The Valkyries: Choosers of the Slain, Weavers of Fate on the Battlefield
The Valkyries — Emil Doepler, c. 1905. The defining Romantic image: armored warrior-women on horseback, riding through clouds and storm, selecting the dead for Odin's hall. They ride through the skies above battlefields on horseback, their armor flashing in what humans below mistake for the northern lights. They move among the fallen, and the ones they touch are not merely dead — they are chosen . Selected. Elevated from the category of the corpse to the category of the einherjar , the honored dead who will feast in Valhalla until the day of Ragnarök , when they will fight at Odin's side in the final battle of the cosmos. The Valkyries — whose name in Old Norse, valkyrja , means literally chooser of the slain ( valr = the slain in battle; kyrja = chooser) — are among the most complex and ambivalent figures in Norse mythology. They are divine agents of Odin, executors of his will on the battlefield, supernatural women whose power over life and death is absolute within...