When amateur archaeologist and metal detectorist Morten Skovsby uncovered this tiny silver figurine near the village of Hårby in the southwest part of the Danish island of Funen, he knew exactly what to do. He documented the findspot immediately, and then took the artifact to the City Museum in nearby Odense. When the museum’s curator, Mogens Bo Henriksen, saw the figurine, he knew what it was. “There can hardly be any doubt,” he says, “that this depicts one of Odin’s valkyries.”

Norse myths, called sagas, tell of female figures called valkyries (from the Old Norse valkyrja meaning “chooser of the slain”). The valkyries were sent to battlefields by the god Odin to select which fallen warriors were worthy of afterlives in Valhalla, filled with feasts of wild boar and liquor milked from goats. Despite their prevalence in the sagas, depictions of valkyries are relatively rare. They are confined to Swedish picture stones dating to about A.D. 700 and a handful of Early Viking fibulae (brooches) from Sweden and Denmark. So this three-dimensional representation is unique.

The figurine, which would probably have been a pendant, is partly gilded, while other areas are colored black by niello, a mixture of copper, silver, and lead sulphides used as an inlay. The valkyrie wears a long patterned dress and carries a double-edged Viking sword in her right hand and a shield protecting her body in her left. Dating to about A.D. 800, the figurine was recovered near an excavated area known to have been a metal workshop. Perhaps, says Henriksen, it was discarded as waste. Or maybe it was raw material on the way to the melting pot. “For some unknown reason it didn’t make it that far—and that’s our good luck.”

Source: JA Lobell. Archaeology Magazine

Photo i took of a Roof on a Viking house in Denmark. Liked the look of the mushrooms and moss.

Kattegat Denmark

A bit of Story Time for fun:
Looking back on some of my old memories from a couple years ago, it's crazy to me that I only could speak like 3-4 words in Danish. Despite my family coming from Denmark, I never cared to learn the language growing up. Most of that was due in part to the fact that in America my family began very split and broken. I grew up with parts of my blood family and two step families here in America during my upbringing, all down in Texas of all places. With this, I also never learned much about our culture, a lot due in part that I held a lot of animosity towards my blood family, most of which came down to religion. My grandfather raised me for the majority of my upbringing, teaching me the animatic ways of life, and in turn I was not Christian, something the majority of my blood family refused to accept, and due to a lot of the fighting and terrible things because of this growing up, I refused myself as a Dane. I didn't want to be like my family for the longest time, I spent a long time wishing my blood was that of my step families that took care of me at times throughout my childhood. Now to spare the 25 years of my history I'll skip ahead to the last 4 years. While I've always been pagan, I explored with many different spiritualities and occult things the past 13 years outside of my more animistic pagan upbringing as a child. In part of 'not wanting to be a Dane' I had actually cast off doing any work with Norse Paganism for a very long time, I had only learned about the runes and such when I was younger, and animistic ways but outside of that I didn't care very much, the same way I never cared to learn Danish. I know it sounds silly and stupid, but Norse Paganism being Scandinavian was too close to being like my family, even though they were very heavily Christian, but I wanted nothing to do with anything from that area for a good portion of my life. And of course over the past few years, I realized just how stupid it was. But in 2021 when Valheim Released, and I got a sudden spark to start caring, I really dove right in, and when I discovered Fuimadane that year, I really got behind the phrase. Fuck you im a Dane. From there i started embracing who i was, enjoying the Norse Myths and history, and i even embraced my accent a bit more, though not speaking any Danish i felt a bit dumb, and began taking the time to learn the language, asking my grandma whom i had not had much contact with over the years to teach me some things, and unfortunately greatly regretting being so disconnected from my blood family for so long, as my great grandma who really had the well of knowledge about of family had passed away during my teen years when I had completely distanced myself from my blood family. Now this did cause some conflicts, my emergence did upset the very Christian people on my family, and we still do not get along, but me and my grandma do find common ground and get along despite our religious differences. I connected with more family members in Denmark, and even some extended family in Sweden! Which was all really exciting, but the connection really has not held, unfortunately my family over seas also holds the same religious values and gets infuriated about my religious views the same as the bits of my family here in America. However despite butting heads heavily with my family, I continued on my journey, I delved further into the ways of Forn Seð, and very much embraced my Danish self and its brought me where I am today. And i really have to give a lot of thanks to Fuimadane, when I discovered him, and the meaning on why his artist name was Fuimadane, this invigorated me and gave me a lot of drive to stand up and go FUCK DIG JEG ER DANSKER! Anyways if you read all this, thanks for reading my silly and complex upbringing in America, it was a very rough and complicated childhood to day the least and of course all the real bad and not good things im not going to put here, but in looking back on things in my life, im happy how things turned out, that i was able to embrace myself and my spiritual path.