Warriors of the Gods

The gods of Norse Mythology will not fight alone in the awakening of Ragnarök, they will have help from the mortal men and women from the realm of Midgard.

“So spoke Ganglere: you say, that every one of the men, that since from the beginning of times and died by weapons, are now for Odin in Valhalla. What has he there, to keep them satisfied, because I think, that there certainly, must be a big amount of people there.

Then answered Hög (the high one): True is it, as you spoke, that there is a big amount of people there, and far many more will join in, but they seem still too few, when the wolf will arrive. However there is never too many in Valhalla, that they couldn’t get enough pork by the svine, who’s name is Sährimner: he is boiled ever day, and is still in one piece come evening. But on the question you are asking, I believe, that only a few are wise enough to answer. The chef is named Andhrimner, the cauldron Eldhrimner, and it is told:

It is written down time and time again in the Eddas about the Einhärjar, the champions of Odin. Before the halls of Valhalla is where their beginning takes shape.

To become a champion for Odin you first need to be picked up from the battlefield one way or the other, or if you were “unlucky” not to die the heroes-death on the battlefield there were rituals to be held in order to make up for it. Like placing miniatures of weapons into graves and throwing spears in honour of Odin.

The Einhärjar were picked up by the Valkyries from the battlefields. Valkyries were female beings, sent out by Odin and at times Freyja. The Valkyries brought the fallen brave warriors to Valhalla (and Freyjas hall Sessrumnir). The ones entering the halls of Valhalla would become Einhärjar.

As mentioned in Snorri’s Gylfaginning, the halls of Valhalla are equipped enough to keep them fed and has more than enough room for them. There are 540 gates in Valhalla and each gate fits around 800 Einhärjar at once. Valhalla in other words is pretty huge, which is needed, since the warriors probably still keeps gathering up throughout all ages of war.

Every morning the Einhärjar puts their armours on and collects their weapons and then they gather outside of the hall. Outside they start beating the crap out of each other. Limbs, blood and even heads are flying, it is a game of “last man standing wins”.

Come evening, all of the limbs start assembling again with their correct owners and the warriors are as good as new again. Then it is time to feast with their fellow Einhärjar until the next morning. Every day they get better and better at battling.

Svinfylking is actually an offensive battle strategy used during Scandinavian Ironage and by (amongst others) the Vikings. The old Norse word “Svinfylking” translates into “Boar snout”, and if you look at the formation of this technique you’ll see why.

It was said to be just as powerful as an angry boar. The triangular shape of the middle formation was a successful tactic to break through the enemy’s armies. So why are we writing about this historical tactical move in this blogpost about the warriors of the gods?

There are several indications that boars have played a huge role during Scandinavian Iron Age, and they are often times found in connection to war and warriors. Even though the tactical move Svinfylking isn’t a type of warrior per se, it tells us a story about how much these animals were connected to war. The god Freyr is heavily connected to boars and has his own war-boar named Gullinbursti. There has been archaeological finds of iron age helmets decorated with boars, one very famous example of this is the Torslunda Plates. Where you can see boar-warriors getting ready for battle. As long with the Vendel Era helmet from the area that gave the period its name: Vendel. This helmet is decorated with a big boar that turns into a human face in the front. Maybe it could be linked depicting Freyr and Gullinbursti riding into battle?

The Haraldskvæði is a skaldic poem written by the Norwegian skald Þorbjörn Hornklofi during the 9th century. It is supposed to play out as a conversation between a raven and a valkyrie, talking about how brave and amazing Harald Fairhair was during his ruling. From this fragmented poem we find out about the berserkers and their character.

Berserkers are usually referenced to as “bear warriors”, since their name comes from the old Norse words for bear and shirt. It is also a reference to “going berserk” which is a mental state of going absolutely violently-war-crazy. Going so crazy that you wouldn’t care getting hit by an arrow or a spear, but just pushed on. Which can also be seen in Hornklofi’s poem, where the berserkers protecting the kings, princes and jarls is said to even before battle having blood on their armour and weapons, and having a reliable mentality where they would hack though shields of the enemy. The berserkers are usually also connected to animistic and shapeshifting rituals, where the lines between human and animal is theorised to have become blurred. There are also old sagas with examples of warriors turning into bears, as is the case with the saga hero Bödvar Bjarki. They are also sometimes depicted as biting their shields in a way of psychologically terrify their enemies, as with the depiction of berserkers in the Lewis chessmen find, dating to the 1100’s.

The ulfhednar are usually always connected to the berserkers, and sometimes it is hard to tell if they are the exact type of warriors side by side, if one could be both at the same time or maybe if they are different ranks of warriors. What is written down about the ulfhednar is however that they wear wolfskin (ulfhednar translates to wolfcoats), where the berserkers are usually depicted wearing bearskin. In the poem above the skald is mentioning warriors in wolfskins. The blurred lines between beast and man is also true for the ulfhednar. In Egil Skallagrimssons saga (circa year 850-1000) is a part telling the story of the man Kväll-Ulf. Ulf was a man from Fjärdafylke, Norway, that had gone viking together with his friend Kårem who is described as a berserker, and Ulf had thereafter become a wealthy man both in riches and children. He was also connected to Harald Fairhair, king of Norway. Ulf had a quirk however. Every evening the wise Ulf turned, and became incredibly aggressive and is described to have shapeshifted. The name Ulf is Norse for wolf, and Kväll-Ulf means Evening-Wolf. Archaeological finds of berserkers and ulfhednar can be found on the Torslunda plates as well.

Both berserkers and ulfhednar are also very much connected to Odin, both through finds and the sagas. In the Ynglinga Saga it is written:

Helheim is not only a horrid realm you’d never want to visit, but the biggest realm of the dead also serves a further purpose (than just being horrible to poor dead people and keeping the god Baldur hostage).

Since Hel is the biggest and most habited realm, there is no denying that creating an army out of all of these dead would be smart if there was ever a need. And a need there is indeed, but more about that is found further down in this post. By the Nastrabeach there is a huge ship being built, out of dead men’s nails. It is described as a huge dragon ship. This is the ship that will carry the army of dead until the last battle Ragnarök. Which means that if all of us make sure to groom properly we can hinder the ship from ever being finished.

The army of Helheim will be joined by Loki, Garmr, Jörmungand, and Fenrir at the day of battle. They will also have backup from the frost-jötunns coming out of Nifelheim, and Surtr with his fiery army coming out of Muspelheim. Right behind the backup is also all of the evil characters found in Norse Mythology like trolls, dragons, serpents, werewolves and other monsters.

Finally chaos and darkness will be cast upon the worldcreation, it is inevitable. The apocalypse of the Norse Mythology is named Ragnarök. But it doesn’t just something that happens overnight, it will creep up on both mankind and the gods. First there will be three very harsh winters in a row, where bitter wars will break loose in Midgard. These wars will be everyone against everyone, brothers turn on each other as well as fathers and sons. Humankind will become bitter, angry, violent and greedy. When this phase is over the eternal winter will come, the Fimbulvetr. This winter will last for three years straight and kill most living creatures with its ice-cold grip.

The next phase of Ragnarök is being introduced when Sköll finally catches up with the sun and swallows it whole. At the same time Hati will catch up with the moon and devour it. This leaves the ice-cold world in complete darkness. This is followed up by earthquakes caused by Fenrir, Garmr and Loki breaking their chains to finally once again be free. This will cause the midgardserpent Jörmungand to wake up, and destroy Midgard on his way up out of the sea, meanwhile Fenrir is swallowing big pieces of it with his big jaw.

Next up there is a rooster waking up all of the dead living in Helheim, and the huge dragonship Naglfar leaves its port soon enough. When the army of Helheim, Muspelheim and Nifelheim marches against Asgard the huge rainbow bridge Bifrost breaks. Meanwhile Heimdallr has already blown the gjallarhorn to warn the gods, valkyries and elves of the upcoming war. Everyone gets ready for the last battle. Ragnarök is the ending of most of the gods and their evil enemies. Odin dies battling Fenrir, which becomes slain by Vidarr avenging his father. Thor successfully defeats Jörmungand finally, but also dies after the huge serpent has poisoned him during the battle. And poor Freyr doesn’t have his magical sword when Ragnarök happens, so he bravely puts up a fight against Surtr, who becomes the death of Freyr. Garmr and Tyr kills eachother, as well as Loki and Heimdallr both kills each other after an epic duel. At the end of the battle Surtr breaks the world open with his huge fire-sword. And the world once again turns into the same chaos and nothingness as in the time before time, when the nothingness Ginnungagap was everywhere.

Don’t worry however! The worldcreation will finally once more rise up from the fire, chaos and seas, purified from Ragnarök’s evils. The sun will once more rise up on the sky and the world wont be drowned in darkness anymore. Even though many of the gods dies during Ragnarök, it is far from all of them that does. As you might remember; Vidarr avenged his father Odin and killed the giant wolf Fenrir off. He survives Ragnarök until the new world. Thors sons Modi and Magni survives as well, as well as Odin’s other son Vali. And since Helheim has been left unattended and next to empty, both Hödur and Baldur escapes from there to join their brothers in the pursuit of rebuilding Asgard. The world-tree itself has survived, Yggrasil has hidden away two creatures from Midgard, so even two humans made it. Liv and Livtrasir.

It is not only gods and humans that has survived Ragnarök, also the evil Nidhöggr is still alive and is predicted to be the cause of the next apocalypse.

I hope you enjoyed this post about a very grim and dark topic. It is however cool to know that humans during many different ages believed that there is more to death and life than we would ever expect. Hopefully we won't have to live through any Fimbulvetr soon.

Take care friends! – Elin aka MooseLady