The Chosen Slain

Norse tradition has him take the battle-dead into a hall, fed by valkyries, fighting each day and healed each evening. It reads as a reward until you notice what it is for. Every one of the einherjar is being kept for Ragnarök, a battle the sources say he already knows he loses. Grímnismál is careful to note he does not even get all of them: Freyja chooses half the slain, and the poem states it without argument. A recruiter, then, with a prophecy on his desk and no expectation of winning.