Library reference · Objects & the cosmos
Folkvangr
/ˈfoʊlkvɑːŋɡər/Old Norse Fólkvangr, masculine noun (accusative Fólkvang, dative Fólkvangi, genitive Fólkvangs); Snorri's prose in the Codex Regius uses the plural, Fólkvangar
Freyja's dwelling in Norse myth, named in the Eddic poem Grímnismál and in Snorri Sturluson's Edda. Both give her half of the battle-slain and Odin the other half. Snorri places Fólkvangr in heaven, and Grímnismál says Freyja decides the seating in the hall there. No medieval source describes the place any further.
Snorri adds the name of her hall, Sessrúmnir, and says only that it is large and fair. In Skáldskaparmál, where he lists the ways a poet may refer to Freyja, she is 'owner of the slain and of Sessrúmnir and of tomcats'. The name seems to mean something like 'roomy in seats', which suits a hall where Freyja allots the seating. The word also turns up among the names for ships in the þulur, the verse lists of names copied with Snorri's Edda, so it was not used only for her hall.
That is the whole of the mythological evidence. No source describes the field itself, says what the dead do there, or says whether they fight beside the gods at Ragnarök. Neither text even states outright that Freyja's half of the slain lives in Fólkvangr, though the seating in the hall implies it. Valhalla, by contrast, gets pages. Grímnismál 23 gives it more than five hundred doors, with eight hundred einherjar marching out of each, and Snorri describes the boar Sæhrímnir, cooked every day and whole again by evening, and the einherjar fighting one another in the yard each day before they sit down to drink (Gylfaginning 38 and 41). Snorri also leaves his own accounts unreconciled: in Gylfaginning 20 he says that all who fall in battle are Odin's adopted sons, and that Odin gives them Valhalla and Vingólf. Modern pictures of Fólkvangr as a second Valhalla, full of warriors training for the last battle, borrow those details. The sources never give them to Freyja's field.
The only other hint comes from a saga. In Egils saga, ch. 78, Egill Skalla-Grímsson's son Böðvarr drowns, and Egill shuts himself in his bed-closet to starve. His daughter Þorgerðr rides to him and announces that she has had no supper and will have none until she has it with Freyja. The saga never says so outright, but the scene reads as a ruse to keep him alive: she chews dulse, which makes them both thirsty, the drink turns out to be milk, and she talks him into composing a memorial poem for his son, which becomes Sonatorrek. Her line shows that a saga writer in 13th-century Iceland could have a woman speak of death as going to Freyja. It does not name Fólkvangr, and one sentence is not a description of an afterlife.
Primary source Verbatim
En Freyja er ágætust af ásynjum. Hon á þann bæ á himni, er Fólkvangr heitir. Ok hvar sem hon ríðr til vígs, þá á hon hálfan val, en hálfan Óðinn [...] Salr hennar Sessrúmnir, hann er mikill ok fagr.
And Freyja is the most renowned of the goddesses. She has the dwelling in heaven that is called Fólkvangr, and wherever she rides to battle, she has half of the slain, and Odin half [...] Her hall is Sessrúmnir; it is large and fair.
GYLFAGINNING, ch. 24 · text ed. Guðni Jónsson · translation editorial ↗
Etymology
So the name can be read as 'field of the people' or 'field of the host', and the poetic sense of fólk makes 'field of the army' at least as likely. The hall's name, Sessrúmnir, is usually taken as sess, 'seat', and rúm, 'room': a hall with room for many seats.
Common misconceptions
Frequently asked questions
What is Folkvangr in Norse mythology?
What is the difference between Folkvangr and Valhalla?
Who goes to Folkvangr?
Does Freyja choose the slain before Odin?
What is Sessrumnir?
Is Folkvangr in Asgard?
Bibliography
- 1. Snorri Sturluson, Edda (Gylfaginning 20, 24, 34, 38 and 41; Skáldskaparmál, the kennings for Freyja, ch. 28 on heimskringla.no, ch. 20 in Faulkes; the þulur, names for ships), c. 1220. Trans. Anthony Faulkes, Everyman, 1987. heimskringla.no ↗
- 2. The Poetic Edda (Grímnismál 8, 14 and 23; Völuspá 24), Codex Regius, GKS 2365 4to, c. 1270. Trans. Carolyne Larrington, rev. ed., Oxford World's Classics, 2014. handrit.is ↗
- 3. Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, ch. 78 (Þorgerðr and the making of Sonatorrek), 13th c. heimskringla.no ↗
- 4. Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology, trans. Angela Hall, D. S. Brewer, 1993, s.v. 'Fólkvangr' and 'Sessrúmnir'.