Valhalla

Valhalla was the famed golden hall presided over by Odin, where the Valkyries bore the honored dead so that they might feast and train as Einherjar until the coming of Ragnarök. Yet it was far more than a hall of glory. Beneath the legend lay a primordial force that judged and tested every soul who entered, a power that even the All-Father could never bend to his will.

The hall of the chosen dead#

Valhalla was the home of the warriors gathered by the Valkyries, the winged figures charged with carrying the worthy dead from the field of battle. Half of those who fell in combat were borne there to become Einherjar, and within the great hall they would feast, drink, and train against the day of Ragnarök, when they would march out to face the giants of Jotunheim. Apart from the halls where the dead made their home, there was a separate part of Valhalla, unconnected to the rest, where the chosen warriors trained.

The exact place of Valhalla was a secret known only to Odin and the Valkyries. Freya said only that it existed within Asgard and beyond it at once, and the precise truth of where the dead passed remained uncertain.

A trial of the soul#

Valhalla was more than a place of reward. It served as a gauntlet to help the dead reckon with and resolve the lives they had lived. Those who found some measure of closure and proved themselves whole could move on, but those unable to make peace with their lives became permanently trapped within a Valhalla of their own. According to Sigrun, some of the chosen preferred to keep fighting in the gauntlet rather than depart, while elsewhere there were larger neighborhoods where the worthy dead lived, socialized, and trained until Ragnarök.

The place drew upon the memories of those who entered, raising up the lands they had once walked and the enemies they had once faced. It sought wholeness and balance in those who came, demanding that a warrior master not only the trials before him but the manner in which he overcame them. While the Valkyries could guide those within, it was Valhalla itself that judged their progress, and it made and kept its own rules.

The curse of the Valkyries#

When Odin cursed the Valkyries, they could no longer carry out their task of gathering the slain. The dead swelled within Helheim until the realm overflowed, and the dead began to walk the mortal realm as savage corpses called Hel-Walkers. The freeing of the Valkyries offered to restore them to their duty and bring balance back to the realms.

Within Asgard, Valhalla also bound the Einherjar to endless rebirth: whenever they fell, they returned at once to the great hall to rise again. For this reason, during Ragnarök the link to Valhalla had to be severed, lest the slain of Asgard return without end.

The truth of Valhalla and Tyr's challenge#

Though the people of the Nine Realms believed Valhalla to be Odin's own creation and a part of Asgard, this was a lie spread by the All-Father. Tyr revealed that Valhalla was in truth a primordial force, and that Odin had attempted to seize control of it and failed. Valhalla was meant for looking inward for answers, and Odin, who could only ever look outside himself, could never truly master it. Mimir likewise named Valhalla and the Valkyries a primordial power.

To enter, one had to have died at some point in life, though the death need not have come in battle or even within the Nine Realms. This allowed Kratos, who had died several times during his years in Greece, as well as Mimir and Tyr, to pass within, while Freya, who had never died, could not. In the manner of the Greek world, Valhalla stood as the counterpart to the Elysium Fields, a place set apart for souls who had met a noble and glorious end.

After the war was won, Kratos and Mimir received a strange letter telling them where the entrance to Valhalla lay, and bidding them enter to master themselves and become whole. The letter had been sent by Tyr, who awaited Kratos at the summit of his own Valhalla within a recreation of Greece. There Tyr set himself as a self-chosen final challenge, to test whether Kratos was focused enough in spirit for the harsher trials the place would make of him.