Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index

Valhalla

Valhalla, in Norse mythology, is Odin's hall, the home for those slain gloriously in battle, who are welcomed by Bragi and escorted to Valhalla by the Valkyries. It has five hundred and forty doors, walls made of spears, a roof made of shields and benches covered with armors. It is said that there is room enough for all those chosen, and finding a place in there is much easier than entering. Those who do not get to Valhalla end up in the home of the dead, Helheim, a place beneath the underworld, Niflheim.

In addition to the Valkyries, the Einherjar and a rooster named Gullinkambi live there.


Valhalla is also the largest impact crater on Jupiter's moon Callisto. It has a bright central region 600 km across, and concentric rings extending to a diameter of approximately 3,000 km around that.



In game screen of Valhalla

Valhalla was also the name of a ZX Spectrum computer game. It was mainly text-based with some graphics showing the location and the characters there. It was set mainly in Asgard and Midgard, though your character died you would reappear in Hell (Niflheim under another name) and be able to walk out.

Within its limits, the parser for the game was very good and would understand multi-part sentences, so long as they were written using the words it understood, which (unlike in many other games) were helpfully listed in the manual.

The aim was to collect six mythical objects, for which you needed the help of other characters, who were taken from Norse mythology and would wander round randomly. To help with this, your character had an alignment (between good and evil) that would change depending on which other characters you helped. Thus, the more you helped good characters, the more other good characters would help you. Some players preferred to ignore the quest and travel around starting fights - type "Ask Thor to throw the rock at Loki" and sit back to watch the fun.


Valhall was also the name of a norwegian doom metal band, one of its members is Fenriz of Darkthrone, and former member of Dødheimsgard and Isengard.

Discography

Here can be found the Official Homepage