Hermóðr stays the night before raising the issue of his errand, and once he has done this and obtained a response to his request, he returns to Ásgarðr. Unlike most households up on earth, however, this one is presided over by a female, Hel. it is apparently she who hosts Hermóðr (and Baldr) and she who sets the conditions for Baldr’s return to the living. as noted above, this world of the dead is thus inverted with respect to gender roles (è22).
some of these features recur in the account of the journey to the world of the dead undertaken by the Danish king Hadingus in Gesta Danorum by saxo grammaticus (1.6.8) (è36). The episode is brief. a woman seemingly rises from the earth (‘femina […] humo caput extulisse conspecta’), shows him summer plants (it is winter),21 wraps him in her cloak, and whisks him away along a worn path, through a sunny region to a dark river, which they cross via a bridge.
on the other side, they see two armies fighting, like the einherjar, an everlasting battle. They encounter a wall, which (lacking sleipnir) they cannot leap over, but the woman wrings the neck of a rooster (as in ibn fadlan’s account of the Rus funeral), which revives when thrown over to the other side.
in Book 8 (14.1–14.20), saxo tells a version of the myth of Þórr’s visit to geirrøðr, displaced into the human world, in which the abode of gerruthus and his daughters looks like a world of the dead. once again the journey is to the north, and here it is undertaken by a Danish royal expedition led by one 20 This spatial boundary labelled gjǫll may be compared to the temporal boundary associated with the onset of Ragnarǫk and embodied in the gjallarhorn (horn of gjǫll) in Vǫluspá st. 46.
21 These herbs can be compared to the snow-free grave-sites that are occasionally mentioned in icelandic sagas, e.g., that of Þorgrímr in Gísla saga ch. 18.
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Thorkillus, apparently an icelander. it is said that the expedition will have to sail beyond the ends of the earth into a land of eternal darkness, and at first the ships go up the Norwegian coast to Hålogaland and thence to Bjarmaland where they encounter guthmundus (guðmundr of glasisvellir). from here, the expedition must cross a bridge over a river that divides humans from demons and over which no mortal must pass. They pass nonetheless and then approach a town, gloomy and decayed, with skulls on stakes and guarded by fierce dogs. Within, there is a terrible stench (as if, we infer, of death) and many vile sights. They see gerruthus, his body cut through, and his three daughters, their bodies covered with tumours and their backs apparently broken. Thorkillus tells his men that Þórr is responsible for the injuries to these persons, and knowing the myth as we do, we must infer that these are living corpses in a world of the dead.22
The features of river and bridge separating the worlds of the living and the dead are also found in Christian vision literature and may well have been borrowed into the Nordic narratives. However, the northern location of the world in the expedition of Thorkillus fits the geography of the high northern latitudes.23
Journeys to the worlds of the dead are undertaken by gods (Óðinn, perhaps Hermóðr)24 and also, as in Christian vision literature, by living humans (Hadingus, Thorkillus). But, of course, most journeys to the world of the dead will have been undertaken by the dead themselves (perhaps accompanied by a psychopomp, as the early poetry may suggest). one narrative about a dead person’s journey is that of Brynhildr in the poem that editors have appropriately titled Helreið Brynhildar (Brynhildr’s hel-ride); she travels in the wagon in which, according to the headnote, she was cremated. The poem itself consists of a dialogue between Brynhildr and a giantess (also according to the headnote) who challenges Brynhildr along the way. Brynhildr expresses her conviction that she and sigurðr will dwell together in the world of the dead and orders the challenger, here explicitly addressed as gýgjarkyn (ogress’s brood), to sink down. one may also think of Baldr’s funeral. in order to send him on his journey, the gods launch a ship and set it on fire. Here, too, a giantess is present, namely Hyrrokkin. although her presence is not approved by everyone, it is necessary since only she can launch the ship and thus let Baldr’s journey begin.
22 although no such inference can be made concerning the subsequent visit to Utgarthilo-cus, terrible stench characterizes his realm as well.
23 lincoln (1991) argues that there are traces in old scandinavian tradition of a realm of the dead located to the south and ruled over by the primordial sacrificial being (ymir in old Norse).
24 The status of Hermóðr is unclear. see lindow (1997a: 101–15).
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ideas about journeys to the worlds of the dead have been discussed with respect to picture-stones, ship-formed stone settings, rich graves with horses, carriages or boats and the notion of a ‘funeral road’. Horses are deposited in several rich ‘equestrian’ graves in Denmark and sweden (sjösvärd 1989; Pedersen 2014).
since horses were animals of status, their relation to journeys to other worlds is quite plausible if not clear-cut (gjessing 1943; Nordberg 2003: 241–55). images of riders on some gotlandic picture-stones indicate journeys to death realms more clearly. The picture-stones from alskog and ardre, mentioned above, both depict a man riding on an eight-legged horse. This motif has been interpreted as Óðinn or as a dead warrior approaching Valhǫll (Buisson 1976; Ellmers 1980).
ships were recurrently connected to graves and memorials, in the form of ship-formed stone-settings, real boats, and images of ships (Crumlin-Pedersen and Munch Thye 1995). ship-formed stone-settings were built during the late Bronze age ( c. 1000–500 bce) and the late iron age (550–1050 ce) (Capelle 1986). Boat graves were used during the first millennium ce (Müller-Wille 1970), whereas images of ships on memorial stones are known from about 400
to 1000 ce (andrén 1993, 2014). all the various forms of ships have been discussed in relation to journeys to the world of dead (ohlmarks 1946). Most boat graves (about 75 per cent) are regarded as the graves of men, according to conventional gender division based on objects, and most gotlandic picture-stones with images of large ships have been viewed as male memorials, which means that ship-voyages to death realms were regarded as linked especially to men (andrén 1993). This male connection fits well not only with the fact that ships and the sea constituted a male realm, but also with the myth of the funeral of Baldr, who was cremated in a ship that was set on fire and launched into the sea (see above and è46). ibn fadlan’s account of the funeral of a Rus chieftain on the Volga offers a specific link to an apparent journey to the world of the dead in connection with a ship cremation: ibn fadlan reports that one of his interlocutors told him that burning the body meant that the deceased entered Paradise immediately (è32).
Burials in carriages are known mainly from the Viking age. in contrast to the boat graves, burials in carriages are associated with women, according to conventional gender division based on objects (Müller-Wille 1985; andrén 1993). Wagons have also been depicted on small gotlandic picture-stones, usually seen as memorials of women (Nylén and lamm 2003). The famous oseberg boat grave, in which two women are buried, includes a richly ornamented carriage. The close connection between women and burials in carriages offers clear associations to Brynhildr’s hel-ride, the subject of the eddic pom Helreið Brynhildar mentioned above.
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figure 34.3.
The richly decorated carriage
from the boat grave at oseberg
in Vestfold (Kulturhistorisk
museum, olso no. C55000_224).
Photo: Eirik irgens Johansen,
Kulturhistorisk Museum,
Universitetet i oslo, oslo.
The wagon from oseberg has fixed wheels, which means it was unable to turn and could only move straight ahead. The fixed wheels probably indicate that the oseberg wagon was used in funeral procession along a straight ‘funeral road’. such a funeral road from the Viking age is still preserved at Rösaring in southern Uppland. on top of a ridge overlooking lake Mälaren is a road, 540
m long, running in a straight north-south line. The road connects a small house at the northern end and a large mound in a burial ground at the southern.
along the east side of the road, about 150 postholes are preserved at regular intervals (Damell 1985). such a straight road could have formed the scene for the oseberg carriage, in a funeral procession expressing in a concrete manner the notion of a journey from the world of the living to the world of the dead (see Nygaard and Murphy 2017 on processions in PCRN in general, 51–66 on processions with funerary connotations specifically).
Deyja í fjall
Landnámabók (ch. s97/H84) and Eyrbyggja saga (ch. 4) tell of groups of pagan settlers who believe that they will ‘die into’ a specific mountain or set of hillocks ( hólar). Chapter H56 of the Hauksbók redaction of Landnámabók is more matter of fact: ‘Þeir sel-Þórir frændr inu heiðnu dóu í Þórisbjǫrg’ (sel-Þórir and his pagan kinsmen died into the mountain Þórisbjǫrg). Naturally, we cannot know whether there was any such belief in pre-Christian time, but several scholars have accepted it (see below under scholarship). Eyrbyggja saga ch. 11 tells of a shepherd who sees Þorólfr’s son Þorsteinn þorskabítr enter the
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mountain, which is lit up and festive with drink, and sit down in the seat of honour opposite his father. soon, the news arrives that Þorsteinn has drowned while out fishing.
Possibly related to this concept of dying into the mountain is the death described in Ynglingatal st. 2 in which an yngling king, sveigðir, appears to follow a dwarf who invites him to enter into a large stone (thus snorri’s understanding of the stanza in Ynglinga saga ch. 7):
En dagskjarr
Dúrnis niðja
salvǫrðuðr
sveigði vélti,
þás í stein
hinn stórgeði
Dusla konr
ept dvergi hljóp.
ok sal r bjartr
þeira sǫkmímis
jǫtunbyggðr
við jǫfri gein.
(and the daylight-shy guard of the hall of the descendants of Dúrnir
[( lit. ‘hall-guard of the descendants of Dúrnir’) DWaRfs > RoCK > DWaRf]
tricked sveigðir when the great-minded offspring of Dusli [= sveigðir] ran into the rock after the dwarf. and the bright giant-inhabited hall of sǫkmímir
Here, the dwarf who entices sveigðir into the stone and the giants who inhabit it are portrayed as chthonic beings.
Living in the Mound
Hervarar saga contains prose and verse about Hervǫr invading the mound of her dead father angantýr to retrieve his sword, Tyrfingr. Here is how the verse describes the opening of the mound:
Hnigin er helgrind,
haugar opnask,
allr er í eldi
eybarmr at sjá
(Hel’s gate is lifted, howes are opening, the isle’s border ablaze before you.) (p. 16)
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Here, the gate of hel (or Hel) confers entry into the grave mound, which is on fire rather like a funeral pyre. The final verse reiterates the burning and reveals a little more about this poet’s conception of this world of the dead.
Búi þér allir,
brott fýsir mik,
heilir í haugi,
heðan vil ek skjótla;
helzt þóttumk nú
heima í millim,
er mik umhverfis
eldar brunnu.
(May you all lie unharmed in the howe resting — to hasten hence my heart urges; i seemed to myself to be set between worlds, when all about me burnt the cairn fire.) (p. 19)
Christopher Tolkien’s otherwise praiseworthy translation is slightly misleading here. What Hervǫr says at the beginning of the stanza is literally ‘May you all live hale here in the howe’.
This wish echoes the general conception in old Norse-icelandic literature that the dead live on in their graves (usually mounds in the sagas), with existences fairly like those they had in this world. To mention just one of the best-known examples, in Njáls saga ch. 79, after gunnar af Hlíðarendi has been interred in his mound, seated, people hear him reciting verses in there. skarpheðinn and gunnar’s son Hǫgni see the mound in the distance one moonlit night. it is open: candles illuminate it, and a seemingly cheerful gunnar recites a skaldic stanza so loudly that they hear it (and thus the author can report it: gunnar boasts of not giving way to his enemies).
There are several archaeological indications that graves in themselves could be seen as the world(s) of the dead. apart from the link between the cover on top of the graves and the concept of hel (see above), some graves from the late iron age had formal entryways, functioning as portals between the living and the dead. some mounds were surrounded by ditches except for short sections towards the south or south-west, leaving passages open from the surroundings to the graves. in other cases in central sweden, formal doorways have been found south-west of grave mounds. These ‘south-west gates’, mostly dated to the tenth century ce, are found predominantly at grave mounds built for women (gräslund 1969; Nordberg 2008, 2009). in some cases, the gates are constructed as doorways with stone thresholds and wooden doorframes (arrhenius 1970). These constructions offer associations to the helgrind in
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figure 34.4. four mounds with
‘south-west gates’ at the burial
ground of Tuna in Västerljung in
södermanland. after gräslund
1969: 134.
Hervarar saga as well as to ibn fadlan’s description of the funeral of the Rus chieftain on the Volga, in which the slave girl is lifted three times over a doorway and sees her deceased relatives in the world of the dead on the other side (è32). The location of the entries across the surrounding ditches and the formal ‘south-west gates’ indicate that the world(s) of the dead were regarded as located downwards and towards north/north-east. These directional conceptions may be compared with those found in the literary traditions.
Reincarnation?
The prose passages following two of the Helgi poems in the Poetic Edda state that the main characters of the poems were reincarnated. The statement after the last verse of what we now call Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar, ‘Helgi oc sváva er sagt at væri endrborin’ (Helgi and sváva are said to have been reincarnated), leads directly into the prose introduction to what we now call Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, inviting the reader to infer that the two main characters of that poem, Helgi and sigrún, are Helgi and sváva reincarnated. The prose pas-
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sage following Helgakviða Hundingsbana II suggests another round of reincarnation, although the allusions are now inaccessible to us.
Þat var trúa í fornescio, at menn væri endrornir, enn þat er nú kǫlluð kerlingavilla.
Helgi oc sigrún er kallat at væri endrborin. Hét hann þá Helgi Haddingiascaði, en hon Kára, Hálfdanar dóttir, svá sem qveðit er í Károlióðom, oc var hon valkyria.
(There was a belief in pagan times,25 which we now reckon an old wives’ tale, that people could be reincarnated. Helgi and sigrun were thought to have been reborn.
He was called Helgi Haddingia-damager, and she was Kara, Halfdan’s daughter as is told in the ‘song of Kara’, and she was a valkyrie.) (p. 137)
These statements are peculiar to the Helgi poems, and it is simply not possible to know whether they reflect any actual older beliefs in reincarnation.
However, the notion does turn up in connection with King Óláfr Haraldsson the saint, in the version of his life in Flateyjarbók. as they ride past the grave mound of the prehistoric King Óláfr guðrøðarson geirstaðaálfr (so named because he was worshipped there in geirstaðir after his death), a retainer asks the king whether it is true that he is a reincarnation of the earlier Óláfr.
Needless to say, the Christian king becomes angry over such a question, and he rails against this false belief (ii, 219). Tradition almost certainly did know of some kind of connection between the two kings, since the Legendary Saga of St Óláfr says that Hrani inn víðfǫrli Hróason, following instructions given to him by Óláfr geirstaðaálfr in a dream, broke into the latter’s grave mound, beheaded the still animate corpse of the king, and took his ring and belt. still following the dream-man’s instructions, Hrani proceeded to travel to oppland where Ásta, the future saint’s mother, was having a difficult childbirth. He put the belt around Ásta, who immediately delivered a baby boy. Hrani then raised the boy and gave him the belt as a tooth-gift and the ring when he was baptized and named Óláfr — as the dream-Óláfr had requested.
These passages at least reveal to us that in medieval Norway and iceland, some people (men of letters?) seemingly found it plausible that their ancestors once believed in reincarnation, apparently over many generations. This hypothetical belief may have included continuity in name forms, and it may have been limited to the sphere of warriors and kings.
25 The word forneskja in the old Norse means literally ‘ancient times’.
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A Language of the Dead?
Alvíssmál offers vocabulary for thirteen items in the languages of various mythological categories of beings. although many observers think the poem could be late or idiosyncratic, it does partake in a well-known indo-European tradition (güntert 1921; Watkins 1970), and we regard it as worth considering even if it cannot be shown that the conceptions in it formed part of pre-Christian Nordic religion.
Through most of the poem, Þórr asks about the vocabulary of various collectives of beings: menn, æsir, vanir, álfar, and so forth, but in seven cases we learn what things are called in the language spoken in hel: ‘kalla […] í helju’ (they call it […] in the world of the dead’). The emphasis on the realm rather than its inhabitants — the poet might just as well have said ‘dauðir’ (the dead) — is interesting and seems to imply a fundamental difference between the living and dead, or, to put it another way, implies that all the mythological beings (including humans) inhabit a realm of the living, which is fundamentally opposed to the realm of the dead.26
since the vocabulary assigned to the categories of men, gods, and giants seems not to be arbitrary (Moberg 1970–73), it is worth surveying the vocabulary assigned to those who live in the world of the dead. six of the thirteen categories are covered. The following chart shows the words used by Þórr and those used, according to alvíss, í helju.
Stanza
Þórr
í helju
13–14
máni (moon)
hverfanda hvél (turning wheel)
17–18
ský (clouds)
hiálmr huliz (concealing helmet)
19–20
vindr (wind)
hvívuðr (squaller, stormer)
25–26
eldr (fire)
hrǫðoðr (hurrier)
31–32
sáð (seed)
hnipinn (drooping)
33–34
ǫl (beer)
miǫðr (mead)
The categories not represented in hel are iǫrð (the earth), himinn (the sky), sól (the sun), logn (calm sea), marr (sea), viðr (forest), and nótt (night). it seems that, according to alvíss, the dead have little vocabulary to discuss the world of the living, with its earth and sky, sun, sea, forest, and diurnal pattern of night and day.27 The dead do have the moon, the clouds that obscure the sun, some 26 schorn (2013: 76) finds that this distinction is crucial in the vocabulary of old Norse-icelandic poetry in general.
27 Day is of course the ‘missing category’ in the poem (Klingenberg 1967), so ‘night’ must stand in for both here.
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weather (they lack calm but have wind), and the ingredients for mead. it will be observed that alliteration links all but the final pair of concepts mentioned by Þórr and the vocabulary assigned by alvíss to hel, and these links certainly could be taken to indicate that what mattered was the alliteration, not the concept of a world of the dead. if, in spite of this possibility, one scrutinizes this vocabulary from a semantic perspective, a few suggestive readings may emerge. To be sure, lennart Moberg (1970–73: 309–10) found only one, namely hnipinn (drooping), which usually refers to hanging one’s head in sorrow but here refers to the bending ear of barley. Beyond that, however, a concealing helmet changes the concept of clouds from wispy ribbons or tall cumulus that allow some sunshine through to heavy stratus clouds, hanging low and obscuring the sun and much of the surrounding landscape. The expression ‘hverfanda hvél’ (turning wheel) should first and foremost be compared to ‘fagra hvél’ (beautiful wheel), the word for the sun among the álfar (st. 16). The expression is also attested in Hávamál st. 84 as the place where the fickle hearts of women are made, perhaps a potter’s wheel. The image may be appropriate because of the muddy clay that spins on the wheel. on the other hand, ‘hverfanda hvél’ sounds like the sun28
and could represent an inversion: the dead call the moon by a name that in the world of the living would be appropriate for the sun. finally, we note that in hel mead is consumed, just as in the stanza from Baldrs draumar, cited above.
Mead may have been particularly important in ritual contexts and thus would be appropriate in the mysterious other World of the dead.
**Cult **
The aforementioned worship of the prehistoric Norwegian king Óláfr geirstaðaálfr, dead inside his mound, also suggests possible ancestor worship, at least of kings. in several versions of the story,29 Óláfr foresees his death and orders his followers not to worship him. They ignore this instruction, and that is how the king receives the posthumous by-name ‘geirstaðaálfr’ ( álfr of geirstaðir).30 However, it must be pointed out that this story is found only in the icelandic accounts. it is lacking in the one Norwegian version of the story, 28 The sun-images on some gotland picture stones could certainly be described as looking like turning wheels.
29 for a thorough discussion of the versions, see Heinrichs (1989).
30 although the use of the term álfr in this context is rare, it finds a potential analogue in Bárðr snæfellsáss, a living being with giant ancestry who according to Bárðar saga was called upon for aid. see also (è63).
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the Legendary Saga of St Óláfr. sundqvist (2015) argues that although the story itself may not be trustworthy, it probably reflects actual historical conceptions.
There are a few signs that extensive rituals took place at graves subsequent to the burial rituals. at one third of the excavated ‘south-west gates’ in central sweden, pottery shards and animal bones have been found, indicating some form of memorial visits involving food and drink (gräslund 1969).
it is also possible that graves themselves were regarded as consecrated places and that some of the constructions on the burial grounds were not graves, but functioned instead as altars or as representations of different cosmic elements.
in some cases, the ground was burnt before the grave was constructed, possibly as a kind of consecration (Nordberg 2009). in other cases, graves have been interpreted as altars (Kaliff 1997, 2007) or as different forms of cosmic representations (andrén 2004a, 2014; Nordberg 2008, 2009).
Particularly in the Migration and Merovingian periods (400–750 bce), some inhumations were reopened fairly soon after the burials, and certain objects and bones were then removed (ljungkvist 2011). This practice indicates some manner of continued dealing with the dead, which finds parallels in Central Europe (Klevnäs 2013). The purpose of the reopening could be either the returning of the ancestor’s important heirlooms or the plundering by opponent families in some kind of ‘posthumous bloodfeud’ (Klevnäs 2015).
With respect to cremations, it is also well known that only parts of the cremated human bones were deposited in formal graves (è33). The rest may have been used in other forms of cult, presumably ancestor rituals, although very little is known about them. a possible example of such rituals is a small hillock at lunda in södermanland; this stony hillock was covered with deposits of cremated human and animal bones, clay, small resin balls, pottery, beads, knives, and arrowheads dating from the late iron age (andersson and skyllberg 2008; figure è27.22).
Scholarship
according to Klare (1933–34), the concept of the dead as corporeal beings living on in the grave was a scholarly discovery of the twentieth century. To some degree that is so, since the earliest study of death conceptions that still retains some currency, Neckel’s analysis of Valhǫll (1913), distinguishes between the fallen on the battlefield and the mythical conception of Óðinn’s hall. There can be little doubt that the mythological sources fully support this conceptual distinction. indeed, it is key to notions of worlds of the dead, where there is hospitality and in some cases sport.
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Many scholars have taken seriously the notion of the dead inside mountains and related it both to ancestor cult and more generally to notions of Valhǫll and ancestor worship (e.g., Hartmann 1937). grønvik and Hovda (1959: 165–
67) argue that the name of the Norwegian mountain Vesaldo, near stavanger, was based on this notion. The relationship between the ruler’s hall on earth and conceptions of Valhǫll forms the topic of Nordberg (2003). The varying conceptions of Valhǫll in Eiríksmál and Hákonarmál have been the subject of investigation (von see 1963; Marold 1972). With its blood and gore, Hákonarmál may be the older, but the poems may moreover represent (anglo-) Danish and Norwegian variations.
folke ström (1954: 70–79; 1956a: 64–68) understands the similarities between freyja and Hel as rulers of a world of the dead as indicating that the two figures are identical. although it can hardly be proved,31 this idea does bring a certain amount of order to a complex situation and is helpful if one understands the distinction between Valhǫll and the realm of Hel as representing a semantic opposition (Hastrup 1985: 49). specifically, the distinction involves not just male versus female and warriors versus ordinary people, but also the iterative and individual aspects of Valhǫll versus the durative and collective aspects of the realm of Hel (schjødt 2008: 389–91). The early poetry may well allow us to assign this semantic distinction to Viking age western scandinavia, even if the overall conceptual complex remains entangled.
steinsland (1997: 97–123) explores conceptions of the relationship between the living and the dead that can be understood as love or an erotic impulse. she argues that especially some scenes (both in texts and images) that bear on the notion of travel to the world of the dead can be understood in this light.
Reincarnation in general was treated by Eckhardt (1937). Kragerud (1989) treated the subject in the Helgi poems.
There seem to be social distinctions associated with the worlds of the dead.
The warriors in Valhǫll would appear to be from the higher social classes, although Baldr in the realm of Hel offers an alternative scenario for the kings.
in Hárbarðsljóð st. 24, Hárbarðr (Óðinn in disguise) boasts that Óðinn gets the jarls who fall in battle and Þórr, his interlocutor, gets the slaves. While there is no way of verifying the latter assertion, much of what Hárbarðr says in the poem concurs with other sources. Viking age graves indicate that persons of the lowest social orders were buried in the peripheral areas of graveyards, which may imply parallel social ordering in the worlds of the dead, without reference 31 freyja’s connection to the slain would be an issue, and of course fólkvangr would have to be identical with the realm of Hel; however, freyja is a noa-name, and perhaps Hel is too.
34 – Worlds of the Dead
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to Þórr or other deities. Þorgerðr’s statement about freyja to the contrary,32
there is no compelling evidence for gendered worlds of the dead other than Valhǫll and its equivalents.33
Monographic treatments of death and ideas about it are found in Hilda Ellis Davidson (1943), Régis Boyer (1994), and arnved Nedkvitne (1997). in the latter, conceptions of the worlds of the dead are contextualized through consideration of related notions, and the longue durée is also taken up. Rather than a break, the Christianization process brought with it a transition with regard to such conceptions.
There are no archaeological studies solely dedicated to ideas about different worlds of the dead. instead, the focus of archaeological interest is on burial rituals, although in some cases aspects of different death realms and journeys to them are mentioned (Price 2012). These aspects include different sorts of gates to graves (gräslund 1969; arrhenius 1970; andrén 1993; Nordberg 2008, 2009), a posthumous life in Valhǫll (Herschend 1997; Nordberg 2003; Carlsson 2015) as well as different forms of travelling to the worlds of the dead (Müller-Wille 1970, 1985; Buisson 1976; Ellmers 1980; Capelle 1986; andrén 1993).
Concluding Remarks
as this survey shows, conceptions of the worlds of the dead were clearly multiple in pre-Christian Nordic religion. They varied widely in time and space and may well have been self-contradictory at any time and in any location (as they are today in many societies). We believe that the evidence supports a distinction between warriors (the warrior band) on the one hand and most ordinary people on the other. in connection with this distinction, we believe that it could be profitable to investigate the possibility that the earliest textual traditions may portray Hel as a psychopomp. This possibility would juxtapose her to the valkyries and ultimately to freyja.
The relation between ideas about different worlds of the dead and the actual graves where the dead were buried remains ambiguous. as was men-32 Þorgerðr’s somewhat ambiguous statement to Egill is interesting in this context: ‘Vil ek, at vit farim eina leið bæði’ (i want both of us to go the same way). ordinarily the statement would be metaphoric (i want both of us to suffer the same fate), but taken literally it could imply that the road to the world of the dead would be the same for Þorgerðr and Egill, and this would vitiate the gendering implied by Þorgerðr’s desire to go to freyja.
33 or are deposits of armies and their weapons in bodies of water indicative of gender-based conceptions of the worlds of the dead?
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tioned above, it is sometimes possible to see links between the death realms and aspects of the graves, but in most cases these links remain unclear. instead, the parallels between the worlds of the dead and the graves can be considered on a more general level in the parallel variations. The burial rituals were as varied as the different worlds of the dead. Moreover, these parallel pre-Christian variations are clearly contrasted with the fairly uniform Christian burial rituals and the clearly delineated Christian worlds of the dead for those saved and those doomed (and, in time, those undergoing purification).34
34 see le goff (1984) on the ‘birth’ of purgatory in the twelfth century.