THE VALKYRIES
Norse Mythology
Meaning: female choosers of the slain
ODIN’S battle or shield maidens
They rode over the battlefields and selected the EINHERJAR (“heroic dead”) who would go to VALHALLA. They probably derived from something more dreadful than the attendants of Valhalla, and must have originally been the goddesses of slaughter itsElf, wild Amazon-like creatures who took great delight in the severed limbs and bloody wounds of battle. Something of this early terror can be imagined in an account of the battle of Stamford Bridge, King Harold’s victory over the Norwegian army dreamt of a Valkyrie before the battle. He thought he was on the king of Norway’s ship, when he beheld a great witch on an island, with a fork in one hand to rake up the dead and a trough in the other to catch all of the blood.