Váli

Summary

Váli is the son of Odin by Rindr, born to avenge his brother Baldr in the Scandinavian myths. Snorri calls him "Áli or Váli" and says he is bold in battle and a sure shot. Gylfaginning 30. He is not the Váli, son of Loki, who is named in the account of his father's binding; the difference is set out below.

His story begins before his birth. Baldr had dreams that warned of danger, so Odin rode his horse Sleipnir to the door of Hel's house and raised a dead seeress from her grave. She told him that mead stood brewed there for Baldr and that his brother Höðr would kill him. Odin asked: who will take vengeance on Höðr, who will bring Baldr's slayer to the pyre? She answered: Rindr will bear Váli in the western halls, a son of Odin, who will fight at one night old and will neither wash his hand nor comb his hair until he brings Baldr's enemy to the pyre. Baldrs draumar 2–11. Then Baldr was killed by the throw of blind Höðr, which Loki guided, and none of the gods could take vengeance in the assembly, because it was a place of peace. Gylfaginning 49. Váli was born as the seeress said. Völuspá says that Baldr's brother was born early and took vengeance at one night old, and the Short Völuspá says that the gods were eleven when Baldr fell, that Váli showed himself worthy to avenge him, and that he killed his brother's slayer.

The idea the story turns on is that blood does not stay without someone to claim it. Peace kept the gods from taking vengeance in their assembly, so a claimant was born whose task was known before his birth. Váli did not wait to grow up: he left his hand unwashed and his hair uncombed, the first things a person does to set himself in order, until he had done what he was born for. Then he survives Ragnarök: neither the sea nor the fire of Surtr harms him, he lives with his brother Víðarr in the gods' holy places in the new land, and Baldr and Höðr come to them out of Hel's house. The avenger and the man he killed sit together at the end of the story.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. The final i of Váli is an Old Norse ending that changes with the word's place: the accusative is Vála, as in the seeress's line "Rindr bears Vála". What remains is Vál-, w and l, the letters of Arabic waliya once its final weak letter drops. In Lisān al-ʿArab the walī is the one who manages another's affairs, and the walī of a slain man is his next of kin, who takes charge of his affairs after his death and claims his blood; of him the Qurʾan says: "whoever is slain wrongfully, We have given his walī authority". On this reading Váli is the walī, the one who holds Baldr's blood, which is what the story makes him: a brother born to take charge of his brother's blood. Snorri also calls him Áli, without the v, and Arabic itself drops the w of waliya in the present tense: waliya, yalī.

Linguistic Root

Váli and walī

Lane, under w-l-y, gives the walī as the manager of another's affairs, the guardian of an orphan, the executor and heir of a dead man, and "the heir, or next-of-kin, of a slain person, who has the management of the affairs after the death of that person", referring for this sense to the verse of al-Isrāʾ. The verb waliyahu means he took charge of it, and tawallā al-amr he took the matter upon himself. The sense joins nearness with taking charge: the walī is the nearest to the slain man, and so the claim to his blood belongs to him.

The sound correspondence is regular: Arabic w answers Norse v, as w answers w and v in the Juthoor laws; l stays l; and the final weak letter drops, as y drops in the Juthoor correspondences. The alternation of Váli and Áli resembles what happens to the w at the start of an Arabic verb of this type: it stands in the past, waliya, and drops in the present, yalī.

Cleasby–Vigfusson has no entry for the name, and the Germanic dictionaries do not settle its origin. Faulkes notes that the equation of Áli with Váli occurs only in Snorri's Edda, and that both names stand in a poetic list of Odin's sons.

Other readings in the essay

The essay puts waliya first, then wālā, to follow in succession, then wallā, to hurry off, which it links with how fast Váli grew, then waliha, to be consumed with attachment. The first three belong to one root, so they are facets of the same reading, and the one nearest the story is the walī who claims the blood. Waliha has an h that would need explaining.

Key Mythic Narratives

Váli, son of Loki

The name Váli appears a second time in the account of Loki's punishment, but there he is a son of Loki and his wife Sigyn. Gylfaginning says that the gods took Loki's sons, Váli and Nari or Narfi, turned Váli into a wolf, and he tore his brother Narfi apart, and they bound Loki with Narfi's entrails. The prose ending of Lokasenna reverses the names: Narfi becomes the wolf, and Loki is bound with the entrails of his son Váli. Faulkes notes that this son of Loki appears nowhere else, and that he may have been drawn from a stanza in the Hauksbók text of Völuspá which says that Váli twisted battle-fetters out of guts; if that stanza is genuine, it may mean Odin's son Váli himself, twisting the bonds that hold Loki.

Poetic names and the gods' assembly

Poets name Váli, as Snorri collects the terms, son of Odin and Rindr, stepson of Frigg, brother of the gods, Baldr's avenger, Höðr's enemy and slayer, and dweller in the homesteads of the fathers. He is one of the twelve gods who sat as judges at the feast Ægir attended.

Boe in Saxo

Saxo Grammaticus makes the avenger Boe (Latin Bous), Odin's son by Rinda, daughter of the king of the Ruthenians. A seer told Odin that this son would avenge his brother, so Odin courted Rinda several times in different disguises until he won her by deceit. When Boe grew up his father reminded him of his brother's killing; he met Hotherus, Balderus's slayer, in battle and killed him, and died of his own wounds the next day.

Symbolic Reading

The Arabic essay reads Váli as "the avenging walī", the one who takes up the vengeance as the walī of blood does in the traditions of the Semitic peoples, and sees in his growth from infant to fighter in a single day an image of how quickly this right is taken up. In the texts the vengeance goes with neglect of the body: no washing and no combing until the killer is carried to the pyre.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Isis conceived by Osiris after his murder, bore Horus as his heir and raised him in hiding until the council judged in his favour and his father's killer was handed over to him. In both stories a son is born after the killing to take the dead man's right from his killer. Horus avenges his father through the judgement of the gods' council after he has grown up; Váli avenges his brother with his own hand at one night old. His brother Víðarr is another avenger, who avenges their father Odin at Ragnarök.