The fact that Valhöll was made up of weapons and armour can be explained by the fact that the dead were buried with all their military equipment. Originally they were sitting in their grave, but with time they were placed to rest in a lying down position. The goat Heiðrún was a picture of the bright and beautiful sorceress/goddess, who was to teach them the secrets, or the beast that was slaughtered on the grave mound so that the blood flowed down into the grave below. If the sorcerer/god drank the blood, he would learn the art of poetry. The fact that they used skulls to drink from suggests that this mead was actually knowledge and that they, rather than actually drinking something, just filled up their heads with knowledge. The deer Eikþyrnir was certainly the oak god Baldr and/or his wife Nanna, who are surrounded by thorns and because of that cannot get away. They were the Sleeping Beauty, sleeping in the grave, waiting for their rescue.
The names of the twelve rivers that flowed into the Hvergelmir are for us a repetition of something we already know, namely, it is a description of a sorcerer's/god's journey into the underworld and what happens there; the hunt for Höðr and the final battle of Ragnarök. The cold autumn, the warrior without form, because his clothes are hanging in the sacrificial tree, the mighty god (Óðinn) who is impersonated, verses learned in the grave, the cruel hunting of bears and wolves, autumn weather, Fenrir who charges forward, howling wolves in the forest, the fire used to kill them, and finally the Gjallarhorn sounding every year.
Inside the grave the warriors were strengthened by the hostility they were met with, when they met the difficult and hard sorceress/goddess. They had to first soften her up, by giving her the correct password and showing to her the key (the mistletoe) that they had brought with them. She would become friendly only when they did this. He had to learn the secret verses she taught him and to know them perfectly in order to advance in his education. Each verse learned by him was the password needed to be given to her for her to teach him more.
Warriors in Valhöll gather outside each day, to fight and die. They are revived and the next day re-enter Valhöll and are given more nutrition. The initiation lasted three days and nights, and each day they had to leave the grave, maybe to rehearse and memorize the verses and other secrets learnt inside. They then had to “die” again, every day to gain access to Valhöll. After the third day they were ready to start the hunt for Höðr/Fenrir.
6.0 The Voice of the Forefathers
6.1 The Eggjum Stone
There are many interesting archaeological finds which support my hypotheses and interpretations. The oldest are probably the cave paintings found in France, in Chauvet, in Ardèche and Lascaux, which are respectively about 35.000, 20,000 and 10,000 years old, where sorcerers with great skill have painted hunting scenes on the cave walls, probably as part of hunting spells. Another ancient evidence of the European religion's old age is a 5000 year old burial mound in Ireland called Newgrange ("new house"), but originally called Sid in Bruca ("the entrance to the underworld"), where at each Sunrise on the Winter Solstice the Sunlight shines into the innermost chamber. Everywhere in Europe we have, from the Stone Age to the Iron Age, evidence which can be understood in context with the ancient religion. In Scandinavia we have up to 6200 year old rock carvings and remains of men and women from the Bronze- and Iron Age found murdered and immersed in bogs. We have everything from burial mounds, ship graves and rock carvings to runic inscriptions. All of this can be understood in the light of the ancient religion.
Runic inscriptions are all from the late Iron Age, and the most interesting one is undoubtedly from a rune stone found in Eggjum in Western Norway, in proto-Nordic:
ni’s solu sot uk ni sākse stāin skorin
ni (????) maR nākda ni sn(?)r(??)R
ni wiltiR manR lāgi (??)
hin wārb nāseu maR
māde þaim kāibā i bormoþā huni
huwaR ob kam hārias hi a lat gotnā
fiskr oR f(??)nā uim swuimade
foki i f(?)a(??) (???) gālande
alu misurki
Translated from proto-Nordic to Norse this becomes:
ní es sólu sótt ok ni saxi steinn skorinn
ní (????) maðr nakða ní sn(a)r(áð)r
ní viltir menn lægi (??)
hin varp násjó maðr
móði þeim keipa í bármóða húni
hver of kom herjáss hí á land gotna
fiskr ór f(or)na vim svimmandi
fákr í f(j)á(nda) (lið) galandi
öl missyrki
In English this is:
This stone is not burned by the Sun or cut with seax
not (???) undressed human being, not resourceful/wise
man does not wish to lie (???)
they threw corpse-sea (i. e. blood) over human
their strength travelled in boat (in/across) her strong river
from whence came a god of war from a bear's lair in the land of the gods
fish swimming from old (???)
horse screaming in pack of enemies
dangerous feast
When we know the New Year and Yule mysteries like we do now the runic inscription becomes understandable. The Sun did not shine on the runes, for when they did the runes lost their power. This was something that was said in the Viking era, and which today is interpreted literally. However, it may well be that it really meant that the secrets should not be revealed in the Sunlight, i. e. in public, but only inside the darkness of the grave.
The runes were not cut with iron tools. Perhaps it was thought originally only that the secrets should not be recorded (and thus be easily learnt by anyone who knew how to read), but instead they should only be memorized by specific individuals. This rule may have been misunderstood later on, perhaps as early as in the Iron Age.
The Eggjum stone had neither been cut with iron tools nor exposed to Sunlight. An undressed man had to be someone who had hung his clothes in the sacred tree, and thus disguised himself as Óðinn, here called Snaráðir ("resourceful", “wise”). He was not Óðinn/Snaráðr, but pretended to be, in order to gain access to the realm of the dead. We can all understand that no man wanted to lie in the grave, whether this was the man or the woman waiting inside for him. The corpse-sea, i. e. the blood, was the blood from the animals they slaughtered on the burial mound, dripping into the chamber inside.