Fólkvangr

Fólkvangr appears in the entirety of Old Norse literature at only two places. One is a single stanza of the Eddic poem Grímnismál, the other is a passage in Snorri Sturluson that quotes exactly this stanza.

The entire notion of a “second Valhalla,” in which Freyja rules over half of the fallen warriors, thus rests on a single verse. What Fólkvangr looked like, what happened there, how the dead lived there – on all of this the sources remain entirely silent.

A Single Stanza as Foundation

The core passage is Grímnismál 14, preserved in the Codex Regius and in the fragment AM 748 I a 4to. There, Grímnir – a disguised form of Odin – recites a catalog of divine dwellings. Of the ninth it says in the Old Norse original: “Fólkvangr er inn níundi, en þar Freyja ræðr sessa kostum í sal; hálfan val hon kýss hverjan dag, en hálfan Óðinn á.”

Snorri adopts this stanza almost verbatim in Gylfaginning 24. There he has the figure Hár explain that Freyja is “the most glorious of the Ásynjur” and possesses a dwelling in the sky called Fólkvangr. Whenever she rides into battle, she is said to receive half of the fallen, the other half falling to Odin. Only afterward does Snorri quote the Grímnismál stanza itself – as evidence for a statement he has already paraphrased.

A third figure belongs to the body of evidence: Sessrúmnir, Freyja’s hall. Snorri names it three times. In Gylfaginning 24 it is called “great and fair.” In the Skáldskaparmál it appears as part of a Freyja kenning, a descriptive poetic phrase: “possessor of the slain of the battlefield and of Sessrúmnir.” And in the same work the same name appears once more – in a list of ship names.

What the Poem Says – and What Only Snorri Adds

Grímnismál 14 says little, but it says it clearly: Fólkvangr is the ninth dwelling. There Freyja determines “sessa kostum í sal,” the seating order in a hall. She chooses half of the battle-dead every day, Odin receives the other half. The stanza gives no name for the hall, and it does not mention Asgard at all.

Everything else comes from Snorri. That the hall is called Sessrúmnir, that it is located within Fólkvangr, that Fólkvangr lies in the sky, and the scene of movement in which Freyja “rides into battle” – all of this appears only in Gylfaginning, not in the poem. Rudolf Simek observes that Snorri’s description follows the Grímnismál stanza closely, with exactly this one addition: Sessrúmnir lies in Fólkvangr.

This addition has consequences. The Grímnismál passage alone reads as though Fólkvangr itself were the hall. Only Snorri clearly frames Fólkvangr as a land – as a field or meadow on which the hall Sessrúmnir stands. It is from this compression that the widespread equation “Fólkvangr is Freyja’s hall” derives, a statement the sources themselves do not make.

The location in Asgard is likewise not a certain fact. The Grímnismál catalog strings together dwellings that by no means all lie in Asgard: Þrymheimr, for instance, is the farm of the giant Þjazi, inhabited after his death by the giantess Skaði. That Fólkvangr lies in Asgard is thus an interpretation, not a textual statement.

Fólkvangr, the Field – Not Hall, Not Sky

The name is composed of fólk and vangr. Fólk means “people” or “folk,” also “host” or “army” – related to the English word folk. Vangr means “field,” “meadow,” or “clearing,” preserved for instance in German place names ending in -wang or -wangen. Literally, then, Fólkvangr names a field, not a palace and not a sky.

The interpretive content hinges on the translation of fólk. Andy Orchard renders it “field of the host,” John Lindow chooses “people-field” or “army-field,” Britt-Mari Näsström “the field of the Warriors.”

“People-field” suggests an afterlife for all humans. “Army-field” restricts the place to the fallen. Both readings rest on the same word root and cannot be decided from the text alone.

Sessrúmnir can be translated as “seat-room” or “rich-in-seats” – a place with many or spacious seats. The name thus fits both a hall and, as will become apparent, a ship.

Hall or Ship?

That Sessrúmnir appears in Snorri twice as a hall and once as a ship’s name is not a scribal error but an unresolved finding. Simek considers it possible that one of the two conceptions rests on a misunderstanding, since the name carries the same literal meaning in both cases: a space with many seats fits a hall just as it fits an oared ship with many rowing benches.

Joseph S. Hopkins and Haukur Þorgeirsson go a step further in their essay “The Ship in the Field” (RMN Newsletter 3, 2011, pp. 14–18, University of Helsinki). They read Fólkvangr and Sessrúmnir together as an image of “a ship in the field” and connect it to the Scandinavian stone ships – burial monuments made of upright stones arranged in the shape of a ship. A ship in a field might, in the mythical realm, mirror a real burial custom, or the reverse.

Their basis is the ship-name list, called þulur in the technical terminology, which they regard as authentic tradition – for whose compiler Sessrúmnir was simply a ship’s name. From this connection the authors derive a possible relationship between Freyja and the “Isis” of the Suebi mentioned by Tacitus in the Germania. The status of this hypothesis is well grounded but not certain.

Contradictions the Sources Do Not Resolve

Odin alone, or Odin and Freyja? Grímnismál 8 describes how, in the hall Glaðsheimr, Valhöll rises up, and Hroptr – an Odin-name – selects the weapon-dead there each day, without any restriction. Six stanzas later, in stanza 14, the same Odin shares the choosing with Freyja, using the same verb kjósa, “to choose.” The poem never resolves this contradiction.

Does Freyja have first choice? Modern retellings often state that Freyja gets to choose before Odin. This is an addition, not a textual statement. Grímnismál 14 says only that both receive half each. No right of first choice for Freyja appears in any manuscript.

Does she choose the dead, or does she merely assign seats? The phrase “ræðr sessa kostum í sal” is translated with disagreement. Benjamin Thorpe renders it as “she directs the choice of seats in the hall,” Henry Adams Bellows as “she decides who shall have seats in the hall.” In the first case, Freyja herself makes the selection of the dead; in the second, she merely assigns rank to those already chosen – in a hall, no small matter, but an expression of status.

Did others besides warriors come there? In the Egils saga, the grief-stricken Þorgerðr, in the Sonatorrek episode (chap. 78 or 79, depending on the edition), declares she will eat nothing more until she dines with Freyja.

This passage is cited in nearly every popular account as evidence that non-warriors, too, came to Fólkvangr. Yet it does not mention Fólkvangr at all. The connection between this statement and Fólkvangr is a scholarly interpretation, not a statement made by the saga itself.

The Silence of the Skalds

So far the question has been what is missing from the two attested passages. But the most telling finding lies elsewhere – namely, in the places where Fólkvangr does not appear at all.

Valhalla appears in tenth-century skaldic poetry. The Eiríksmál describes how Odin receives Eiríkr Bloodaxe in Valhalla. The Hákonarmál describes how Hákon the Good is led there. Both are memorial poems for actually ruling kings, composed at a time when the old faith was still a living practice.

Fólkvangr appears in not a single skaldic poem. No memorial poem, no stanza, no kenning ever sends a dead man there.

By the source logic of this website, this is the most serious finding of all. Skaldic poetry is formally difficult to alter, attributed to named authors, and closer to the Viking Age than any surviving manuscript. Where it is silent, the ground grows thin.

This fits Rudolf Simek’s caution regarding the notion of an ancient cult site. The name Fólkvangr, he holds, is “certainly no older than the Grímnismál itself” – possibly, then, a poetic invention of the poem and not a term from a pre-literary age.

With this the article arrives at a possible answer to its own opening question. Why does everything rest on a single verse? Perhaps because there never was more than one.

Freyja, the Dead, and Women

Britt-Mari Näsström interprets Freyja’s role as receiver of the dead as meaning that her dwelling was also open to women who had suffered a noble death. She grounds this in the Egils saga passage and in the Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, in which a queen hangs herself in a dísarsalr, a “hall of the dís.” Such a dís, she argues, can scarcely be any figure other than Freyja herself – though this, too, remains interpretation, not direct evidence.

Siegfried Andres Dobat sees in Freyja’s task of choosing half the battlefield dead for Fólkvangr a mythological model for the valkyries and the dísir, those protective and fate-bound figures of Old Norse belief.

Lindow’s Argument and Its Source

John Lindow classes Fólkvangr, if one understands fólk as “army,” as a genuine alternative to Valhalla. Like Odin, he argues, Freyja too is connected to warriors, since she presides over the eternal battle Hjaðningavíg.

Here it is worth following the chain of evidence one step further than is usually done.

In the Skáldskaparmál it is not Freyja who sets the Hjaðningavíg in motion, but Hildr, the daughter of Högni. Freyja does not appear in this version at all.

The Freyja–Hjaðningavíg connection stems from the Sörla þáttr, a tale found in the Flateyjarbók from the late fourteenth century. There, Odin demands that Freyja incite the eternal battle between Heðinn and Högni, so that she may recover the Brísingamen.

This is a text that arose roughly one hundred and fifty years after Snorri – and more than four hundred years after the end of the Viking Age. Lindow’s interpretation is therefore not wrong, but it rests on one of the latest texts in the entire corpus. Whoever cites it should know what it stands on.

Museum Folkwang: A Reinterpretation from 1902

Karl Ernst Osthaus (1874–1921) borrowed the name from the Edda in 1902 for his newly founded museum in Hagen: Folkwang. In 1922, through a merger with the Essen art museum, this became the Museum Folkwang in Essen, later also lending its name to the Folkwang University of the Arts.

This reception made a clear choice between the two contested etymologies. It translated Folkwang as “hall of the people,” a palace of the goddess Freya, who was interpreted as a protective goddess of the arts alongside fertility.

In doing so it opted for “people” rather than “army,” turned the field into a hall – and left out entirely the halving of the fallen. Three changes made within a single name.

Osthaus wanted the museum to enliven the industrial region through art: Folkwang as a meeting place for city dwellers of every class. Of the mythological battlefield on which Freyja daily chooses half of the dead, nothing remained in this choice of name.

Sources

Poetic Edda. The only central passage is Grímnismál 14, preserved in the Codex Regius and in the fragment AM 748 I a 4to. For comparison of the seemingly contradictory rights of choice, see Grímnismál 8; on the question of location, Grímnismál 11 with Þrymheimr as a giant’s farm.

Snorri Sturluson. Gylfaginning 24 quotes Grímnismál 14 and adds the information about Sessrúmnir, the location in the sky, and the riding scene. In the Skáldskaparmál, Sessrúmnir appears once in a Freyja kenning and once in a list of ship names; the chapter numbering of the Skáldskaparmál varies between editions, so no number is given here.

Skaldic poetry. Eiríksmál and Hákonarmál, both tenth century, name Valhalla as the destination of fallen kings. For Fólkvangr there is no equivalent – in all of skaldic poetry the name does not occur.

Sagas and Þættir. Egils saga, Sonatorrek episode, chap. 78 or 79 depending on the edition, with the Þorgerðr passage, which does not mention Fólkvangr. Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks with the dísarsalr motif. Sörla þáttr in the Flateyjarbók, late fourteenth century, as the basis for the Freyja–Hjaðningavíg connection; the older version in the Skáldskaparmál names Hildr instead.

Scholarly literature. Rudolf Simek on the question of the name’s age and on the relationship between Gylfaginning and Grímnismál. John Lindow on the interpretation as an alternative to Valhalla. Britt-Mari Näsström on the opening of the place to women. Siegfried Andres Dobat on the relationship to valkyries and dísir. Andy Orchard on the translation “field of the host.” Joseph S. Hopkins and Haukur Þorgeirsson, “The Ship in the Field,” RMN Newsletter 3, 2011, pp. 14–18, University of Helsinki, on the interpretation as a stone-ship motif and on the possible connection with the “Isis” of the Suebi in Tacitus, Germania.

Open questions. Whether fólk here means “people,” “army,” or – as a third meaning attested in poetic language – “battle,” is not settled; in the last case Fólkvangr would simply mean “battlefield.” Also open remain the location of the place, the relationship between hall and ship, and the question of who besides the fallen arrived there.

Historically reliable in all of this is only the wording of the Grímnismál stanza and its adoption by Snorri. Everything beyond that, concerning the appearance, function, and inhabitants of Fólkvangr, is interpretation – in part well grounded, but supported by no further Old Norse source.