Sessrúmnir

14. Fôlkvang is the ninth, there Freyia directs the sittings in the hall. She half the fallen chooses each day, but Odin th’ other half.

Freyja is the most propitious of the goddesses; her abode in heaven is called Folkvang.

Her mansion, called Sessrumnir, is large and magnificent; thence she sallies forth in a car drawn by two cats.

Grímnismál names Fólkvangr as the ninth dwelling, where Freyja directs the sittings in the hall. Each day she chooses half of the fallen and Odin takes the other half. The poem does not name her hall.

Snorri’s Gylfaginning gives both names. Freyja’s abode in heaven is Fólkvangr, where she claims half of the slain on every field she rides to, and her mansion is Sessrúmnir, “large and magnificent”. He adds that she rides out from it in a car drawn by two cats. Snorri does not say in so many words that the hall lies inside the field.

Sessrúmnir is read as “seat-roomy”, a hall with room for many seats; the Norroena glossary gives “having room for plenty of seats”. Fólkvangr is glossed there as “the folk’s field, or habitation”.

The seats fit what both sources say about Freyja choosing half of the slain, but the texts do not say whether the hall and the field are one place under two names or a hall within a field. Readers differ on this.