The Valkyrie are Odin's fierce maidens of the battlefield. In Norse mythology they serve their god by riding down on their war horses to the human world, choosing who among the slain warriors on the battlefield would be taken to Valhalla - that mythical hall of dead warriors, where men could feast and relax until the time came to support Odin in Ragnarok.
The depiction of the Valkyrie has, as with all good myth, altered somewhat in the telling over the passage of time. In favour in more recent times is a portrayal of noble and elegant riders, who sought only to help Odin in finding the most worthy of warriors, and oftentimes themselves falling in love with those men - protecting those they favoured.
In heathen times they were decidely less congenial. Those men the Valkyrie did not favour were destined for foul ends.
In a poem contained within Njal’s Saga, twelve Valkyrie sit about weaving tragedy into the fate of those warriors they dislike, using intestines for thread and severed heads for weights.
The Anglo-Saxons wrote of them as female spirits of carnage, and in Celtic mythology the Valkyrie's visciousness and ruthlessness is reflected in the war goddess', Morrigan and Badb. (Source: Norse-mythology.org)
✨The Diabolus Chronicles contains not just the Valkyrie, but the Morrigan and Badb. Ready to find out what happens when goddess' of war meet?
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