Valhalla

alternative Valhall

1. Norsehuman sciencesThe home of half of all warriors who died gloriously in battle as well as many of the Æsir.

   In some poems they are envisaged as divine figures, women who serve mead to the dead warriors in Valhall, and who fulfil the will of Odin in overseeing battle and making sure that victory is awarded to the right man.

   1996, Carolyne Larrington, The Poetic Edda, Folio Society, published 2016, page xvii

   2 more examples

   [S]uch souls as were detruded from the body by any violent method went strait to Valhalla. (Latin original: Nostratibus sane hoc erat infallibiliter persuasum, animas, non vulgares, neque senio morbove, sec cruenta morte & vi corporibus exeuntes, recta ad Vahlallam ferri)

   1791 May 1, “Moore's Inquiry into the Subject of Suicide”, in Monthly Review, London, pages 24–25

   So it’s hardly a surprise that the “Call of Duty” and “Assassin’s Creed” franchises put out new releases this week. “Assassin’s Creed Valhalla,” about Vikings and Norse mythology, debuted on November 10, the same day as the Xbox Series X. Three days later, “Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War,” set in the 1980s, was released.

   2020 November 15, Shannon Liao, “Next-gen consoles are here. So are the games”, in CNN Business, archived from the original on 17 Nov 2021

2. A hamlet and census-designated place in the town of Mount Pleasant, Westchester County, New York, United States.

   Investigators are not sure why the woman’s Mercedes SUV stopped on the tracks Tuesday night in Valhalla, about 30 miles north of New York City, National Transportation Safety Board Member Robert Sumwalt said Wednesday.

   2015 February 4, Ray Sanchez and Ben Brumfield, “6 killed when train hits SUV in New York”, in CNN Business, archived from the original on 22 Apr 2015

plural Valhallas · alternative Valhall

1. broadlyAn abode of the gods or afterlife in general.

   You will all go directly to your respective Valhallas / Go directly, do not pass 'GO', do not collect two hundred dollars

   1959, Tom Lehrer, “We Will All Go Together When We Go”

   3 more examples

   “The swans are singing 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 gods were wild ships swimming in music.

   1915 April, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], “The Return of Song”, in Fifty-one Tales, London: [Charles] Elkin Mathews, →OCLC

   That we possessed no Westminster Abbey must have touched his native pride somewhere, and he has set out to remove the slur by building and endowing a lordly private Valhalla on one of his seventeen estates for the last sleep of the great.

   1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries

   Like Philip's, Franco's autarchy was shrouded in religiosity—not Christianity alone, but also a sort of dim Wagnerian vision of hero-gods and Valhallas, a gloomy level of devotion on which paganism, Catholicism and the apotheosis of the State could conveniently be mingled.

   1964, Jan Morris, “Envoi: State of Being”, in Spain, Faber and Faber, published 2008, →ISBN