Fólkvangr

• 1. Introduction

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  Fólkvangr is a meadow in Norse myth, and its Old Norse name can be read as "field of the host," "people-field," or "army-field." The goddess Freyja rules over it. Most listeners have heard of Valhalla, the hall of the fallen, but Fólkvangr was another place where a warrior's story could end. The medieval texts that name it are few, and they say little. Yet those short passages have kept scholars arguing for generations. Who decided which of the dead went where? Why would one mythology keep two destinations for its heroes? And what could a field possibly have to do with a ship?

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• 2. Odin in Disguise

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  In the poem Grímnismál, Odin sits disguised as a figure named Grímnir and speaks to a young man called Agnar. Among the things he reveals is where Freyja lives. The poem belongs to the Poetic Edda, a collection compiled in the 13th century from older traditional sources.

  Henry Adams Bellows translates the key stanza this way: "The ninth is Folkvang, where Freyja decrees / Who shall have seats in the hall; / The half of the dead each day does she choose, / And half does Othin have." Benjamin Thorpe's older translation says that Freyja "directs the sittings in the hall."

  The verse gives Freyja the power of selection. The choice is made each day, and the speaker is Odin himself, who admits that he receives only a share. Snorri Sturluson later quoted this very stanza in the Prose Edda, and he added a detail the poem lacks.

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• 3. Snorri's Retelling

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  In chapter 24 of Gylfaginning, part of the Prose Edda, a figure called High answers questions from Gangleri, who is king Gylfi in disguise. High calls Freyja "the most glorious of the ásynjur," the goddesses of the Norse pantheon. He places her dwelling in the heavens and gives it the name Fólkvangr.

  Snorri frames her share as something that happens on the battlefield. In his words, "whenever she rides to battle she gets half of the slain, and the other half Odin." High then supports the claim by quoting the Grímnismál stanza.

  Snorri's account stays close to the poem, but it makes one addition. Freyja's hall, Sessrúmnir, stands inside Fólkvangr. Britt-Mari Näsström notes that the hall's name means "filled with many seats." Rudolf Simek goes further and suggests that the name Fólkvangr is "surely not much older than Grímnismál itself."

  Neither Edda says who besides warriors might sit in Freyja's hall. A saga about a poet and his daughter hints at an answer.

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• 4. Women at Freyja's Table

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  In Egils saga, Egill Skallagrímsson refuses to eat, and his daughter Þorgerðr announces that she will join him in going hungry. She says in a loud voice: "I have had no evening meal, nor will I do so until I join Freyja. I know no better course of action than my father's. I do not want to live after my father and brother are dead." Starving herself, she expects to arrive at Freyja's side.

  Britt-Mari Näsström reads the scene as evidence about the goddess. As a receiver of the dead, she argues, Freyja's abode is also open to women who have suffered a noble death.

  Näsström finds a possible second case in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks. There a queen hangs herself in the dísarsalr, the Hall of the Dís, after learning that her husband has betrayed both her father and her brother. Näsström argues that this Dís could hardly be anyone but Freyja, the natural leader of the female deities called dísir.

  If Freyja gathers women as well as soldiers, scholars must ask what sort of place her field really is. John Lindow begins with the word fólk itself.

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• 5. Rival to Valhalla

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  John Lindow observes that if the Fólk- in the name means "army," then Fólkvangr looks like an alternative to Valhalla. Freyja shares a link with warriors, he adds, because she presides over Hjaðningavíg, the eternal combat.

  Hilda Ellis Davidson explains why the field is so little known. Valhalla, she says, "is well known because it plays so large a part in images of warfare and death." Other halls, including Ýdalir, where the god Ullr dwells, and Freyja's Fólkvangr, have lost their significance.

  Näsström pictures Sessrúmnir doing the work of Valhöll, the hall of the slain, where warriors eat and drink beer after the fighting. She then asks why Norse belief would hold two heroic paradises. One possible answer is that warriors were initiated in different ways, with one group belonging to Odin and the other to Freyja.

  For Näsström, the evidence shows Freyja as a war-goddess. She even appears as a valkyrie, literally "the one who chooses the slain." Siegfried Andres Dobat takes the idea one step further and calls her the mythological role model for the Valkyrjar and the dísir.

  A 2012 paper took the puzzle in a very different direction, by looking at the ground rather than the texts.

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• 6. A Ship in a Field

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  In 2012, Joseph S. Hopkins and Haukur Þorgeirsson proposed a link between Fólkvangr, Sessrúmnir, and the many stone ships found across Scandinavia. Put the field and the hall together, they argue, and you get the picture of a ship standing in a field. They concede that "A ship in a field" is a somewhat unexpected idea. But it strongly recalls the stone ships of Scandinavian burial sites, and the myth may have mirrored real burial customs, or the other way round.

  They add a possible benefit. A symbolic ship may have been thought to bring good seasons and peace to the land, much as Freyr's mound burial does in Ynglinga saga.

  The same reasoning reaches further. If Freyja owned a ship, her ship imagery could support a connection between a Vanir goddess and the "Isis" of the Suebi, who is tied to ship symbolism in Tacitus's Germania. Hopkins and Haukur also note that afterlife beliefs with strong nautical elements, and separately afterlife fields, appear in numerous Indo-European cultures.

  The name itself may point back even further. They link Fólkvangr to other Germanic afterlife words built on Proto-Germanic wangaz, including Old English Neorxnawang, which hints at an early Germanic "wangaz of the dead." Centuries later, a German spelling of the name would be attached to a museum.

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• 7. Folkwang in Essen

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  Early in the 20th century, Karl Ernst Osthaus developed the "Folkwang-Gedanke," or "Folkwang-Konzept," the idea that art and life can be reconciled. Several cultural institutions took the German spelling of Fólkvangr as their name in his honor.

  The Museum Folkwang in Essen opened in 1902. The publishing house Folkwang-Verlag was founded in 1919. The Folkwang Kammerorchester Essen followed in 1958, and the Folkwang-Musikschule in Essen in 1974.

  Today, Folkwang University of the Arts focuses on music, theater, dance, design and academic studies. A university in Essen still carries the name of a meadow that the Norse texts describe in only a few lines.

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