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Unfortunately, for most people before the modern age … they more than likely just died of starvation, disease or infection and suffered a slow agonizing death for no greater apparent reason or purpose.
Imagine being a great warrior, surviving a great battle with all your mates, overpower your opponents, climb over ramparts to kill a dozen enemies, win the day … and then get an infection from a small cut you had on your leg and then die a month later from the runaway infection.
Dying in battle wasn’t the meat grinder event Hollywood makes it out to be.
Battles probably looked more like this footage from a West Papua Tribal War where the #1 priority is staying alive.
I’d speculate the whole Valhalla thing is an emotional cope from watching your buddy who you’ve fought many battles with die violently.
Might be the other way around - rather than emotional cope, being an inducement for greater aggression. If you, the powerful men of your society, can convince all the little folk that dying in battle is way cool and will get them huge rewards in the afterlife, you suddenly become much more powerful, man-for-man, against neighboring polities of similar culture (at least until they adopt that aspect of theology or a similar one)
It could also be psychological warfare, pretending that your soldiers are ready to die in battle makes enemies less likely to fight back.
And it’s indoctrination as well so that you have more people to join your army.
Wonder if that gets you into Valhalla on a technicality, at least?
Explanation: While my knowledge of Norse mythology is a little sparse, to my understanding, the Norse (also sometimes colloquially referred to as ‘Vikings’, though that formally refers to warriors going raiding) had the best two afterlives of their mythology reserved for warriors who died in battle. No dying in bed for you, gramps! Grab an axe, or you go to the BORING afterlife!
The Valkyries take one half of those fallen as warriors to Odin’s hall Valhalla, the other half is Freyja’s share and is taken to hers, Fólkvangr.
While my knowledge of Norse mythology is a little sparse
To be fair, all knowledge of norse mythology is rather sparse, given that there are very few surviving texts and much of our understanding of norse mythology comes from later writers who were christians and probably tried to reconcile norse and christian mythologies (both the Elder/Poetic Edda/Codex Regius and the Younger/Prose Edda, two massively influential artifacts, were written (or at least compiled) in the 13th century and the latter makes a lot of use of the former).
Fun fact though: while Odin and Freya oversaw those who fell in battle and Hel took care of those who died of illness and old age (and also oathbreakers and murderers who had a special place in or by Hel called Náströnd (Corpse Shore, very metal)) there were also Rán and Gefjon, goddesses who watched over those who drowned at sea and died a virgin, respectively.
To be honest a goddess of those who die a virgin sounds like a much healthier approach than our current incel culture(s)!
That’s not an excessively high bar though.
Isn’t there a loophole that if you die during sex you get a free pass?
Might be, the past is weird. Like I said though, my knowledge of Norse mythology is a bit sparse lmao
I googled it and it’s BS.
Dying from coitus will also get you into the halls of Valhalla.
Also Sto-vo-kor
