Choosers of the Slain

The Norse word states the job: valkyrja, chooser of the slain. The sources describe them riding to battlefields at Odin's direction, deciding who falls, and carrying the chosen to Valhalla, where the Eddic poem Grimnismal lists them by name as the ones who bring ale to the dead warriors. The two duties sit oddly together and the poems do not find that odd. Their names read like a lexicon of battle — Tumult, Shaker, Spear-Bearer — which suggests a tradition that thought of them as the forces at work in a fight before it thought of them as persons.