Dear Llama Nom and Runadis,
Your last mail on Valkyrie was really very informative; especially what
you wrote on Svanhilds and Gláms gaze reminds me on the sirens
from Ulysses.
I was trying to point out that not VAL means choosing or selecting,
but KYR or KÜR, as in my examples Kurfürst and Willkür.
The word stem VAL though sounds very similar to the New High
German Wahl or New Swedish val- which both mean electing,
choosing, but in this case VAL is the stem of VALR and means slain,
fallen. There are numerous mythology related words that Ive found in
the Icelandic-English Dictionary, by Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand
Vigfusson, 1874. pp. 675-676.
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/oi_cleasbyvigfusson_ab
out.html#images
E.g.
val-dögg: dew of the slain (blood)
val-fall: fall of the slain
val-föđr: father of the slain (Odin) /I brought the example Walfater in
my last mail, which is same, but in German).
Val-hölla: Hall of the Slain, Valhalla
val-keri: the prober of the slain
and
Val-kyrja: the chooser of the slain.
There is also an other word for Valkyrja, it is Valmćr, at least the entry
of this word in the mentioned dictionary points to see the entry
of Valkyrja, though Val-mćr literally means virgin/maiden of the slain;
that doesnt make difference, because Valkyrja expresses the choosing
of the slain and Valmćr rather expresses those who choose the slain.
As to your presumption on the connection of the ON val and
Latin vellere, you may be right that these words are related to each
other, but may be the cause of this is that these two words both
originate from a common proto-Indo-European word. I couldnt
imagine VAL-r being a loan-word, because things beginning with the
word stem VAL- mean very basic mythological and faith-related
phenomena of the ON. It would be strange to think that Old Norse
people have taken a loan-word from Latin to express their own type of
religious belief. We should check the etymology of vellere.
Anyway, I should not forget about mentioning that many words
beginning with Val- do not belong to our case of discussion,
because Val- also stands for Welsh, like Valland, the land of the
Welsh or the dictionary Ive consulted also has words in which val-
stands for choosing, like val-menni, chosen men. The latter I think is
simply homophone.
Tomorrow Im going to check Valkyrja/Valkyrie in some etymological
dictionaries.
If Ive misunderstood anything in your letter, - a lots of examples, you
must have really done a great research in this topic - please tell me
about it.
Imre