Odin and the Valkyrmr 105 



And in that Asgaard there has been prepared a 

 special home for all heroes. It is called Valholl, the 

 hall of the chosen, the hall of the heroes, and is pre- 

 sided over by Odin and his Valkyriur, ' the choosers of 

 the slain,' whose business it is from every battlefield to 

 select the heroes who are worthy to go to Valholl. 



The imagination of the Norsemen did really behold 

 that celestial company : Odin riding through the air on 

 his eight-footed horse Sleipnir, the swiftest of steeds, 

 and with him riding his troop of shield-maidens — ' three 

 nines of maidens,' as one poem says — mounted upon 

 tlieir horses, their bare-backed steeds. And the theory 

 which lay at the root of all this business of choosing 

 slain warriors and transporting them to Valholl w^as 

 that the powers of rude nature, the Giants and Trolls, 

 were always ready to make war on the abode of the 

 gods, and that one day they would all combine for one 

 great assault upon it, the issue of which no man could 

 foresee. 



This is, in the language of sober prose, the myth of 

 Odin and the Valkyriur, and of Valholl (Walhalla). 

 But prose is not the form in which it should be uttered. 

 To appreciate it we have to look at it through the 

 medium of the old northern poetry, 



' Three troops of maidens, though one maid foremost rode, 

 A white and helmed maid : 



Their horses shook tliemselves, and from tlieir manes there fell 

 Dew in the deep dales and on the high hills hail. ' 



Many other lesser gods are mentioned. Bragi is one, 

 a god of poetry, and also in a manner a god of rash and 

 boasting vows (whence our 'brag'). For it was the 

 custom at feasts to hand round a cup called the Bragi- 



