The Norse Pagan Afterlife: to Valhal or Bust?

When anyone converts to a new faith, one of the first things they explore is what’s going to happen after they die. Which is a little funny, isn’t it? Only after you convert do you wonder what’s going to happen to you. 

You’d be in good company. In fact, when we look at literature and archeological findings, it doesn’t appear that many in the Pagan Germanic world did an awful lot of thinking about the afterlife either.

But here is what we know.

Death and Afterlives in Germanic History and Literature

In Bede’s famous story of King Edwin’s conversion, one of his counselors compares human life to a swallow flying through a feasting hall, experiencing a brief moment of light and warmth between two dark un- knowns (Ecclesiastical History II.13, transl. King, pp. 282-285). If the story accurately reflects attitudes of the time, it may mean that the pre-Chris- tian Anglo-Saxons didn’t have a well-developed idea of what happens to people after their deaths. 

Today, we might see this sort of vagueness about the afterlife as a feature, not a bug. As you’ll see from these examples, most of the concepts of the afterlife for Pagans in ancient times was some version of “you’ll just keep doing whatever you were doing in life.”

Dying into the Land

Some dead folk continue to live in their burial mounds, whether as land-alfs (discussed in Volume 2, Chapter 16) or as draugar (walking corpses). Others “die into” certain holy mountains. This seems to have been a belief held by particular families, such as the families of Icelandic settlers Thorolf Mosturskeggi, Hreiðarr of Steinsstad, Sel-Þórir, Svanr the wizard, and the matriarch Auðr (Ellis, Road to Hel, pp. 87-89). The belief in an afterlife in a holy mountain is also found in a 1723 manu- script describing Sámi belief in souls of the dead living in a saivo, a sacred mountain owned by a spirit being that has been a “guardian angel” for the deceased and his or her ancestors. The dead in the saivo can protect their living kin and receive sacrifices from them (Nordland, “Valhall and Helgafell,” pp. 70-74).

Many Germanic graves seem to have been made in the shape of houses, and many were outfitted with food, drink, and grave-goods for the deceased to use in the howe. (Toplak, “Deconstructing the Deviant Burials,” pp. 85-86).

Traveling to the Worlds of the Gods

Besides the popular stories of Odin in Valhall and Hel in Helheim, other gods may receive the souls of certain populations of the dead. 

Gefjon is said to receive un-married girls after death (Gylfaginning 35). Freyja receives half the battle-slain, and according to Egil Skallagrimsson’s daughter, she also receives women (see Volume 2, Chapter 9).

Since the gods and goddesses have their own halls, many Heathens believe that people who are deeply devoted to a particular deity might go to live with that deity after death. 

However, for some deities, there is no textual evidence. If Tyr, for example, feasts his dead worshippers in his hall, none of our sources have anything to say about it. Nor is an afterlife in the hall of a deity necessarily an outcome that all Heathens would want.

Valhalla is not the Norse Pagan Heaven

This is the one you came here for, right? No. Valhalla is not the Viking Heaven. 

 

The Valhalla that people think of now is more a product of the Romantic imagination than the pre-Christian as far as we know. That’s not to say that Valhalla doesn’t appear in Germanic Heroic poetry. It certainly does. But it doesn’t appear to have occupied nearly the space in the imagination that it does in modern culture.

 

Many Heathens today believe in the existence of Valhalla, especially those who have served in the armed forces. 

If we think about it in terms of “doing what you were doing in life” then the explanation becomes a little more clear. Warriors who swore fealty to a Lord in life and proved themselves in battle would swear fealty to Odin in death. In fact, the fact that the warriors are brought by the Valkyries and given mead to drink is a recreation of the ceremony that warriors would have done in life when they swore fealty to their Lord.

There are various opinions in modern Heathenry as to whether one must be an actual combatant dying in an armed struggle to reach Valhall, or whether more metaphorical warriors might be invited as well.

John Mainer, a retired combat veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces, believes that Valhall is not even for all soldiers, many of whom return home and learn to live in the world again. Valhall is for those soldiers who never truly come home (“Valhalla,” p. 9):

Some can’t return. This too is a price demanded by the people. The true body count of a war is not measured at the time the guns at the front go quiet. The true body count will not be known until the last soldier is able to put down the bottle, the needle, or the gun before he finishes dying from the internal wounds with which he walked home from war.

They are not lost in this life; their sacrifices for our secular goals are redeemed by a second sacrifice in a nobler cause.

Is there a Norse Pagan Hell?

No. Norse Pagans don’t and have never in general believed in a place of eternal torment reserved for people who doubt the existence of our Gods or people who chew too loudly or talk during movies.

Helheim, on the other hand, is a place described in literature as an “underworld” ruled by the Goddess Hel. 

The Goddess Hel is not regarded by most Norse Pagans as a Devil or a malevolent character by any means. She is worshiped today as a Goddess who welcomes weary souls–her boundless hospitality is her great gift to the departed.

Snorri Sturluson describes Hel’s realm as a dreary place (Gylfaginning 34), but his description is al- most certainly based on medieval Christian texts. Against it, we can set the descriptions from Baldrs draumar and Hermóðr’s journey that show Hel’s hall richly prepared to receive Baldr, with gold and mead.

The main difference between Hel and Valhall is that Hel seems to be a rather quiet place, as seen by expressions such as hvílask í helju, “to rest in Hel,” and Saxo’s reference to placidae sedes, “quiet homes.” 

Niflhel and Christian syncretism

A few texts mention Niflhel, “Mist Hel,” which Snorri makes out to be a place where wicked people go, “dying out of Hel” a second time after they have died and left Midgard. This may or may not be the same as Nástrǫndr, “Corpse Beach,” the location of a hall where the wicked must wade through venom and be torn by a wolf (Vǫluspá 37-38).

There is one Icelandic poem in Eddic meter, the Sólarljóð or “Lay of the Sun.” Composed in the 13th century, the poem is spoken by a deceased father, addressing his son from the afterlife and recounting his journey there. The father sees various punishments: the envious have bloody runes carved on their breasts, fraudsters have to carry lead burdens, robbers are attacked by dragons, slanderers have their eyes torn out by ravens, and so on (verses 57-67). 

However, despite its Heathen flavor, Sólarljóð is a thoroughly Christian poem. “Guided tours” of the afterlife, with detailed previews of the joys of Heaven and the torments of Hell, are a tradition in medieval literature. Some, such as the prose account Duggals leiðsla, were popular in medieval Iceland (Svanhildur Óskarsdottir, “Prose of Christian Instruction,” pp. 350-351).

Joining the Ancestors

Whatever a dead person’s fate, the bonds of kinship still held after death. Thorolf Mostarskegg’s family feasts together after death in the mountain Helgafell; Egil Skallagrimsson states that his dead son has gone to “visit his kin” in Sonatorrek 18. As Sigmund is dying in Vǫlsunga saga 12, his last words are ek mu nu vitja frænda vára framgengina, “I must now go to our kin who have gone before.” 

From the Continent, we have the story of King Radbod of Frisia, who was standing at the edge of the baptismal font when he asked where his ancestors were. When the missionary responded that they were in Hell, Radbod stepped away from the font and refused baptism, saying that he would not separate from the fellowship of his ancestors who had ruled the Frisians before him (Vita Wulframi, transl. Chisholm, Grove and Gallows, p. 61).

Rebirth

As Hilda R. Ellis has discussed at some length in The Road to Hel, there are suggestions in the lore of a belief in rebirth.

There is some question as to whether the individual consciousness is reborn (through inheritance or name-giving) or not. 

The most famous prose description of the Norse belief in rebirth comes from Óláfs þáttr Geirstaðaálfs, preserved in the extended version of Óláfs saga ins helga found in Flateyjarbók and other manuscripts (trans- lated in Waggoner, “Tales from the Flateyjarbók VII”). It comes by way of a very interesting denial.

 

In this saga, it is told how the dead Óláfr Geirstaðaálfr comes to a man named Hrani in a dream, telling him to break into Óláfr’s own howe, cut the head off the corpse, and take the sword, ring, and girdle from the mound. He is to put the girdle around the waist of the pregnant queen Ásta and tell her that if her child is a boy, he is to be named Óláfr, and he shall have the ring and sword. 

 

At some point in the tale, our bouncing baby boy Óláfr converted to Christianity, which makes this next part extremely interesting.

 

Later in his saga (chapter 106, titled “Óðinn came to King Óláfr with deception and wiles”), Óláfr is visited by Odin, who speaks to him of kings of old and asks which among them he would prefer to have been if he could choose. 

 

Óláfr says that he would not prefer to be any heathen man, king or otherwise, although eventually he admits to liking the legendary hero Hrólfr Kráki.  But when he recognizes Odin, he throws a prayer book at the god.

 

The chapter then reveals Óláfr’s feelings about the possibility of reincarnation:

It is said that on one occasion, a retainer of the king, who isn’t named, asked King Olaf as he was riding with his household next to the mound of Olaf Geirstadalf: “Tell me, lord, whether you were buried here.”

The king answered him: “My spirit (ǫnd) never had two bodies, and it will not have them, not now and not at the Resurrection. And if I say something else, then the correct catholic faith is not in me.”

Then the retainer said, “People have said that when you came to this place, you said, ‘Here we were, and here we fared.’ “

The king answered, “I have never said that, and I will never say that.” And the king was greatly troubled in his mind, and he spurred his horse at once and fled from the place as quickly as he could.

As Hilda R. Ellis comments, “Here the belief in rebirth seems to be clearly expressed, all the more convincingly because of the Christian king’s determined denial of it later on” (Road to Hel, p. 139). The argument here is that “the King doth protest too much” and that such a remark would only be delivered that way if the belief in rebirth were already a widespread Heathen belief that Olaf, as a Christian, would have to deny.

What Heathens Today Believe about the Afterlife

My belief is that death is just another step in the journey. I believe that life, like time, is cyclical and not linear. We live many lives, with the soul learning from each life. I also believe that individual souls can dwell with their patron deities should those deities invite them to their halls. Otherwise, the soul goes to Hel where it rests in between lives and reviews the experiences it went through. 

—Alex LaFountain

Specifically, my wishes involve natural burial with a few “grave goods” in the form of small, biodegradable gifts for some of my spiritual family: sort of like bringing presents in a suitcase while traveling. I enjoy life and plan to keep living it, but having a loving bond with these deities, including with Death Herself, helps ease the unavoidable fact of mortality.

—Bat Collazo

Hel is a place of rest, of peace, and I do not believe the realm to have any army that will rise for a literal carrying out of the Ragnarok. In life there is strife enough, and in death we might know peace, nourished by the renown we have gathered and the lineage of our descendants.

—Torolf Brucesson

The paradox for the polytheist is that we wish to preserve the plurality and diversity of our gods and god-homes. My instinct is that, in the greater reality, it’s possible to inhabit both the individual afterlives of our religious traditions, such as Valhǫll and Sessrumnir and Paradise and the Summerlands, while at the same time sharing a common ground where the reality of our interdependence is more mystically obvious than it is here in Midgard. It would probably be more correct to say we’re already “dead”, and we always have been, we just get temporarily blinded to that life so that we can get on with the business of being human for a while.

—Dr. Emily Kelly