{
  "id": "valhalla",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Valhalla",
  "summary": "Odin's hall of the slain, \"Valhall\" in Bellows, in Glathsheim: roofed with shields, raftered with spears, a wolf at the western door and an eagle above; five hundred and forty doors, through each of which eight hundred warriors will march to fight the wolf; the heroes fight daily and are healed to feast on Sæhrimnir's flesh and the goat Heithrun's mead.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "norse",
    "places",
    "afterlife",
    "warriors"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "odin"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "freyja"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "ragnarok"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "baldr"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "poetic-edda"
    },
    {
      "rel": "discussed_in",
      "target": "underworlds-compared"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What is Valhalla?",
    "Who goes to Valhalla?",
    "What does Valhalla look like?",
    "What do the warriors do in Valhalla?",
    "How many doors does Valhalla have?",
    "Do all the dead go to Valhalla?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Valhall stands in Glathsheim, and there \"does Othin each day choose / The men who have fallen in fight\" (Grimnismol 8); \"The noble who fall in the fight hath Othin, / And Thor hath the race of the thralls\" (Harbarthsljoth 24).",
      "sources": [
        "poetic-edda-bellows"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The hall's look: \"Its rafters are spears, with shields is it roofed, / On its benches are breastplates strewn ... There hangs a wolf by the western door, / And o'er it an eagle hovers\" (Grimnismol 9–10); the gate Valgrind stands before it (Grimnismol 22).",
      "sources": [
        "poetic-edda-bellows"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "Its size is given for Ragnarok: \"Five hundred doors and forty there are ... in Valhall's walls; / Eight hundred fighters through one door fare / When to war with the wolf they go\" (Grimnismol 23).",
      "sources": [
        "poetic-edda-bellows"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The warriors' day: \"The heroes all in Othin's hall / Each day to fight go forth; / They fell each other, and fare from the fight / All healed full soon to sit\" (Vafthruthnismol 41); the cook Andhrimnir boils Sæhrimnir's flesh, the goat Heithrun gives mead that never fails, and valkyries bear the beer (Grimnismol 18, 25, 36).",
      "sources": [
        "poetic-edda-bellows"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "Not all the dead are Odin's: Freyja \"The half of the dead each day does she choose, / And half does Othin have\" (Grimnismol 14); the wicked wade rivers in a hall on Nastrond (Voluspo 38–39); Hel is a separate realm under the tree (Grimnismol 31).",
      "sources": [
        "poetic-edda-bellows"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.92
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The cock Gollinkambi \"wakes the heroes in Othin's hall\" at the coming of Ragnarok (Voluspo 43), and Frigg's grief for Baldr is grief \"For Valhall's need\" (Voluspo 34).",
      "sources": [
        "poetic-edda-bellows"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.92
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [
    "Grimnismol 8–10, 18–26 and 36 is the description; Vafthruthnismol 41 is the daily battle — nearly everything known of Valhall is in these two poems.",
    "It is an army in waiting — 540 doors times 800 men for the war with the wolf (Grimnismol 23).",
    "Half the slain go to Freyja's Folkvang (Grimnismol 14); Valhall was never the fate of all the dead."
  ],
  "faqs": [
    {
      "q": "Who goes to Valhalla?",
      "claim": "c1"
    },
    {
      "q": "What does Valhalla look like?",
      "claim": "c2"
    },
    {
      "q": "How many doors does Valhalla have?",
      "claim": "c3"
    },
    {
      "q": "What do the warriors do in Valhalla?",
      "claim": "c4"
    },
    {
      "q": "Do all the dead go to Valhalla?",
      "claim": "c5"
    }
  ],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "theoretical",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Gives the hall stanza by stanza, including the arithmetic of Grimnismol 23 and Freyja's half, which popular summaries drop.",
  "confidence": 0.93,
  "last_verified": "2026-09-03",
  "media": [],
  "x": {
    "myth": {
      "pantheon": "norse",
      "kind": "place",
      "domains": [
        "the battle-dead",
        "feasting",
        "the afterlife"
      ],
      "symbols": [
        "shields",
        "spears",
        "the goat Heithrun",
        "the boar Sæhrimnir"
      ],
      "wikidata": "Q177860"
    }
  },
  "canonical_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/valhalla",
  "api_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/api/k/valhalla.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Valhalla",
    "description": "Odin's hall of the slain, \"Valhall\" in Bellows, in Glathsheim: roofed with shields, raftered with spears, a wolf at the western door and an eagle above; five hundred and forty doors, through each of which eight hundred warriors will march to fight the wolf; the heroes fight daily and are healed to feast on Sæhrimnir's flesh and the goat Heithrun's mead.",
    "url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/valhalla",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-09-03",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "The Poetic Edda — tr. Henry Adams Bellows (American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1923), XML edition by fjarri",
        "url": "https://github.com/fjarri/poetic_edda/tree/master/chapters"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Valhalla"
  }
}