Page "Valkyrie" Paragraph 166

Davidson places emphasis on the fact that valkyrie literally means " chooser of the slain ".

She compares Wulfstan's mention of a " chooser of the slain " in his Sermo Lupi ad Anglos sermon, which appears among " a blacklist of sinners, witches, and evildoers ", to " all the other classes whom he mentions ", and concludes as those " are human ones, it seems unlikely that he has introduced mythological figures as well.

" Davidson points out that Arab traveler Ibn Fadlan's detailed account of a 10th-century Rus ship funeral on the Volga River features an " old Hunnish woman, massive and grim to look upon " ( who Fadlan refers to as the " Angel of Death ") who organizes the killing of the slave girl, and has two other women with her that Fadlan refers to as her daughters.

Davidson says that " it would hardly be surprising if strange legends grew up about such women, who must have been kept apart from their kind due to their gruesome duties.

Since it was often decided by lot which prisoners should be killed, the idea that the god " chose " his victims, through the instrument of the priestesses, must have been a familiar one, apart from the obvious assumption that some were chosen to fall in war.

" Davidson says that it appears that from " early times " the Germanic peoples " believed in fierce female spirits doing the command of the war god, stirring up disorder, taking part in battle, seizing and perhaps devouring the slain.