Death in Norse paganism was associated with diverse customs and beliefs that varied with time, location and social group, and did not form a structured, uniform system. After the funeral, the individual could go to a range of afterlives including Valhalla, Hel and living on physically in the landscape. These afterlives show blurred boundaries and exist alongside a number of minor afterlives that may have been significant in Nordic paganism. The dead were also seen as being able to bestow land fertility, often in return for votive offerings, and knowledge, either willingly or after coercion. Many of these beliefs and practices continued in altered forms after the Christianisation of the Germanic peoples in folk belief.
This image is usually interpreted as a Valkyrie who welcomes a dead man, or Odin himself, on the Tjängvide image stone from Gotland, in the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm.
The Oseberg ship (Viking Ship Museum, Norway)
Helgafell in western Iceland
The three large "royal mounds" at Gamla Uppsala.
Norse funerals, or the burial customs of Viking Age North Germanic Norsemen, are known both from archaeology and from historical accounts such as the Icelandic sagas and Old Norse poetry.
Viking burial scene, Dublinia
Excavation of the Oseberg Ship burial mound in Norway
Grave goods from a völva's grave in Köpingsvik, Öland, Sweden. There is an 82 centimetres (32 in) wand of iron with bronze details and a unique model of a house on the top. The finds are on display in the Swedish History Museum, Stockholm.
The deceased could be incinerated inside a stone ship. The picture shows two of the stone ships at Badelunda, near Västerås, Sweden.