The Valkyries: The Complete Story of Odin’s Mysterious Riders Between Life and Valhalla | Norse Mythology for Sleep

The Valkyries: The Complete Story of Odin’s Mysterious Riders Between Life and Valhalla | Norse Mythology for SleepA slow, quiet retelling of the Valkyries, made for falling asleep to.The name means chooser of the slain, which is the part that unsettles people once they notice it. They didn't arrive after a battle to collect the dead. They arrived before it, and decided.In the oldest material they are not the figures in armour that later art made of them. They are closer to something out of a nightmare — weaving on a loom strung with human parts, deciding the outcome as they work, riding over armies with light coming off their weapons. Later they soften. They become the ones who carry chosen men to a hall with a roof made of shields, and who pour the drink there every evening while everyone waits for a war that hasn't happened yet. And in a few stories they become individual women with names and histories, who fall in love with mortal men, disobey the god they serve, and get punished for it — one of them put to sleep inside a ring of fire until somebody brave enough came for her.That's the interesting thing about them. They sit exactly on the line between a force of nature and a person, and the old texts never quite settle which side they're on.The recording itself is the usual thing. A low, even voice, no music, no sound effects, nothing that rises or drops or suddenly arrives. Nothing in it is built to unsettle you, whatever the subject sounds like. Slow enough that following along stops feeling necessary somewhere in the first twenty minutes. If you drift off before the first battle and surface somewhere in a hall long afterwards, that's the intended use. Most people don't make it past the first half hour, and the rest will still be here tomorrow night.Put it on, turn the volume down, and let it go on without you.Mythology & Folklore for Sleep — long, calm retellings of Greek myths, Norse legends, Egyptian tales, Hindu epics, Chinese classics and old folklore from around the world, made for insomnia and the hours when you can't sleep. Bedtime stories for adults, told in a slow, quiet voice. New episodes every day.