Editing Fólkvangr (section)

==Theories==

===''Egils saga''===
In ''[[Egils saga]]'', when [[Egill Skallagrímsson]] refuses to eat, his daughter [[Thorgerd Egilsdottir|Þorgerðr]] (here anglicized as "Thorgerd") says she will go without food and thus starve to death, and in doing so will meet the goddess Freyja:
<blockquote>
:Thorgerd replied in a loud voice, 'I have had no evening meal, nor will I do so until I join Freyja. I know no better course of action than my father's. I do not want to live after my father and brother are dead.'<ref name=SCUDDER151>Scudder (2001:151).</ref>
</blockquote>
Britt-Mari Näsström says that "as a receiver of the dead her [Freyja's] 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]] (Old Norse "the Hall of the [[Dís]]") 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 collective female deities called dísir, and the place of the queen's suicide seems thus to be connected with Freyja."<ref name="NÄSSTRÖM61">Näsström (1999:61).</ref>

===Implications===
[[John Lindow]] 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]].<ref name=LINDOW118/>

[[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.<ref name=SIMEK87>Simek (2007:87).</ref> 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.<ref name=DAVIDSON199367>Davidson (1993:67).</ref>

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:
<blockquote>
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'.<ref name="NÄSSTRÖM61"/>
</blockquote>
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 [[dís]]ir."<ref name=DOBAT186>Dobat (2006:186).</ref>

===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 ship]]s 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]]:
<blockquote>
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 …"<ref name="HOPKINS-HAUKUR-14-17">Hopkins and Haukur (2012:14-17).</ref>
</blockquote>

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 English ''[[Neorxnawang]]'', potentially pointing to an early Germanic '''*wangaz'' of the dead'.<ref name="HOPKINS-HAUKUR-14-17"/>