I’m not normally given to violence, but I punched a Valkyrie once. She was surprised. That’s not the greeting she usually gets when she’s whisking people off to Valhalla.
The thing is, I really didn’t want to go to Valhalla. Not because I wasn’t ready to die. Well, I wasn’t exactly happy about it, but, when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go, and there’s no point fighting it. It was Valhalla I was objecting to. I really didn’t want to spend any time there, let alone eternity.
The skalds make it seem like a wonderful place, a heroes’ hall of perpetual feasting and carousing and manly men doing manly stuff. In other words, a bunch of smelly guys eating and drinking until they puke, getting into pointless brawls about nothing at all, groping the serving women, and telling the same old tedious stories over and over again.
The boasting was bad enough when they were alive. A couple of idiots drunkenly swinging fists at each other gradually turned into an epic saga of vengeance, battles, monsters, gods or whatever. Every time they told the story, it got bigger and bigger, more and more outrageous. And of course, one guy would tell his story, then the other guy would tell his side of the story, the quarrel would break out all over again, and before you knew it, someone was getting hit in the face with a piece of dead sheep, axes and spears would be drawn, and there’d be a bloodbath. The next night, they’d do it all over again, and they thought it was wonderful.
I did kind of feel sorry for the younger ones. Anyone who died in battle was welcome in Valhalla. That was fine for the so-called heroes who had something to look back on, but a goodly number of them had died in their first fight. Many of them had been ambushed and cut down without even knowing who killed them. What were they supposed to talk about for eternity? Imagine being made to feel inferior for ever.
So when my time came, I decided I wasn’t going there. Apart from anything else, I didn’t want to end up in the same place as Snorri, the man who killed me, my wife and my two daughters. I got him back with my dying breath, but the thought of looking at his fat, smirking face ever again was too much. So when Göndul and Skögul came to take us both to Valhalla, I said no. Göndul told me I had no choice, and that’s when I hit her. Not hard, but enough to knock her off her horse.
“I want to go to the Other Place,” I said.
“Hel?” she asked, mystified. “Why would you want to go there? That’s for common people, not warriors like you.”
I shook my head. “No, not Hel. Fólkvangr. Freyja’s place.”
She laughed. “Fólkvangr? You know that’s for girls, right? Do you really want to spend the rest of time walking in fields, picking flowers, combing your hair, wearing fancy clothes, eating fruit, and singing songs about happy ever after with a bunch of women?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what I want.”
“But… why?”
“It sounds relaxing,” I said. “I’ve been killed once. Don’t feel like doing it again. And seriously, I never liked any of those guys. I’d rather be chilling with my family. Eternity with Frida and the girls sounds rather wonderful.”
She rubbed her bruised chin. “Okay, then,” she said. “It’s your choice. I’ll tell Odin we decided you weren’t worthy of Valhalla.”
Snorri snickered. Skögul cuffed the back of his head. “You’re not the big man you think you are,” she told him. “There’s a lot of people in Valhalla looking forward to seeing you. So, let’s go, fat boy.” She dragged him onto her horse and smiled. It wasn’t a pretty smile. I think he pissed himself.
Göndul’s smile was much more pleasant. “You’re weird,” she said.
“I know,” I replied. “Shall we?”
The Viking afterlife has always seemed weird to me. If there is an afterlife, I want to spend it relaxing and lazing around, not in an endless party. Parties get boring after a while, and an eternity of it sounds like a terrible idea. So I was slightly surprised to find that Valhalla wasn’t the only option. There are, in fact, several afterlives in Norse mythology. It took me a while to figure out how to turn the idea of Fólkvangr into a story, but as soon as the first line came to me, the rest just wrote itself in about half an hour.
I admit, I did take one major liberty with the mythology. Fólkvangr isn’t for girls. According to Norse tradition, half of those who die in battle go to Valhalla with Odin, the rest go to Fólkvangr with Freyja. Everyone else goes to Hel. Apologies to the purists.
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Enjoyed this story very much, Matt
I saw one interpretation of the Gylfaginning that says half of those slain in battle go to Valhalla, the other half getting claimed by Freyja in her capacity as (supposedly) a war goddess. On balance I prefer your version.