Valhalla, in Norse mythology, the hall of slain warriors, who live there blissfully under the leadership of the god Odin. Valhalla is depicted as a splendid palace, roofed with shields, where the warriors feast on the flesh of a boar slaughtered daily and made whole again each evening.
The concept of Odin's Hall seems to have developed from an earlier vision of a warrior's afterlife as a battlefield. The name Valhalla comes from the Norse Valholl, with holl originally referring to a rock, rocks, or mountains, not a hall, and understood as Rock of the Slain.
What was Valhalla made of?
Built of weapons and armor, Valhalla was the promised land of a Viking warrior. The Poetic Edda, a collection of myths and heroic stories written in 13th-century Iceland, depicts Valhalla's dramatic construction: “spear-shafts the building has for rafters, it's roofed with shields, mail-coats are strewn on the benches.
How to get to Valhalla
In the Prose Edda, Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson tells us that a Viking could only make it to Valhalla if he died in battle. Those who died of sickness, old age or any other natural cause, no matter how fearsome a warrior they had been in life, would go to Hel, the Viking underworld.
In Mesopotamian traditions, hell is described as a distant land of no return, a house of dust where the dead dwell without distinction of rank or merit, and a sealed fortress, typically of seven gates, barred against invasion or escape.
Did you know
Valhalla, which was led by Odin and was the hall of slain warriors, was within Asgard.
