It was thought that, "if you were a Viking woman, or died in bed of sickness, or if you died of old age, you were not going to Valhalla," says Larrington. “You would go to the hall of Hel, which was not necessarily a pleasant place.
After the funeral, the individual could go to a range of afterlives including Valhalla (a hall ruled by Odin for the warrior elite who die in battle), Hel (a realm for those who die of natural causes) and living on physically in the landscape.
Often depicted as mighty and brave warriors, they were seen as guiding forces in the lives of the ancient Norse people. However, unlike gods from other mythologies who often embodied the concept of immortality, Norse gods had a significantly different narrative. In fact, they were subject to aging and even death.
The name supposedly denotes sites where ritual senicide took place during pagan Nordic prehistoric times, whereby elderly people threw themselves, or were thrown, to their deaths. According to legend, this was done when old people were unable to support themselves or assist in a household.
Helheim should not be conflated with Christian ideas of Hell. It was not a place for the wicked, but an afterlife for anyone who did not die in battle. Even the beloved god Baldr, son or Odin, found himself in Helheim (and not Valhalla) when he was killed in a prank orchestrated by Loki.
That meant making a choice between continuing to fight as Thor and continuing to fight her cancer, and in both cases Jane chose to pick up the hammer again, helping others instead of helping herself. This also meant that, in both cases, she died and went to Valhalla as an Asgardian hero.
When Vikings died they believed they would go to Valhalla, where they would spend their afterlife. Before Christianity, Valhalla was the Viking eternal paradise, like Heaven. Valkyries were warrior-women goddesses who searched battlefields for dead heroes.
Here the Vikings also met every 9 years to ensure the goodwill of the gods. 9 males of all kinds of living creatures were sacrificed in a holy grove nearby. According to Adam of Bremen dogs, horses and humans hung from the trees.
We know from written sources that the Odin cult demanded human and animal sacrifices. Both animals and people may have been hung at Onsholt. Odin was the god of the upper classes and was primarily worshipped by magnates and warriors.
Every ninth year there is a blót of nine days, a common feast for everyone in Sweden. Then they sacrifice nine males of each species, even men, and the bodies are hung from the branches of a grove near the temple. No one is exempt from this blót and everyone sends gifts to the shrine, even the kings.
Due to his exile by Loki, Odin's power had been slowly draining, so after telling Thor that he loved him, Odin died in a manner fitting a god: his disintegrated into pure energy (the Odinforce) and entered Valhalla.
Thor is Immortal, Not Invincible
It's clear that age doesn't affect him the way it does normal mortals, as with most immortals, he is aging at a slower rate. While Thor will eventually die, it will take thousands of years for it to happen.
Near-Immortality: Odin, like all Asgardians, was extremely long-lived, although not truly immortal like Olympians. However, Odin still ages at a pace much slower than human beings.
- King of Norway 1046-1066
Harald Hardrada (Harald III Sigurdsson) is often known as "the last real Viking," and maybe he was what many understood by a real Viking king.
The Vikings typically lived to be around 40-50 years old. But there are also examples of upper class Vikings who lived longer – for instance Harald Fairhair, who was King of Norway for more than 60 years. (Picture of King Harald from the 14th century Icelandic manuscript Flateyjarbók / public domain.)
The old name of Osmussaar is Odensholm and it alludes to the site of Odin's grave. According to folk tales among people on the coast the Russian military blew up a large granite rock somewhere on the southern shore of Osmussaar, to get building material for their fortresses.
The average height of Vikings as found by researchers and scholars, varied depending on a number of factors, including their age and gender. Typically, the average male Viking would usually be between 5 foot 7 and 5 foot 9, while the average female would be between 5 foot 1 and 5 foot 3.
Historical accounts
There are historical attestations that Viking Age women took part in warfare. The Byzantine historian John Skylitzes records that women fought in battle when Sviatoslav I of Kiev attacked the Byzantines in Bulgaria in 971.
The Vikings chose Christianity during the 900s, partly because of the extensive trade networks with Christian areas of Europe, but also particularly as a result of increasing political and religious pressure from the German empire to the south. By the end of the Viking period, around 1050, most Vikings were Christians.
According to the Viking belief system, the makeup would protect them from bad luck. They would paint their faces during rituals, using ash or blood to create a dark blue hue that was not permanent. There are stories suggesting that Vikings even had runes painted on their faces before going into battle.
The Viking presence in England was finally ended in 1066 when an English army under King Harold defeated the last great Viking king, Harald Hardrada of Norway, at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, near York.
A number of broader factors contributed to the Vikings' decline: more and more communities previously attacked by Vikings became better able to defend themselves, with armies and fortifications; Christianity's spread in Europe; and less egalitarianism in Viking society.
The written sources portray Viking women as independent and possessing rights. Compared to women elsewhere in the same period, Viking women had more freedom. However, there were limits to this. Even if women had a relatively strong position, they were officially inferior to men.
There is no record of Vikings sharing their wives. If anything, the available evidence suggests that Viking men of high status often had several female partners apart from their wives. This left low-ranking Viking men at a disadvantage when securing partners for themselves.
Women tended to marry between the ages of 12 and 15, and families negotiated to arrange those marriages, but the woman usually had a say in the arrangement. If a woman wanted a divorce, she had to call witnesses to her home and marriage bed and declare in front of them that she had divorced her husband.