The Older, Grimmer Word

Before the romance, there is carrion. Old English glossaries use waelcyrge to translate the Latin names of the Furies and of Bellona, and Anglo-Saxon homilists put the word among demons, which shows the tradition once held a far darker figure. Norse poetry keeps that layer too: valkyries appear alongside the ravens and wolves, the creatures that follow an army for what it leaves behind. The armoured maiden who falls in love with a hero belongs to later medieval storytelling. The earlier material is closer to a battlefield understood as a thing with appetites.