what is valhalla to a viking

Valhalla is a hall of the slain in Norse mythology, where warriors killed in battle go after death. It is depicted as a splendid palace, roofed with shields, where the warriors feast on the flesh of a boar slaughtered daily and made whole again each evening. They drink liquor that flows from the udders of a goat, and their sport is to fight one another every day. The people who reside in Valhalla are known collectively as the Einherjar, which is the plural of Einheri, literally ‘army of one’, so they’re the most fearsome and brutal of warriors. Valhalla is located in Asgard, the gods’ celestial fortress. It is believed that only those who died in battle had a chance of going to Valhalla. Women did not go to Valhalla nor Folkvangr, and their fate after death is not clarified in any of the literary sources. Valhalla was a late era bolt-on to a whole broad collection of Germanic/Northern European belief systems.