In Valhalla an eternal feast holds sway – provided by a single animal that never runs out: the boar Sæhrimnir.
Each day the cook Andhrimnir slaughters and boils the boar Sæhrimnir in the great cauldron Eldhrimnir. His flesh feeds the countless host of the Einherjar, the fallen warriors Odin gathers for the last battle. And the marvel: each evening the boar is whole and alive again. So the meal never ends – night after night, until Ragnarök.
With the meat flows the mead that the goat Heidrun gives on Valhalla’s roof from the branches of the world-tree. Meat from Sæhrimnir, mead from Heidrun: the hall of the fallen knows no want. The image of the never-ending feast is the Norse dream of a warrior’s paradise.
“Andhrimnir has, in Eldhrimnir, / Sæhrimnir boiled, the best of pork.”— after Grímnismál 18, Karl Simrock (public domain)
Sæhrimnir is the heart of a vast system. Valhalla has, says the Grímnismál, 540 doors, and through each, at the last battle, 800 warriors pass at once. This host, the Einherjar, spends its days fighting: every morning they ride out and slay one another, every evening they rise whole again and feast together.
And at the feast nothing is lacking: meat from the ever-renewed boar Sæhrimnir, with the mead that the goat Heidrun gives on the roof from the leaves of the world-tree, and that the stag Eikthyrnir passes on as spring-water. This image of the never-ending battle and the never-ending meal was no child’s tale but a promise: whoever fell with honour awaited not nothing, but the best of all halls.
Valhalla · The Einherjar · Odin · Thor’s Goats.
Grímnismál 18 (Poetic Edda); Snorri, Gylfaginning 38. Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology.