Odin's Hall of the Slain
Valhalla, 'the hall of the slain', is Odin's hall in Gladsheim in Asgard. The Grimnismal describes a war-built architecture: rafters of spear-shafts, a roof of golden shields, benches strewn with mail-coats, and five hundred and forty doors, from each of which eight hundred warriors will march abreast at the world's end. The warriors gathered by the valkyries, the einherjar, live an afterlife designed as training: every morning they arm themselves and cut each other down in the courtyard, and every evening the dead rise whole and sit down together to feast.
The feast never runs short. The cook Andhrimnir boils the great boar Saehrimnir each day, and the beast is whole again by morning; on the roof stands the she-goat Heidrun, browsing the branches of the tree beside the hall, her udders running with mead enough to fill vat after vat. Odin sits at the table but eats nothing, tossing his meat to the two wolves at his feet and living on wine alone. To die in battle and enter Valhalla was the proudest end a Viking warrior could imagine; the tenth-century poem Eiriksmal shows Odin sending heroes to the doors to welcome King Eirik Bloodaxe to his seat.
All the feasting and daily slaughter aim at a single date: at Ragnarok the einherjar march out with Odin to the plain of Vigrid, knowing the battle is already lost, and going anyway.
