50 Fun Facts About Valhalla

How do the warriors of Valhalla spend each day?

Fighting one another for sport: each morning they arm, go out to the courtyard and cut each other down, then rise healed and ride back to the hall to eat and drink together.

What does the Old Norse Valhǫll literally mean?

Hall of the Slain: valr meant those killed in battle. In the poem Grímnismál the gold-bright hall is where Odin picks his share of the fallen every day.

What are the warriors who dwell in Valhalla called?

Einherjar are the army Odin hoards for Ragnarök: when a visitor remarks how crowded the hall must be, the Prose Edda replies that even this host will seem too few when the end comes.

Which female spirits decide who falls in battle and bring the dead to Valhalla?

The valkyries: Odin sends them to every battle to settle who wins and who dies, and back in the hall the same figures wait on the men they picked.

Which goddess claims half of those who die in combat, the other half going to Odin?

Freyja seats her half in her own hall at Fólkvangr. In Egil's Saga a grieving daughter who means to starve herself vows to take no supper 'till I sup with Freyja'.

In Norse myth, Valhalla has 540 of what, so that its army can pour out together at Ragnarök?

Doors: in the Prose Edda a visitor supposes the entrance must often be badly crowded, and is told he should first ask how many doors the hall has, and how large they are.

In the Prose Edda, Valhalla stands in which of the Norse worlds?

Asgard: the Prose Edda has the gods build Valhalla at the very start, before a giant in disguise offers to wall their citadel for the price of a goddess, the sun and the moon.

What serve as the rafters of Valhalla in Grímnismál?

Spear-shafts hold up the roof so that, as the poem puts it, a dead warrior knows the hall the moment he sees it, down to the coats of mail strewn over its benches.

Which Led Zeppelin track, written after a 1970 concert in Iceland, has Robert Plant cry that he is coming to Valhalla?

Immigrant Song came out of a Reykjavik show that a civil servants' strike nearly cancelled, until the university found the band a hall. Plant called the night phenomenal.

In the Prose Edda, what animal is Sæhrímnir, cooked daily and whole again by evening?

A boar, and one is enough: asked how Odin can feed every man killed in battle since the world began, the Prose Edda answers that the hall will never be so full that its meat runs short.

In the Prose Edda, which plant, growing just west of Valhalla, is used to kill the god Baldr?

Mistletoe was the one thing Frigg never asked to spare her son, thinking it too young to swear an oath. Loki found out and guided the blind god Höðr's hand.

In Valhalla, the goat Heiðrún fills a great vat each day with what, straight from her udders?

Mead: when a visitor asks whether the fallen get only water, the Prose Edda scoffs that Odin would hardly invite kings and earls and then serve them that.

What is unusual about Sleipnir, the horse Odin rides?

He has eight legs, and Loki is his mother: the trickster turned into a mare to lure away a giant builder's stallion and later gave birth to the grey foal.

In Valhalla, who gets all the meat that is set before Odin at the feast?

His two wolves, Geri and Freki, eat it all: Odin needs no food, because wine is both meat and drink to him.

What are those killed in battle described as being to Odin in the Prose Edda?

His adopted sons: the Prose Edda gives that as the reason Odin is also called Valfather, and says it is for them that he keeps the hall ready.

In the Prose Edda, Glasir grows outside Valhalla with leaves made of what?

Red gold: the Prose Edda calls Glasir the fairest tree among gods and men, and tells of it to explain why poets could call gold 'the leaves of Glasir'.

Which god was called when the giant Hrungnir got drunk in Valhalla and threatened to carry it away?

Thor came at once, but the giant pleaded a guest's protection inside the hall, so the two agreed to meet in a formal duel, which Hrungnir did not survive.

In the Prose Edda, where do those who die of sickness or old age go, rather than Valhalla?

Hel is both the place and its ruler: the Prose Edda makes her Loki's daughter, thrown down into the cold below by Odin and given charge of everyone sent to her.

In an Eddic poem, the hero Helgi reaches Valhalla and sets his old enemy Hunding to which humbling task?

Washing every warrior's feet was only the start: Hunding must also light the fire, tie up the dogs and feed the pigs before he may sleep. Odin had invited Helgi to rule beside him.

A 10th-century poem has Odin rouse Valhalla to welcome which Viking king of Northumbria?

Eric Bloodaxe: his widow Gunnhild is said to have ordered the poem, in which Odin has the benches strewn and the cups scoured, sure that a great king is on his way.

In Ynglinga saga, Odin's law promises the dead will arrive in Valhalla with whatever riches were what?

Burned on their pyre: the same law lets a man keep whatever he had buried himself, and orders a mound raised for great men and a standing stone for brave warriors.

Whose horn blast will rouse the gods and send Valhalla's army to arm when Ragnarök begins?

Heimdall, the gods' watchman, is said to hear grass grow and to need less sleep than a bird. Once the alarm is given he meets Loki in the battle, and the two kill each other.

Which survival game carries fallen Vikings to a 'tenth world' to prove themselves worthy of Valhalla?

Valheim drops the player there with nothing: to win the Allfather's favour they must hunt down the monsters he banished to that world long ago.

Who wrote the Prose Edda, a key source for Valhalla?

Snorri Sturluson wrote it as a textbook: it tells young skalds to master the book if they want to learn the language of poetry and understand what the old verses darkly say.

Which Danish actor plays the enslaved warrior One-Eye in Nicolas Winding Refn's 2009 film Valhalla Rising?

Mads Mikkelsen plays him without a word of dialogue: One-Eye breaks free and sails with Crusaders bound for the Holy Land, who get lost in fog and come ashore somewhere else entirely.

In Rick Riordan's Magnus Chase novels, Valhalla takes the form of what in modern Boston?

A hotel: the newly dead check in at Hotel Valhalla, where a manager named Helgi has run the desk for more than a thousand years, and Magnus arrives after dying in a fight on a Boston bridge.

At Ragnarök, which wolf swallows Odin whole?

Fenrir had been bound by the gods with a magic ribbon, and bit off the hand Týr laid in his mouth as a pledge that it was no trick. At Ragnarök the fetter finally snaps.

In the Prose Edda, which 'silent god' avenges Odin by tearing the wolf's jaws apart?

Víðarr pins the wolf's lower jaw with a shoe made from every scrap of leather ever trimmed off a shoe, then wrenches the jaws apart. He is one of the few gods who live on afterwards.

Ask and Embla were the first humans in Norse myth, but which pair survive Ragnarök to repopulate the world?

Líf and Lífþrasir hide in a wood while fire sweeps the world, living on nothing but morning dew until the earth rises green again.

What are Odin's two ravens called?

Huginn and Muninn leave at dawn, fly over the whole world and are back by breakfast to tell Odin what they saw. In the old poem he frets every day that they may not return.

What did Odin sacrifice for wisdom?

One of his eyes was the price of a single drink from Mímir's well, where wisdom is kept. In the old poem a seeress taunts him that she knows exactly where the eye lies hidden.

Which day of the week takes its name from Odin?

Wednesday goes back to Old English, which named the day for its own form of the god. Germanic peoples chose him to translate the Romans' 'day of Mercury', which French keeps as mercredi.

In Wagner's Ring cycle, by what name does Odin, lord of Valhalla, appear?

Wotan echoes Wuotan, the old German form of the name. In the Ring his power rests on the treaties he has made, so he is bound by his own bargains, the one with Valhalla's builders included.

In Wagner's Das Rheingold, who builds Valhalla for the gods?

Two giant brothers, Fasolt and Fafner, build it for the promise of a goddess, settle for a dwarf's stolen hoard instead, and then Fafner kills Fasolt over the ring in the heap.

How does Valhalla end in Wagner's Götterdämmerung?

It is destroyed by fire its own lord has laid: he has the World Ash cut into logs and stacked around the hall, then sits inside among his heroes, waiting for the blaze.

The Walhalla memorial, a temple-like hall of fame for great Germans, stands high above which river near Regensburg?

The Danube: Ludwig I of Bavaria resolved to build it as a young crown prince, after Napoleon's armies had humbled the German states, and opened it in 1842.

Which Athenian building was the Walhalla memorial near Regensburg modelled on?

The Parthenon gave the hall its outside, but the roll of honour inside is still growing: Bavaria's cabinet votes in a new bust every few years, Sophie Scholl's among them in 2003.

Which figure comes first in the Walhalla memorial's roll of honour, kept in time order?

Arminius learned war as an officer in Rome's own army, then lured his commander Varus into the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9 and destroyed three legions.

Who is the player character in Assassin's Creed Valhalla?

Eivor Varinsdottir leads a clan out of Norway to raid, build a settlement and forge alliances, all, as the game's own pitch has it, to 'earn a place in Valhalla'.

In Assassin's Creed Valhalla, the player's clan leaves Norway to settle where?

England: there the clan builds a settlement of its own and fights or befriends the Saxon kingdoms of what Ubisoft calls 'a fractured nation of petty lords and warring kingdoms'.

Which Yankees star is buried in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York?

Lou Gehrig died at 37 of ALS, the illness Americans came to call by his name, two years after it ended his run of 2,130 straight games.

Valhalla, New York, a hamlet north of New York City, lies in which county?

Westchester chose Valhalla for its memorial to county residents killed on 11 September 2001: a steel sculpture called The Rising, set at the foot of the Kensico Dam.

Netflix's Vikings: Valhalla follows which Greenlander, the brother of the warrior Freydís?

Leif Erikson sails in from Greenland with his sister in the first episode, a hundred years after the events of Vikings, and is soon caught up in a Viking war of revenge.

From his high seat Hliðskjálf, what is Odin able to do?

See over all the worlds, down to what each person is doing. When the god Freyr once sat there in his place, he caught sight of a giant's daughter and fell helplessly in love.

Odin hung for nine nights on the world tree, wounded by a spear, to win the secret of what?

The runes: in the poem Hávamál he says he hung there as an offering 'myself to myself', with no food or drink, until he could reach down and seize them with a scream.

According to Grímnismál, what is Valhalla's roof thatched with?

Shields overlap on it like shingles, golden ones in the Prose Edda, where a king arriving in disguise finds the hall so tall he can barely see over it.

In the Prose Edda, a visitor to Valhalla finds a man at the threshold doing what with seven swords?

Juggling them, all seven in the air at once. The visitor is a king in disguise, and the gods, who foresaw his coming, have staged everything he sees as an illusion.

In the Prose Edda, what lights the hall when the sea-giant Ægir comes to feast with the gods?

Shimmering swords, carried in on Odin's orders, shone so brightly that no other light was needed. Ægir lit his own feast with gleaming gold in return, which is why poets call gold 'Ægir's fire'.

In the Eddic poem about him, how does the dead hero Helgi return from Valhalla to visit his grieving wife?

On horseback, with a troop of dead men riding behind him: a maid who sees them asks whether the world is ending, and Helgi must be gone again before the cock crows.

Which 2015 film's War Boys believe a heroic death for Immortan Joe will carry them to Valhalla?

Mad Max: Fury Road gives the War Boys a cry, 'Witness me!', shouted before a suicidal charge, and has Joe promise one of them that he will carry him 'to the gates of Valhalla' himself.