Valkyries' Loom

On the morning of Good Friday, it happened in Caithness that
a man called Dorrud went outside and saw twelve riders
approach a woman’s bower and disappear inside. He walked
over to the bower and peered through a window; inside, he
could see women with a loom set up before them. Men’s heads
were used in place of weights, and men’s intestines for the weft
and warp; a sword served as the beater, and the shuttle was an
arrow. And these were the verses they were chanting:

‘Blood rains
From the cloudy web
On the broad loom
Oi slaughter.
The web of man,
Grey as armour,
Is now being woven;
The Valkyries
Will cross it
With a crimson weft.

‘The warp is made
Of human entrails;
Human heads
Are used as weights;
The heddle-rods
Are blood-wet spears;
The shafts are iron-bound.
And arrows are the shuttles.
With swords we will weave
This web of battle.

‘The Valkyries go weaving
With drawn swords,
Hild and Hjorthrimul,
Sanngrid and Svipul.
Spears will shatter.
Shields will splinter.
Swords will gnaw
Like wolves through armour.

‘Let us now wind
The web of war
Which the young king
Once waged.
Let us advance
And wade through the ranks,
Where friends of ours
Are exchanging blows.

Let us now wind
The web of war
And then follow
The king to battle.
Gunn and Gondul
Can see there
The blood-spattered shields
That guarded the king.

‘Let us now wind
The web of war,
Where the warrior banners
Are forging forward.
Let his life
Not be taken;
Only the Valkyries
Can choose the slain.

‘Lands will be ruled
By new peoples
Who once inhabited
Outlying headlands.
We pronounce a great king
Destined to die;
Now an earl
Is felled by spears.

‘The men of Ireland
Will suffer a grief
That will never grow old
In the minds of men.
The web is now woven
And the battlefield reddened;
The news of disaster
Will spread through lands.

‘It is horrible now
To look around.
As a blood-red cloud
Darkens the sky.
The heavens are stained
With the blood of men,
As the Valkyries
Sing their song.

‘We sang well
Victory songs
For the young king;
Hail to our singing!
Let him who listens
To our Valkyrie song
Learn it well
And tell it to others.

‘Let us ride our horses
Hard on bare backs.
With swords unsheathed.
Away from here.’

Then they tore the woven cloth from the loom and ripped it
to pieces, each keeping the shred she held in her hands. Dorrud
left the window and went home. The women mounted their
horses and rode away, six to the south and six to the north.

A similar marvel was seen by Brand Gneistason in the Faroe
Islands.

At Svinafell in Iceland, blood fell on to the priest’s stole on
Good Friday, and he had to take it off. At Thvattriver on Good
Friday, the priest seemed to see an abyss of ocean beside the
altar, full of terrible sights, and for a long time he was unable
to sing Mass.


- Njal's Saga (Njáls saga), Chapter 157