Description:
The Hall of Valor is an enormous hall building within Sovngarde (LINK), where the souls of dead Nord heroes endlessly feast and drink mead. It is ruled by Shor (LINK), the Nordic version of Lorkhan, who sided with humans against the elves and the other gods in the earliest period of history, the Merethic era. It is thus also known as Shor's Hall, as it and Sovngarde itself were created by Shor to guarantee a haven for the souls of valiant Nords, who are the descendants of the people that fought alongside Shor in the ancient past. See the entry on Shor for more about the creation of the Mundus and his punishment. As a "dead" god, Shor is notably absent from his hall in Sovngarde when The Last Dragonborn (LINK) arrives there at the end of Skyrim's main questline. His influence persists in the power he lent to the creation of Mundus, and clearly his Hall of Valor continues to function even without him physically present. According to the in-game book, The Road to Sovngarde (LINK), "Pain and illness vanish within the Hall of Valor. Revelry is never-ending, mead flows freely, and the greatest Nords of all time compete in tests of strength and prowess." The Hall of Valor is a direct parallel to the mythical Valhöll (LINK), "hall of the slain," in Ásgarðr (LINK), commonly anglicized as Valhalla. Both are mead halls, both are afterlives marked out for those who die in battle, and both are presided over by the parallel gods, Óðinn (LINK) and Shor. These battle-slain people are called einherjar (LINK) in Old Norse mythological literature, which translates to "lone fighter" or, more literally, "one army" in the sense of one-man army. They are chosen variously by Óðinn or by valkyrjar (LINK), the valkyries, whose name in Old Norse means "choosers of the slain." Housed in Valhöll, they feast and drink an endless supply of mead, and train to prepare for Ragnarök (LINK), the "doom of the gods," the apocalypse of Norse mythology. In the quest which takes the player here, named Sovngarde, the player's quest journal describes Sovngarde as "the realm of Aetherius where the souls of Nord heroes go to feast and battle until the final reckoning." This "final reckoning" is unspecified in The Elder Scrolls lore and mythology, convoluted and contradictory as it is (by design, with in-game books giving competing and incomplete accounts of the beginning of the world and its prophesied end). The apocryphal TES lore text, "Shor son of Shor" (LINK), written by former TES developer Michael Kirkbride but not included in any Elder Scrolls game, describes the cyclical, recurring battle between the gods of men and mer (elves) and their supporters. This is to be taken as only a possible answer to what the "final reckoning" is, as this text is, again, not canon and does not appear in any game, even though it was written by a developer and published on a forum. This cyclical war matches the rebirth described in Völuspá (LINK), the Eddic poem detailing Ragnarök, the destruction of the world and the gods, and its subsequent renewal. Thus, like Óðinn gathers the heroic dead to be his army of einherjar to help in the fighting at Ragnarök, Shor takes the souls of Nords who prove themselves likewise in battle to prepare for a final reckoning.| Medieval Citation | Medieval Sources | Description | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Einherjar | Gylfaginning Prose Edda/Younger Edda Poetic Edda/Elder Edda Grímnismál | Einherjar, meaning "lone fighters" or "one man armies," are warriors who died in battle and thus earned a place in Valhöll (LINK), Óðinn's (LINK) hall... | Never-ending battle |
| Valhöll | Prose Edda/Younger Edda Grímnismál | Valhöll ("hall of the slain") is the hall of the god Óðinn (LINK), which is frequently anglicized as Valhalla. According to the Afterlife Mead Hall |