"Valhalla" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conception of Hel, the Northmen also framed the idea of Valhalla, [6] the abode to which Odin received the souls of those who had died, not ingloriously in their beds, but on the field of battle. A troop of divine maidens, the Valkyries, [7] rode through the air on Odin's ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... come and the flowers open. No one knew the true God then. Everyone said that Woden lived in a beautiful city in the sky, north of our own Northland. All the houses there were gold and silver, and the most splendid one was Woden's royal palace. This was called Valhalla. To reach it one had to ride or walk the whole length of the rainbow, as it arched from land to land. But there was a sharp-eyed watchman at the gate who stopped anyone who had no right to cross ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... had shut us in. On this dull December evening, with its vines and shrubs and gaunt trees bare, its pointed cedars and hemlocks the only green, its dark water swirling under overhanging rocks, it had become an entrance to Valhalla, the dim abode of ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... "Apart from any boom Islam secures by sealing England's doom, We shall, if we survive the coming clash, Collect papyrus notes in lieu of cash; And, if we perish, as we may indeed, We have a goodly future guaranteed, With houris waiting in Valhalla's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... address—"I'm not sure that I can go quite so far as that. If we had no war at all, perchance our swords might rust, and our skill, for want of practice, might fail us in the hour of need. Besides, how could men in that case hope to dwell with Odin in Valhalla's bright and merry halls? But I agree with thee in wishing that we had less of war and more ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... steps to the Casino terrace, coming upon it near the clump of nymphlike palms, and the marble bust of Berlioz that Mary could see from her window. Hercules' Rock was on fire with sunrise, and the Prince's palace looked in the magic flame like a strange Valhalla. ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... this cause, in battle for this ideal, behold them advance to greet the great dead who fell in the old wars! See, through the mists of time, Valhalla, its towers and battlements, uplift themselves, and from their places the phantoms of the mighty heroes of all ages rise to greet these English youths who enter smiling, the blood yet trickling from their wounds! Behold, Achilles ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... powerfully on their childish imagination. Did not one single Kemper or Teuton return from Marius' slaughter, to spread among the tribes (niddering though he may have been called for coming back alive) the fair land which they had found, fit for the gods of Valhalla; the land of sunshine, fruits and wine, wherein his brothers' and sisters' bones were bleaching unavenged? Did no gay Gaul of the Legion of the Lark, boast in a frontier wine-house to a German trapper, who came in to sell his peltry, how he himself was a gentleman now, and a civilized ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... beheld it when they saw it as the bridge of Iris, messenger of the Gods; and similarly the Germanic mythology speaks of it as the pathway along which the souls of the fallen warriors draw near to Valhalla. By recovering this old conception in a new and scientifically grounded form we are enabled also to rectify the misunderstanding from which the ancient bridge-conception of the rainbow has suffered in later days, when tradition had begun ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... repose in our own sensations. Thus, the Arab, when covered with wounds, saw nothing but the dark eyes and the green kerchief of a beckoning Houri. The Northern warrior laughed in the pangs of death when he thought of the mead of Valhalla. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... For if the gem-like green of the verdure proclaims its short life, it proclaims at the same time its richness,—and in winter the very darkness seems made to let the starry vault shine through with a glory of Valhalla and Gimle. Indeed, in our North, the winter possesses an impressiveness, a freshness, which only we Norsemen understand. Add to these strong effects of nature the loneliness of life in a wide tract of land, sparingly populated by a still sparingly educated people, and then ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... gloomy regions. To her came also all those who had died, not on the battlefield, but of old age or disease. And though these were treated kindly enough, theirs was a joyless life in comparison with that of the dead warriors who were feasting and fighting in the halls of Valhalla, under the kindly rule of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... have agreed not to throw away the cosmogony and the hierology of Greece. It is part of Grecian history that the creed of the people was filled with a love of embodied fancies, so graceful and luxuriant. No less are the revel rout of Valhalla part of the virtual history of the Scandinavian tribes. But the lives of our saints, independently altogether of the momentous change in human affairs and prospects which they ushered in, have a ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... a medley of verdure, a hierarchy of bronze and a forest of marble. This is an expression full of anomalies, but it is strictly applicable to Versailles. Its waters, jets and cascades, its monsters, its Tritons and Valhalla of marble statues set off the artificial background in a manner only to be compared to a stage setting—a magnificent stage setting, ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... blightingly, horribly forced itself upon him . . . Ootah asked himself all the questions men ask in such a crisis . . . and he demanded with wild weeping their answer from the dead rejoicing in the auroral Valhalla. But there was no answer—as perhaps there may be no answer; or, if there is, that God fearing lest, in attaining the Great Desire, men should cease to endeavor; to serve and to labor has kept it locked where He and the ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... it might be identified with Malleus, the name of the Devil.[99] Nork has attempted with more reason to identify it with the hammer of Thor.[100] But the real identification is closer than this. Thus, it is connected with the Valhalla practices, already noted, by the fact that if an old Norseman becomes too frail to travel to the cliff, in order to throw himself over, his kinsman would save him the disgrace of dying "like a cow in the straw," and would beat him to death with the family ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... I cannot avoid recalling an old Scandinavian myth; she realizes so fully my ideal Iduna, standing at the portals of Valhalla, offering ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... is the laughter of one watching his darling stripped for the rods. He who would be "in harmony with Nature." with those "murderous ministers" who, in their blind abyss, throw dice with Chance, must be in harmony with the giants of Jotunheim, as well as with the lords of Valhalla. He must be able to look on grimly while Asgard totters; he must welcome "the Twilight of the Gods." To have a mind inured to such conceptions, a mind capable of remaining on such a verge, is, alone, to be, intellectually speaking, what we call "aristocratic." When, even with eyes like poor ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... I should wish Quickly to rid myself of such a foe? That I deceived a dreamer who despised The mighty gods,—does that astonish thee? Does it astonish thee that I approved My warrior's purpose, since a hostile fate Attempted to dethrone, not only me, But all Valhalla's gods? ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... his quarrel just, and brought it without guile to the issue of the sword, went by the very manner of his death to a better place. The Father of the Slain wanted him, and he was welcomed by the Valkyries, by Odin's corse-choosers, to the festive board in Valhalla. In every point of view, therefore, war and battle was a holy thing, and the Northman went to the battlefield in the firm conviction that right would prevail. In modern times, while we appeal in declarations of war to the God of Battles, ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... with its terrestrial paradise, and those concentric spheres of Heaven wherein beatified saints held weird and subtle converse, all went their way to the limbo prepared for the childlike fancies of untaught minds, whither Hades and Valhalla had gone before them. In our day it is hard to realize the startling effect of the discovery that Man does not dwell at the centre of things, but is the denizen of an obscure and tiny speck of cosmical matter quite invisible amid the innumerable throng of flaming suns that make up our galaxy. To ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... greeted the sudden sight of Vulcan's smithy blazing on Olympian hills. But the clang of iron on iron would have attended the flash and gleam of those unexpected fires, and here all was still save for that steady throb never heard in Olympus or the halls of Valhalla, the pant of the motor eager for flight ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... for a faith, his bones would have been canonized. Had he struggled for a party as he stood for the State, no political preferment would have been held beyond his reach. Had he lived in another age, among other people, his body would have been inurned in the Valhalla of the Brave. As it is, all that is mortal of him occupies only so much of Texas soil as may serve as "paste and cover of his bones." Little does he reck of this, and his friends should not repine, ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... I will tell to thee. I, living amongst men, have wed the daughter of a hero. My son shall live as a mortal amongst mortals. Sigi his name shall be. From him shall spring heroes who will fill Valhalla, my own hall in Asgard, with heroes against the day of our strife with the Giants and with ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... that might is right in him personified Bids all creation bend before the insatiate Teuton pride, Which, nourished on Valhalla dreams of empire unconfined, Would make the cannon and the sword the ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... his Cross; the sight which melted the hearts of our fierce forefathers, and turned them from the worship of Thor and Odin to the worship of 'The white Christ;' and from the hope of a Valhalla of brute prowess, to the hope of a heaven of righteousness and love. Look at Christ upon his Cross, and see there, as they saw, the true prowess, the true valour, the true chivalry, the true glory, the true manhood, ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... Paradise, Elysium, Eden, the New Jerusalem, glory; Olympus, Elysium, Elysian, Arcadia; Valhalla, Walhalla; Nirvana. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... remember the story of the old Viking who had been converted to Christianity, and who, just as they were about, with much joy, to baptize him, paused and asked: "But what—if this, as you tell me, is the only way to the true Valhalla—what has become of my comrades, my friends who are dead, who died in ...
— Evergreens - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... they could find stored-up wealth along the coasts of Western Europe. The Northmen were heathen still and their religion was the old religion of force. They loved battle even more than they loved plunder. They held that the warrior who was slain in fight was received by the god Odin in Valhalla, where immortal heroes spent their days in cutting one another to pieces, and were healed of their wounds in the evening that they might join in the nightly feast, and be able to fight again on the morrow. He that died in bed was condemned to ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... all the chambers of our revolvers and fixed the weapons on to our belts, wondering what killing men would feel like, and how soon it would begin. "It'll be curious," Doe suggested, "going through life knowing that you killed a man while you were still nineteen. Perhaps in Valhalla we'll be introduced to the men we've killed. Jove! I'll write a poem ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... morality and religion repose. Both parties to the dispute beat the air; they worry their own shadow; for they pass from Nature into the domain of speculation, where their dogmatic grips find nothing to lay hold upon. The shadows which they hew to pieces grow together in a moment like the heroes in Valhalla, to rejoice again in bloodless battles. Metaphysics can no longer claim to be the cornerstone of religion and morality. But if she can not be the Atlas that bears the moral world she can furnish a magic defense. Around the ideas ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... His faith was ever strong; The people's war he wagd For victory erelong. Beneath the banner dying, He would not yet give o'er, And him Valkyries flying Home to Valhalla bore. ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... chief spokesman. After the vague, mad, noble dreams of Byron, Shelley and Napoleon, the awakening found those disillusioned souls, Wagner, Nietzsche and Chopin. Wagner sought in the epical rehabilitation of a vanished Valhalla a surcease from the world- pain. He consciously selected his anodyne and in "Die Meistersinger" touched a consoling earth. Chopin and Nietzsche, temperamentally finer and more sensitive than Wagner—the one musically, the other intellectually—sang themselves ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... said Helgi with a laugh. "And I can read my fate yet further. When I part from my foster-brother Estein, then shall a man go to Valhalla. What say ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... truly lives. A heroic Wallace, quartered on the scaffold, cannot hinder that his Scotland become, one day, a part of England: but he does hinder that it become, on tyrannous unfair terms, a part of it; commands still, as with a god's voice, from his old Valhalla and Temple of the Brave, that there be a just real union as of brother and brother, not a false and merely semblant one as of slave and master. If the union with England be in fact one of Scotland's chief blessings, we thank Wallace ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... cold. And here the reflection again returns, what an inexpressible poverty of the mind there is, when the people have no longer a mythology, and yet have not obtained in its place any knowledge of the true religion. The martial vagrants of Scandinavia glowed with the vivid anticipations of Valhalla; the savages of the western continent had their animating visions of the "land of souls;" the modern Christian barbarians of England, who also expect to live after death, do not know what they mean by the! phrase of ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... still, chambered society, the circle of bland countenances, the digestive silence, the admired remark, the flutter of affectionate approval. They demand more atmosphere and exercise; "a gale upon their spirits," as our pious ancestors would phrase it; to have their wits well breathed in an uproarious Valhalla. And I suspect that the choice, given their character and faults, is one to be defended. The purely wise are silenced by facts; they talk in a clear atmosphere, problems lying around them like a view in nature; if they can be shown to be somewhat ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... small compensation for lost youth, I fear." She said it without sentimentality, but, as she spoke, lightly touched the delicate theme of the "Golden Apples" that brought eternal youth to the gods, passing into the sublimity of the Valhalla motive. Looking up, she met Mark's comprehension and smiled, then, bringing her chord to a resolution, rose from the piano stool. Mark watched her as she paused to turn over the pages of his "Sun-dial," noting the titles—Sunrise, Morning, High Noon, Afternoon, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... drumming of the hoofs behind them as they led their first un-apron-stringed unit out into the unknown. The one kind of man has tasted honey, but the other knows what fed, and feeds, the roaring sportsmen in Valhalla. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... "And what of that? Little good can it do me to be a king's son if I am also a slave, made to work hard for my daily portion of black bread and tough horse flesh. Triggvi is in Valhalla, with Harald Fairhair and the rest of them, and he cannot help me now. But Odin be thanked, he died not like a cow upon a bed of straw, but with sword in hand like a ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... the mantling Channel's mist Dim your distant decks and spars, And your flag that victory kissed And Valhalla hung with stars— Crowd and watch our signal fly: ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... poor broken-hearted girl clinging to the church door. There is a dungeon, the chanting of the procession of tonsured priests, the passing-bell. Seldom appears the golden bridge over which the baffled and tired pass into Valhalla. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... round the old peak of Mull; and his long yellow hair waved round his head like a sunset. My life for it, Jarl, thy ancestors were Vikings, who many a time sailed over the salt German sea and the Baltic; who wedded their Brynhildas in Jutland; and are now quaffing mead in the halls of Valhalla, and beating time with their cans to the hymns of the Scalds. Ah! how the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... of a citizen to become a father was a prominent feature in many ancient religions. How much honor the sire of many sons had in Rome and Palestine is familiar to all readers. No warrior, according to German faith, could gain entrance to Valhalla unless he had begotten a son. Thus the preservation of the species was placed under the ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... trick. Suddenly he thinks of all the lives that must, in these last three years, have ended in that grand gesture. It is too silly. He seems to see their poor lacerated souls, clutching their greasy dog-eared cards, climb to a squalid Valhalla, and there, in tobacco-stinking, sweat-stinking rooms, like those of the little cafes behind the lines, sit in groups of five, shuffling, dealing, taking tricks, always with the same slam of the cards on the table, pausing now and then to ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... then add 1689 to our memory; and when a Pantheon or Valhalla is piled up to commemorate the names and guard the effigies of the great and good, the bright and burning genius, the haughty and faithful hearts, and the victorious hands of Ireland, let not the men of that time—that time ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... Wagner could make us feel the awful tragedy of Siegfried's death, the calm of the primeval elements, the pompous yet somewhat venerable character of the Mastersingers, the agony of Tristan's delirium, the superb majesty of Valhalla, or the free, noble nature of Parsifal? Even when Wagner uses motives comparatively little, writing rather "freely," as in Tristan und Isolde, he always has the power of imprinting an idea with the utmost clearness upon our souls. He ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... seemed to have decided that Ragnar should not prove as successful as usual. The poets tell us that they even sent the Valkyrs (battle maidens of northern mythology) to warn him of his coming defeat, and to tell him of the bliss awaiting him in Valhalla. ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... France. The courage and example of a private soldier, who there fell, contributed much to the success of the charge. Ever after, at the parades of his battalion, the name of Latour d'Auvergne was first called, when the oldest sergeant stepped to the front and answered, "Died on the field of honor." In Valhalla, beyond the grave, where spirits of warriors assemble, when on the roll of heroes the name of Jackson is reached, it will be for the majestic shade of Lee to pronounce the highest eulogy known to our race—"Died on the field ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... Spencer be erected in the Abbey, or rather in what journalists love to call the 'National Valhalla,' the 'English Pantheon,' or the 'venerable edifice,' where, as Macaulay says, the dust of the illustrious accusers, et cetera——? The question was once agitated in a daily paper. It seems that the Dean, when approached on the subject, acted like one of his predecessors ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... in peace, like the warriors of old time, over whose tomb they slew many victims and cut many throats. I believe in no creed, but the old one of our ancestors suits me best, and I hope I shall find my way to Valhalla, ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... stood fixt the fatal bough Of mistletoe, which Lok the Accuser gave To Hoder, and unwitting Hoder threw— 'Gainst that alone had Balder's life no charm. And all the Gods and all the Heroes came, And stood round Balder on the bloody floor, Weeping and wailing; and Valhalla rang Up to its golden roof with sobs and cries; And on the tables stood the untasted meats, And in the horns and gold-rimm'd skulls the wine. And now would night have fall'n, and found them yet Wailing; but otherwise was Odin's will. And thus the father of the ages ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... they cheered. It is likely that the warriors up in Valhalla heard, and thought it a battle-cry. Olaf raised his drinking-horn and said, 'Hail to you, Leif Ericsson! Health and greeting! Victory always follows your sword.' Then he drank to him across the floor, and bade him come and sit beside him, that he might ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... supported by all the authority of the Odin establishment, were violent in opposition. The Whigs advocated the new arrangement, and, as the king supported their own views, insisted strongly on the Divine right. Several liberal members permitted themselves to speak sarcastically of the Valhalla tap, and the ankles of Freya. The discussion was at its height, when suddenly a fearful peal of subterranean thunder roared around the Althing. "Listen!" cried an orator of the Pagan party; "how angry is Odin that we should even consider ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... middle was the field of Ida, the gathering-place of the gods, with Odin's throne, Lidskialv, from which he views the whole world. Odin is the highest and the oldest of the gods, and all the others honor him as their father. Odin's hall is Valhalla. The ceiling of this hall is made of spears, it is covered with shields, and its benches are ornamented with coats of mail. To this place Odin invites all who have fallen in battle, and he is therefore called Valfather, i.e., the father of the fallen. The invited fallen heroes ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... wherever you are, with your pencil dipped in darkness, starry with diamond dews and spanned with the softness of rainbows, and set on this land-locked Neptune your cross of the Legion of Honor, assure to the angry god his bowl in Valhalla, that the thunder-vexed lake may be soothed with ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Curley both together. And the bull terrier took the joint yell for a war cry, or a bunting call, or possibly the herald's overture that summons bull pups to Valhalla. He was bred right and British Navy trained and his was not to reason why. He waited for no second invitation, but lit out from Byng's arms like a streak—a whip-tail, snow-white streak—for where the Arab's hard lean legs shone shiny-brown below ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... a sharp alarm note is sounded. An officer gallops from house to house. Quick! saddle and ride; meet at Frederikstad! Myself and a comrade are quickly speeding thither, our brief Valhalla over. On the road we overtake and pass parties of twos and threes, all on the same errand. At last we approach the rendezvous. Up the hill rides a dense body of cavalry; down near the station horsemen dash in and out, to and fro, like busy ants. On the hill a few footmen leisurely ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... the little shrub mistletoe, which grows, you know, on the west side of Valhalla, and to which I said nothing, because I thought it was too young ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... the extraordinary spirit of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. At first sight some things that he has written appear pagan enough, and have been regarded as such. The God of Christians seems to inhabit and preside over an amazing Valhalla of pagan divinities; and indeed throughout Mr. Kipling's work the heavens and the earth are mingled in a most inextricable and astonishing fashion. It is said that not long ago, during the launch of a ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... are not honored like the leaders and commanders in the loyal cause, if they wear no laurels on their brows, if no monuments are erected to transmit their memory to posterity, if their names and deeds are not recorded in the Valhalla of the redeemed nation, they ought not to be disregarded and ignored. It was not on the field of strife alone in the South that the battle was fought and won. The army and the navy needed a moral, as well as a material support, ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... in which it was made perfectly clear that England would stand ashamed among the nations, if she did not inter her greatest painter in Westminster Abbey. Only the article, instead of saying Westminster Abbey, said National Valhalla. It seemed to make a point of not mentioning Westminster Abbey by name, as though Westminster Abbey had been something not quite mentionable, such as a pair of trousers. The article ended with the word 'basilica,' and by the time you had ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... In the Valhalla of English literature Anne Manning is sure of a little and safe place. Her studies of great men, in which her imagination fills in the hiatus which history has left, are not only literature in themselves, but they ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... answer came back, for Cornelius James, the hilt of the sword grasped firmly in two small hands, had passed into the Valhalla of Childhood. ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... concentration, like a two-bit swami. Cam noticed a tiny, rodent-type nose thrusting itself up from Everett's side pocket. "Fear ... I detect great apprehension—panic—hysteria verging on the loss of reason ... third booth this side of the runes ... Valhalla." ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... which the personal element played an undue part—were being waged in the twilight of a secluded Valhalla, the Supreme Economic Council decided that the seized Austrian vessels must be pooled among all the Allies. When the untoward consequences of this decision were flashed upon the Italians and the Jugoslavs, the rupture between them was seen to be injurious to ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... feeble piping voice—now scarcely heard an arm's length away—was potent in the contentions of the great hall when he was the honored associate of men whose public service reached back to the formation of the Government. In the old hall near by—now the Valhalla of the nation—he had sat with John Quincy Adams and contemporaries whose names at once recall the Revolutionary period. After serving as Vice-President of the Confederacy, whose rise and fall he had witnessed, Mr. Stephens, with the shadows ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... whoop, his spectre voice, and only escaped with her life because his war club was but a shadow wielded by an arm of air. The Slavonians sacrificed a warrior's horse at his tomb.47 Nothing seemed to the Northman so noble as to enter Valhalla on horseback, with a numerous retinue, in his richest apparel and finest armor. It was firmly believed, Mallet says, that Odin himself had declared that whatsoever was burned or buried with the dead accompanied ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... roamed about for several months as "a wanderer and a vagabond upon the earth," until, finally, he settled down in New Orleans, where he entered into partnership with a thrifty young Swede, and established a hotel, known as the "Sailors' Valhalla." Fortune favored him: his reckless daring, his ready tongue, and, above all, his extraordinary beauty soon gained him an enviable reputation. Money became abundant, the hotel was torn down and rebuilt with the usual barbaric ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... heroes were valiant in war, but they held that a lie was not justifiable under any pressure of an emergency. Their Valhalla heaven was the home of those who had fought bravely; but there was no place for liars in it. A fine illustration of their conception of the unvarying duty of truthfulness is given in the saga of ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... them with other human faculties and powers. Odin was the Jupiter, the chief, of the northern gods. He is the god of song and of war, and was the inventor of the Runic characters, or alphabet. He was the ruler of Valhalla, the home of heroes slain in battle. There is much more that is curious and interesting in the mythology of the Scandinavians, which I must ask ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... tops, above the clouds, was built the wonderful city of Asgard, home of the gods. In the center was the palace Gladsheim, of pure gold, within whose precious hall there were set golden thrones for all the gods. Odin had, too, a great palace of his own, called Valhalla, and each god and each goddess had a home built of precious metals ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... motives. "That is the motive of the Ride; that, dear, is the motive of the Fire; that is the motive of Slumber in the Fire, and that is the motive of Siegfried, the pure hero who will be born to save Valhalla." The class above had some knowledge of the orchestration. "You see," said a young man, pointing to the score, "here he is writing for the entire orchestra." "Three bars farther on he is writing for three violins and a flute. He withdraws his instruments in a couple of bars; it would ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Steer on these locusts of the north. Each vessel bears a deadly freight; Each Viking, fired with greed and hate, His axe is whetting for the strife, And counting how each Christian life Shall win him fame in Skaldic lays, And in Valhalla endless praise. For Hamble's river straight they steer; Prayer is in vain, no aid is near— Hopeless and helpless all must die. Oh, fainting heart and failing eye, Look forth upon the foe once more! Why leap they not upon the shore? Why pause their ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the hand of a deceased Irishman. The Greenlanders bury with a child a dog, for they say a dog will find his way anywhere. In the grave of the Viking warrior were buried his horn and armour in order that he might enter the halls of Valhalla fully equipped. ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... polished at our raw edges? One, probably; at the best, not more than two. And that takes us back to screaming savagery, when, gross of body and deed, we drank blood from the skulls of our enemies, and hailed as highest paradise the orgies and carnage of Valhalla. And before that time, think you, how many thousands of years of savagery did we endure? and how many myriads of thousands in the long procession of life up from the first vitalised inorganic? Two thousand years are ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... companions, when your souls Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead, Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge, Death will stand grieving in that field of war Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent. And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell; The unreturning army that was youth; The legions who have suffered ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... ends of the earth, jewelled and plumed were we. I was Lord of the Inca race, and she was Queen of the Sea. Under the stars beyond our stars where the new-forged meteors glow Hotly we stormed Valhalla, a ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... Song of Ragnar Lodbrok should be appreciated by modern authors. It is one of the documents responsible for the conventional Valkyria and Valhalla of the Romantic School, and for other stage properties, no longer new. The poem itself is in spirit rather more nearly related to the work of Tegnr or Oehlenschlger than to the Volosp. It ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... again," said to one another the gods. And looking downwards, for my dreams had taken me to some fair and far Valhalla, I saw below me an iridescent bubble not greatly larger than a star shine beautifully but faintly, and up and up from it looking larger and larger came a flock of white, innumerable swans, singing and singing and singing, till it seemed as though even the ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... chapter, or its sanctuary, as the fact that it is the resting-place of famous Englishmen, from every rank and creed, and every form of genius. It is not only Reims Cathedral and St. Denys both in one; but it is what the Pantheon was intended to be to France—what the Valhalla is to Germany—what Santa Croce is to Italy. . . It is this which inspired the saying of Nelson—Victory or Westminster Abbey. It is this which has intertwined it with so many eloquent passages of Macaulay. It is ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... were in every man's memory, and whose mighty deeds were in every minstrel's mouth. Helgi, Sigmund, Sinfjoetli, Sigurd, Signy, Brynhildr, Gudrun; champions and shield- maidens, henchmen and corse-choosers, now dead and gone, who sat round Odin's board in Valhalla. Women whose beauty, woes, and sufferings were beyond those of all women; men whose prowess had never found an equal. Between these, love and hate; all that can foster passion or beget revenge. Ill assorted marriages; the right man to the wrong ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... watch (Eastern Christian Time) in the left. Then decide on the time you think you would like to reach home. Let us say that you usually have dinner at 7. You would, if you could do just what you wanted, reach Valhalla at 6:30. Very well. It takes about an hour from the Grand Central Terminal to Valhalla. How about ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... find this wild north land. It is called Scandinavia, and comprises Norway and Sweden. The home of these Northern gods was a city called Asgard, built above the clouds, in the midst of which stood Valhalla, the hall of the chief god, Odin. Such a marvellous place as this was! It had a golden roof that reflected light over all the earth, just like the sun, and its ceiling was supported by spears, while millions of shields formed its walls, over ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... shady that the Druids would have forsaken their oaks to worship in them." Follow him to "the cedar wood beyond Flint's Pond, where the trees covered with hoary blue berries, spiring higher and higher, are fit to stand before Valhalla." Follow him, but not too closely, for you may see little, if you do—"as he walks in so pure and bright a light gilding its withered grass and leaves so softly and serenely bright that he thinks he has never ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... some connection with the Lord's Supper, the twelve Apostles bringing the number up to thirteen, while others attributed it to a much earlier period. In Norse mythology, thirteen was considered unlucky, because at a banquet in Valhalla, the Scandinavian heaven, where twelve had sat down, Loki intruded and made the number thirteen, and ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... had a celestial hall called Valhall, and thither he transported the souls of the brave; hence the name Valhalla. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... popularity did not penetrate far within the circle of scholars and thinkers, and never knocked at the charmed threshold of the Weimar set, whose taste was controlled by Goethe and Schiller. But "Hesperus" made a great noise, and these warders of the German Valhalla were obliged to open the door just a crack, in order to reconnoitre the pretentious arrival. Goethe first called the attention of Schiller to the book, sending him a copy while he was at Jena, in 1795. Schiller recognized at once its power and geniality, but was disposed to regard it as a literary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... winter. The Senate is as far from him as the Polar Star, and I question whether he could even bear the crucial test of two geese and a half. Yet I still look upon him with a thrill of awe, as the man selected by the popular vote to represent us in fame's Valhalla, and mysteriously defeated by some unexpected move of the "unseen hand at ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... course a few, a very few, of our greatest authors, who have striven forward to the first place in our Valhalla without the help of the largest reading-class among us; but I should say that these were chiefly the humorists, for whom women are said nowhere to have any warm liking, and who have generally with us come up through the newspapers, and have never ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... cloud is low over the thane's castle The eagle screams—he rides on its bosom. Scream not, grey rider of the sable cloud, Thy banquet is prepared! The maidens of Valhalla look forth, The race of Hengist will send them guests. Shake your black tresses, maidens of Valhalla! And strike your loud timbrels for joy! Many a haughty step bends to your halls, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... chambered society, the circle of bland countenances, the digestive silence, the admired remark, the flutter of affectionate approval. They demand more atmosphere and exercise; "a gale upon their spirits," as our pious ancestors would phrase it; to have their wits well breathed in an uproarious Valhalla.[30] And I suspect that the choice, given their character and faults, is one to be defended. The purely wise are silenced by facts; they talk in a clear atmosphere, problems lying around them like a view in nature; if they can be shown to be somewhat ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thanks to Dr. Lewisohn, may read all his plays in English. Even Henry Becque has got into the vulgate and is familiar to the Drama League. As for Anatole France, his "Revolt of the Angels" is on the shelves of the Carnegie Libraries, and the Comstocks have let it pass. New gods whoop and rage in Valhalla: Verhaeren, Artzibashef, Przybyszewski. Huneker, alas, seems to drop behind the procession. He writes nothing about these second-hand third-raters. He has come to Wedekind, Schnitzler, Schoenberg, Korngold and Moussorgsky, and he has discharged ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... for he knew all events that happened in the world, and he understood the speech of birds, and all kinds of charms and magic arts. Men served him by brave fighting in a good cause, and when they perished in battle he received their souls in his dwelling of Valhalla in the city of Asgard, where they spent each day in warfare, and where at evening the dead were revived, the wounded healed, and all feasted together in Odin's palace. There they fed upon the flesh of the boar Saehrimner, which was renewed ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris |
