Feasting Halls for Living and Dead
In Norse mythology, there are many great halls. It seems as if one were a god or a goddess, it was essential to have a great place to hold banquets, to celebrate and even to grieve or simply to have a grand old feast, to come together for a mighty, what we might call, party. These halls seem to be a distinguishing feature of this mythology, both in a material sense, they were mighty buildings, but also in a community sense, they were places for the gods and goddesses, heroes and warriors and heroines, to meet and enjoy each other’s company in a friendly setting, and to enjoy what the land and nature had to offer meet and drink.
One of the grandest of these halls was Valhalla. It was in Asgard. And it is a vast place, so much so that it was hard to see the opposing wall inside, and there were four, 540 doors which could be thrown wide open, and 800 warriors could enter each of the doors at a time, and inside, there was a huge fire that blazed down the middle. And there was room and a welcome for all. And indeed, it was needed. This was where 1000s of Odins, dead warriors who were killed in battle were taken and for those who wished to come, none were refused entry. There was space for all.
Now, after the Battle of the Gods, there was much need for this, because there were many battles going on in the Norse world, between the world of the humans and between worlds. Odin indeed, is the Great Father God. He who had been known as the wise wanderer, had now become a fierce God of War. He was called Igg the Terrible, and he would turn up at one of the many battles on his great eight leg steed and decide who would win and who would die.
Following Odin were a band of tall and beautiful maidens, brave and wearing Shining Armor with winged helmets, riding horses. These were the Valkyries. They were from Asgard, and they were Odin’s maidens, but they did not live in Asgard. They flew around in white cloaks of swans, feathers that Odin had given them. The Valkyries would choose who would live or die. And this, by the way, was after Odin himself had chosen who would win the overall battle. The Valkyries would also bring the dead Warriors up to Valhalla on their horses, and there the heroes and warriors would live a life of glory, and if on arrival, the hero had been particularly brave, Odin would make a point of giving them a drink of sweet mead.
In Valhalla, there were two magical animals. There was a strange goat grazing in the branches and whose others just supplied Mead without end. And there was also a great pig, a hog who, after filling the platters of the warriors with fresh pork, came to life again at night again and again. These, like Daghda’s Cauldron from the Irish Myths, were sources of other world abundance in that they never emptied what they supplied never ran out.
Now Odin and his sons, Tyr and Hod, Vidir and Vali would come to the feast with the dead warriors. They, too, these gods loved the feast, and Odin had a seat of honor at the north wall in Valhalla. And they would feast till exhausted and sleep all over the Great Hall and benches covered in straw.
As well as feasting, there was fighting. The fighting didn’t stop because of them being in Valhalla, and when they woke in the morning, typically, it would be in a grumpy mood, and they would chew magic mushrooms to get them into a frenzy. And this then led to intense battles. But at the end of the day, when the bell rang, it was back again for another feast. So they fought hard in the day, and they feasted hard at night, and here they would be served by the Valkyries, their plates and goblets continually filled by these wonderful maidens.
Now there was another hall in Valhalla, and this was Freya’s, and it was called Sessrúmnir, and it too was a place of feasting. And Freyja would take her share of the warriors slain on the field of battle. She would take half of them so they were chosen by the Vanir Goddess of Love, to feast with her until the time of Ragnarok. This hall, Freya’s Hall, had a different atmosphere from the boisterousness of Odins, and this was filled with heavenly music, and it was a place of great beauty. It was very different in feel. And there were women there too. Now Freya was busy, for not only did she look after her own half of the warriors, she would also help Odin entertain his heroes in Valhalla.
And what this meant was that Freya did not have time to spend with all the other goddesses. So what they did was gather around Frigg, who was Odins favorite wife. Now, Frigg was a goddess of prophecy, and she understood the mysteries of what womanhood. She too lived in a splendid Hall. This is the third of the halls that we would cover, and the hall was called Fensalir, Fen Halls, and it was situated in the wetlands of Asgard.
Now, Frigg was a weaver, and she spent her time spinning yarn while keeping an eye on the households and the humans in the households. And if she noticed a hard-working housewife, she would send a piece from her own weaving down. And like many objects of the other world, this piece of the weaving, this yarn never ran out.
So what about the goddesses who gathered around Frigg? What do we know about these key female characters? Three were three were Frigg’s special ladies in waiting, called Fulla, Gna and Lin and they acted to protect any men or women who Frigg had identified. and two other goddesses, Eir and Var also had important roles. Eir was a goddess of healing and Var, the true one, played a role somewhere between a priestess and a judge, in that she listened to vows made between men and women and acted when these vows were broken.
And there were two other goddesses, Saga and Gefjon, who looked and behaved so much like Frigg that many thought the three were one and the same, but they were different. The Goddess Saga was a great storyteller, gifted with second sight. And Odin loved wisdom, and he loved Sagas stories, and each day he would come down to listen to her stories of great heroes and great deeds in Friggs Hall. Saga herself had a great hall Sökkvabekkr, the Hall of Saga, it was near the water’s edge and the sounds of waves would mix with her enchanted stories.
Gefjon also had a story to tell. One day, she went with Odin to Finn, his favorite Island. It’s now Denmark. And she decided she would like such an island. So in disguise as a Midgard woman, she goes to the king of what is now Sweden. She too was a gifted storyteller, and was soon much in the king’s favor, and she asked him if she could have all the land that she could plow in a day and a night. He laughed, but he also agreed, and quickly Gefjon heads off to Jotunheim, marries a Jotun giant and has four sons, and she turns these four sons into bulls and puts them so to work pulling her plow, and the plow dug so deep that it cut the land loose, and what she now had was a beautiful island nowadays. This is now Copenhagen.
And so we have all these stories of Valhalla and the halls in Valhalla, and we have the stories of the Goddesses, all of whom had important roles. And many of these great figures also had great halls. Other figures had great halls for meeting and feasting and stories. We haven’t had, haven’t time here to speak to the Halls of Balder and Forseti and Vidar and Njord and Skaldi, nor indeed the hall inHel, Eljudnir which was damp with rain and sleet, and a place where Balder was as he waited for Ragnarok, the final battle.
And what about Gimli, the fire shelter, the Hall at which the gods would meet after all the other halls were razed to the ground during the devastation of Ragnarok. At all times, halls are there in the Norse Myths places to meet and come together during normal times and troubled times. Halls, as we have seen were both for this life, and indeed after life, there was a welcome for the dead in either Valhalla with Odin or Sessrúmnir with Freya and then Friggs Hall for the Goddesses for whom storytelling seems to have been a special and much appreciated art.
