The Death and The Afterlife in Norse Mythology

In Norse belief, death was a passage, not an end. Those slain in battle went to Odin’s Valhalla or to Freyja’s Fólkvangr; Snorri Sturluson sends those who die of sickness or old age to Hel, the drowned were said to go to Rán, wife of the sea-giant Ægir, and one Icelandic family expected to pass into a holy mountain. Ship burials and grave goods equipped the dead for what lay ahead.

Did you know that even death in Norse mythology was quite interesting? Dying is not the end, according to Vikings’ beliefs. They believed that after they die, the afterlife begins. Like a lot of people in many other cultures thought, dying is not the end of the path, but the beginning of a new one.

Afterlife in Norse mythology is a fascinating topic that extends above and beyond explaining various beliefs, customs, and traditional ways of honoring the dead. The sources are patchy, and they never set out one consistent scheme of the afterlife, but what survives may be the most interesting part of Norse myth, since this is where humans come closest to the Gods.

We’ll explain the afterlife and Vikings death in Norse paganism in detail. As strange as it may sound, the beginning of this journey starts with death. What warriors above all hoped for after death was a seat at Odin’s benches in Valhalla. However, it’s a long journey, and not every Viking will enter the halls of Valhalla.

Let’s start with the end of life.

The Viking Funeral

Death in Norse mythology and Viking funerals were specific events that included a lot of customs. Since Vikings believed that every one of them will leap into the afterlife, there were plenty of traditions that they used to adhere to at the funeral.

When a person died, they were often buried with their personal belongings, but not with random items. Graves tend to hold things that show who the dead had been and what work they did while they were among the living.

For example, some craftsmen were buried with the tools of their trade, smiths with hammers and tongs. Wealthy women were often buried with brooches, beads and other jewelry, while warriors were buried with their weapons. The Oseberg ship, buried in Norway in 834 with two women, also held a cart, sledges, beds and kitchen gear, and horses and dogs were laid in the grave. Ynglinga saga, written in Iceland in the 13th century, says that Odin’s law was to burn the dead with their property, and that each would come to Valhalla with the wealth laid on his pyre.

What Viking funerals are best remembered for is the ship. Both cremation and burial in the ground were practised, and which was more usual depended on the region and the period. The very wealthiest, however, were sometimes laid in a whole ship under a mound. Besides Oseberg, the best known is the Gokstad ship in Norway, buried around 900 with a man of about forty, and at Ladby in Denmark a chieftain was buried in a warship around 925.

The Viking Funeral

The famous picture of a burning ship pushed out to sea comes mostly from literature. In Gylfaginning, Snorri Sturluson’s guide to the myths written around 1220, the gods burn Baldr on his ship Hringhorni, and Ynglinga saga tells of King Haki, mortally wounded, who had his ship loaded with the dead and their weapons, set alight and sent out to sea under sail. Archaeology can only find what stayed on land: ships buried under mounds or burned on the pyre. Another kind of grave was the stone ship-setting, standing stones placed in the outline of a ship, as at Lindholm Høje in Denmark.

The fullest eyewitness account of a funeral comes from Ahmad ibn Fadlan, a member of the Abbasid caliph’s embassy to the Volga Bulghars, who met the Rus, traders generally thought to be Scandinavians, on the Volga in 922. When one of their great men died, he was laid in a temporary grave for ten days while new clothes were cut and sewn for him. On the day of the funeral he was dressed in a silk kaftan with gold buttons and a silk cap trimmed with sable, and set in a pavilion on his ship, which had been drawn up on land, with drink, fruit, bread, meat and onions beside him. There was heavy drinking throughout. Ibn Fadlan describes one funeral among the Rus, far from Scandinavia, so it shows what one community did, not a rule for everyone.

The “grave goods” were gifts for paying the last tribute and respect to a dead person. In general, the richer the grave, the higher the standing of the dead. All of the gifts, along with the body, were either burned or buried.

The death in Norse mythology was perceived as a significant journey for the person that died. Ibn Fadlan also saw a slave girl who had agreed to die with her master. She was killed on the ship by an old woman the Rus called the Angel of Death, helped by two men, and the ship was then set alight. Some Scandinavian graves with two bodies, one of them apparently killed, are read the same way, though archaeologists debate individual cases.

The Beliefs About the Afterlife in Norse Mythology

Death in Norse mythology means that when Vikings die, they go straight to Valhalla, right? Not quite.

There are several destinations, and the sources never sort them into one system. Valhalla is reserved for the warriors slain on the battlefield, and not for everybody. Where do all the other Norsemen and Norsewomen go after they die? First of all, let’s explain their beliefs from the beginning, and then we’ll go further into explaining the afterlife in Norse mythology.

Modern books often say that the Norse saw a person as made of several parts. The words come from the sources: hamr, the shape or “skin”, which a shape-shifter could change; hugr, mind or thought; fylgja, a “follower”, a guardian spirit often seen in dreams as an animal or a woman; and hamingja, luck, which could also appear as a spirit. No medieval text, however, lays these out as a fixed model of the soul. That tidy scheme is a modern reconstruction.

Some of the dead did not rest. The sagas tell of men who “walked again” after death, the creatures modern books call draugar. They are often men who were hard and unjust in life. In Eyrbyggja saga, Þórólfr lame-foot, called the most unjust of men, haunts his district after he dies, and in Grettis saga the surly shepherd Glámr walks after his death until Grettir wrestles him, cuts off his head and burns the body. Others stay in their burial mounds: Kárr the Old haunts his island until Grettir breaks into his mound for the treasure and fights the dead man inside. These are solid corpses, not ghosts, which is why the cure is to behead and burn them.

Luck could outlive its owner. In Víga-Glúms saga, Glúmr dreams of a woman so huge that her shoulders touch the mountains on both sides, walking up the valley towards his farm. He takes her to be the hamingja of his grandfather Vigfúss, who must now be dead and whose luck is coming to him, and that summer news of Vigfúss’s death arrives.

Rebirth gets only a few hints. The prose at the end of the Eddic poem Helgakviða Hundingsbana II (heimskringla.no gives it under its manuscript title, Völsungakviða in forna) says that in olden times people believed men were reborn, though that is now called an old wives’ tale, and that the hero Helgi and the valkyrie Sigrún are said to have been reborn as Helgi Haddingjaskati and Kára. A similar note closes Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar. The sources never present this as a teaching, and it should not be confused with Eastern ideas of reincarnation; Christianity, the faith of the 13th-century Icelanders who wrote these poems down, has no rebirth of this kind at all.

Family mattered all the same. Children were often given the names of dead kinsmen, and some scholars connect the custom with rebirth, but no source explains it that way. What the sources do show, once again, is that Vikings believed that death is not the end.

The Afterlife Lands in Norse Universe

When it comes to the most famous lands of the afterlife in Norse mythology, Valhalla is the one that people talk about the most. What is Valhalla? It is Odin’s hall in Asgard, where warriors who fell in battle, the einherjar, live. In the Eddic poem Grímnismál, Odin describes it: a gold-bright hall with rafters of spear-shafts, a roof of shields and mail-coats on the benches, and five hundred and forty doors, through each of which eight hundred einherjar will march out together when they go to fight the wolf (stanzas 8, 9 and 23). The cook Andhrímnir boils the boar Sæhrímnir in the pot Eldhrímnir, the goat Heiðrún on the roof fills the vat with clear mead, and valkyries carry the einherjar their ale, while Odin gives his own food to his wolves and lives on wine alone (stanzas 18, 19, 25 and 36). Snorri adds in Gylfaginning that the boar is whole again every evening, and that every day the einherjar arm themselves, go out into the yard and fight, felling one another, then ride home and sit down to drink together.

Fallen Vikings on the Way to Valhalla

The death in Norse mythology is described as the new journey. People had one journey while they were alive, but when they die, another adventure begins. There are several other afterlife lands in the Norse mythology, and we’ll go through them all.

Another one is Hel, often called Helheim in modern books, which resembles Hell in Christianity, but it’s not the same. The two are the same Germanic word, yet Hel is not mainly a place for evil and wicked people. In Gylfaginning (chapter 34), Snorri says that those who die of sickness or old age are sent to Hel. He says nothing of guilt and nothing of punishment for surviving the battle; it is simply where people who died in their beds would go.

The ruler of this afterlife land is the goddess Hel, Loki’s daughter, whom Odin cast into Niflheim, the world of mist and cold. No medieval source draws a map with her realm beneath Midgard. Grímnismál (stanza 31) says Hel lives under one of the three roots of Yggdrasil, and in Snorri’s account of Hermóðr’s ride to fetch Baldr, the road to Hel runs “down and to the north”, through dark, deep valleys to the river Gjöll. The river is crossed by a bridge roofed with gold, and beyond it stand the gates of Hel. Hermóðr, who was alive, rode there and back, but the dead stay.

Not even the gods could undo a death. Frigg had made everything swear not to harm her son, the god Baldr, so the gods made a game of shooting at him. Loki put a shoot of mistletoe, the one thing that had not sworn, into the hand of Baldr’s blind brother Höðr and guided his aim. Baldr died and went to Hel, and only Hel could release him. She agreed on one condition, that everything in the world weep for him; one giantess, thought to be Loki in disguise, refused, so Baldr stays with Hel until after Ragnarök.

Modern books often say that warriors dying in bed cut themselves with blades to cheat Hel and reach Valhalla. The only source behind this is Ynglinga saga, in which Odin, pictured as a human ruler in Sweden, dies of sickness but first has himself marked with a spear-point and claims all men who die by weapons; Njörðr has himself marked for Odin in the same way before he dies. No source says ordinary warriors did it, or that it was meant to trick Hel.

Death in Norse mythology is perceived in many ways since there are places that Viking warriors were eager to go to, like Valhalla. Still, Hel, as an alternative, was not a place of shame: Baldr, the best of the gods, sits in the high seat of Hel’s hall.

Punishment does appear, but not neatly inside Hel. Early in Gylfaginning, Snorri says that wicked men go to Hel and from there into Niflhel, “down in the ninth world”. The poem Völuspá (stanzas 38 and 39) describes a hall far from the sun on Náströnd, the “shore of corpses”, its doors facing north and its walls woven of serpents’ spines, where perjurers and murderers wade heavy streams. The poem never calls this place Hel, and Snorri puts Náströnd in the world after Ragnarök, alongside the good halls where good and righteous men will live: Gimlé in heaven, Brimir with its good drink, and Sindri, a hall of red gold (Gylfaginning 52).

Considering that Vikings were famous for sailing to the far reaches of Midgard to raid the known and the unknown territories of the realm, it’s no wonder that the sea had its own claim on the dead. Those who drowned were said to go to Rán.

Rán is the wife of the sea-giant Ægir. In Skáldskaparmál, Snorri says the gods learned that she owned a net in which she caught everyone who went out on the sea. The sources speak of her hall, not of a shining land on the ocean floor. In Friðþjófs saga, after a great sea sweeps four men overboard, Friðþjófr says they must surely go to Rán and tells every man to carry gold, so that they arrive as fitting guests in her hall. Eyrbyggja saga (chapter 54) says that when drowned men came dripping into their own funeral feast, people took it as a sign that they were well received at Rán’s. Poets also called gold “Ægir’s fire”, because Ægir lit his hall with gold at the gods’ feast.

Another afterlife is the holy mountain Helgafell, often spelled Helgafjell in modern books, on the Snæfellsnes peninsula in western Iceland. Eyrbyggja saga says the settler Þórólfr Mostrarskegg held the mountain so holy that no one was to look at it unwashed, and believed that he and all his kinsmen on the headland would go into it when they died.

The saga shows what that meant. One autumn evening a shepherd saw the north side of the mountain open. Inside were great fires, and he heard feasting and the clamour of drinking horns, and heard Þórólfr’s son Þorsteinn cod-biter and his companions being welcomed and told to sit in the high seat opposite his father. The next morning news came that Þorsteinn had drowned while fishing (chapter 11). So this was a family afterlife, with the dead feasting together inside their own mountain. Þorsteinn drowned, yet the saga sends him to the mountain, not to Rán: another sign that the sources never agreed on one scheme.

Viking Beliefs and Customs

The Vikings believed that several things would help them in the afterlife. One was to respect the Gods by offering them various sacrifices, though no source says that sacrifice earned a better place after death. Another was to always be fearsome in battle. Only those who died by weapons could hope for Valhalla, and dying in battle made a warrior eligible, not certain, since the valkyries did the choosing.

When it comes to burying their dead, the words people used are mostly lost. No source preserves how they would pray to Odin and other Gods at a funeral, and none says that chanting helped a fallen friend find his path to Valhalla. Ibn Fadlan’s account comes closest. Before she died, the slave girl was lifted three times above a door frame and said she saw her father and mother, then all her dead kin, and finally her master seated in Paradise, which was green and beautiful, calling her to him. A Rus man told Ibn Fadlan’s interpreter that the Arabs were fools to put their dead in the earth to be eaten by worms; the Rus burned theirs so that they would enter Paradise at once.

The family then held the funeral feast, the erfi, which was also the inheritance feast. Ynglinga saga explains the custom for kings and earls: the heir sat on the step before the high seat until the cup called bragafull was carried in, then stood up, made a vow and drank it off, and only then took his father’s seat and his inheritance. In Eyrbyggja saga, the family of the drowned Þóroddr turned their Yule ale into funeral ale.

Of funeral music almost nothing is known. The one sound Ibn Fadlan records at the killing of the slave girl is the men beating their shields with sticks, so that her cries would not be heard and frighten other girls away from dying with their masters.

Ynglinga saga records a belief about the smoke: the higher it rose into the sky, the higher in heaven the dead man would be, and the richer, the more wealth burned with him. The same saga says the ashes were to be carried out to sea or buried, with a mound raised for great men and a standing stone for anyone of worth. Burnt bones did survive the pyre, and they were buried, sometimes in a pot, under a mound or a stone setting. After the ship on the Volga had burned, the Rus raised a round mound over it and set up a wooden post with the man’s name and the name of the Rus king.

These were the customs of the rich and powerful, the people whose graves and funerals got noticed. Most people were buried far more simply, and apart from those killed to go with their masters, the sources say almost nothing about how slaves were buried.

Let’s Close This Story Right Here

Death was an important event for the Vikings. Losing a family member or a friend also meant sending them on, and the people they had left behind were the ones preparing the dead for the journey into the afterlife.

How much did you know about the burial customs and the afterlife in Norse mythology? Is there anything else you would like to add that we have missed mentioning? Share your knowledge with the community in the comment box below.

Norse Afterlife FAQ

Did all Vikings go to Valhalla?

No. Valhalla, Odin’s hall in Asgard, took only those slain in battle, and even of these Freyja, whose dwelling is Fólkvangr, chose half. Snorri sends those who die of sickness or old age to Hel, the drowned were said to go to Rán, the wife of the sea-giant Ægir, and one Icelandic family expected to pass into the holy mountain Helgafell.

What is Helheim in Norse mythology?

Helheim is the modern name for Hel, the realm of the dead ruled by the goddess Hel, Loki’s daughter; the medieval texts almost always call it simply hel. Snorri places it in Niflheim and says it receives those who die of sickness or old age, with no word of guilt, and the poem Grímnismál puts Hel under one of the roots of Yggdrasil. Náströnd, the shore where perjurers and murderers suffer in Völuspá, is never called part of Hel, and Snorri puts it in the world after Ragnarök.

How were the Vikings buried?

Both cremation and burial in the ground were used, usually with grave goods such as tools, weapons, jewelry and even animals. The very wealthy were sometimes laid in a whole ship under a mound, like the Oseberg ship buried in 834, and other graves were marked with stones set in the outline of a ship. Ibn Fadlan, who saw a Rus funeral on the Volga in 922, describes the dead man dressed in new clothes and burned on his ship.

Did the Vikings believe in reincarnation?

Only a few texts hint at it. A prose note in the Eddic poem Helgakviða Hundingsbana II says that people in olden times believed in rebirth, which by the writer’s day was called an old wives’ tale, and that the hero Helgi and the valkyrie Sigrún were said to have been reborn. No source sets it out as a general belief.

Where did drowned sailors go?

To Rán, the wife of the sea-giant Ægir. Snorri says she owned a net in which she caught everyone who went out on the sea. In Friðþjófs saga men about to drown carry gold so as to arrive as fitting guests in her hall, and Eyrbyggja saga says drowned men who appeared at their own funeral feast were thought to have been well received by Rán.

Where the dead go: Valhalla, Fólkvangr, Hel, the Norse gods of death and the Valkyries who choose them, or shop Norse jewelry.