In Norse mythology, Fólkvangr is a meadow or field ruled over by the goddess Freyja where half of those that die in combat go upon death, whilst the other half go to the god Odin in Valhalla. Others were also brought to Fólkvangr after their death; Egils Saga, for example, has a world-weary female character declare that she’ll never taste food again until she dines with Freya. Fólkvangr is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. According to the Prose Edda, within Fólkvangr is Freyja's hall Sessrúmnir. Scholarly theories have been proposed about the implications of the location.
Attestations
In the poem Grímnismál collected in the Poetic Edda, Odin tells the young Agnar that Freyja allots seats to half of those that die in her hall Fólkvangr, while Odin receives the other half :
In chapter 24 of the Prose Edda book Gylfaginning, High tells Gangleri that Freyja is "the most glorious of the ásynjur", that Freyja has a dwelling in the heavens called Fólkvangr, and that "whenever she rides to battle she gets half of the slain, and the other half Odin, as it says here: ". High then continues with a description of Freyja's hall Sessrúmnir.
Theories
''Egils saga''
In Egils saga, when Egill Skallagrímsson refuses to eat, his daughter Þorgerðr says she will go without food and thus starve to death, and in doing so will meet the goddess Freyja:
Britt-Mari Näsström says that "as a receiver of the dead her abode is also open for women who have suffered a noble death." Näsström cites the above passage from Egils saga as an example, and points to a potential additional connection in the saga Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, where the queen hangs herself in the dísarsalr after discovering that her husband has betrayed both her father and brother. Näsström comments that "this Dís could hardly be anyone but Freyja herself, the natural leader of the collectivefemale deities called dísir, and the place of the queen's suicide seems thus to be connected with Freyja."
Implications
says that if the Fólk- element of Fólkvangr is to be understood as "army", then Fólkvangr appears as an alternative to Valhalla. Lindow adds that, like Odin, Freyja has an association with warriors in that she presides over the eternal combat of Hjaðningavíg. Rudolf Simek theorizes that the name Fólkvangr is "surely not much older than Grímnismál itself", and adds that the Gylfaginning description keeps close to the Grímnismál description, yet that the Gylfaginning descriptions adds that Sessrúmnir is located within Fólkvangr. According to Hilda Ellis Davidson, Valhalla "is well known because it plays so large a part in images of warfare and death," yet the significance of other halls in Norse mythology such as Ýdalir, where the god Ullr dwells, and Freyja's Fólkvangr have been lost. Britt-Mari Näsström places emphasis on that Gylfaginning relates that "whenever she rides into battle she takes half of the slain," and interprets Fólkvangr as "the field of the Warriors." Näsström comments that:
Freyja receives the slain heroes of the battlefield quite respectfully as Óðinn does. Her house is called Sessrumnir, 'filled with many seats', and it probably fills the same function as Valhöll, 'the hall of the slain', where the warriors eat and drink beer after the fighting. Still, we must ask why there are two heroic paradises in the Old Norse View of afterlife. It might possibly be a consequence of different forms of initiation of warriors, where one part seemed to have belonged to Óðinn and the other to Freyja. These examples indicate that Freyja was a war-goddess, and she even appears as a valkyrie, literally 'the one who chooses the slain'.
Siegfried Andres Dobat comments that "in her mythological role as the chooser of half the fallen warriors for her death realm Fólkvangr, the goddess Freyja, however, emerges as the mythological role model for the Valkyrjar and the dísir."
Stone ships and Proto-Germanic afterlife location
In a 2012 paper, Joseph S. Hopkins and Haukur Þorgeirsson propose a connection between Fólkvangr, Sessrúmnir, and numerous stone ships found throughout Scandinavia. According to Hopkins and Haukur, Fólkvangr and Sessrumir together paint an image of a ship and a field, which has broader implications and may connect Freyja to the "Isis" of the Suebi:
Perhaps each source has preserved a part of the same truth and Sessrúmnir was conceived of as both a ship and an afterlife location in Fólkvangr. 'A ship in a field' is a somewhat unexpected idea, but it is strongly reminiscent of the stone ships in Scandinavian burial sites. 'A ship in the field' in the mythical realm may have been conceived as a reflection of actual burial customs and vice versa. It is possible that the symbolic ship was thought of as providing some sort of beneficial property to the land, such as good seasons and peace brought on by Freyr’s mound burial in Ynglinga saga. Evidence involving ships from the pre-Christian period and from folklore may be similarly re-examined with this potential in mind. For example, if Freyja is taken as a possessor of a ship, then this ship iconography may lend support to positions arguing for a connection between a Vanir goddess and the "Isis" of the Suebi, who is associated with ship symbolism in Tacitus’s Germania. Afterlife beliefs involving strong nautical elements, and, separately, afterlife fields, have been identified in numerous Indo-European cultures …"
Hopkins and Haukur additionally propose a connection between Fólkvangr and a variety of other Germanic words referring to the afterlife that contain extensions of Proto-Germanic *wangaz, including Old EnglishNeorxnawang, potentially pointing to an early Germanic '*wangaz of the dead'.
