"I want Hrist and Mist to bring me a horn of ale"

Reading the Eddas, one gets the impression that valkyrie is not so much a divine status as job title. I've lost count* of the number of king's daughters who are valkyries who ride through the air and sea, and collect men from battle, and resist marriages arranged by their families. Sometimes when one marries -- a man of her own choosing, thank you very much -- she stays on the job, but some retire and dwindle into domesticity. (Presumably Odin has to go recruiting every so often. One wonders whether he finds this a tedious chore or a chance to check out those cute viking girls.)

Needless to say, I'm all over this. The story of Helgi Hundingsbane and Sigrun particularly catches my eye, despite eliding over her difficulties returning to civilian life and the deplorable lack of gratuitous nudity.**

Though those both can, of course, be corrected in retelling.


* In part from textual difficulties -- there's conflations and doublings and name mismatches. Not to mention reincarnations.

** I'm also intrigued by the symbolic connections that strongly imply valkyries are raven-maidens.

---L.