[antir-heralds] Another Order for Avcal

[Ursula Whitcher]

Suzanne Jacquest wrote:
> I'd like to get people's opinion on yet another Order name for
> Avacal:
> 
> 
> Order of the Valkyries
> 
> Now I know that they don't accept just any mythological character,
> but  the Valkyries are very similar for the Norse as Angels are to
> Christians and Angels are considered a heraldic charge. Human
> monsters  for heraldry are Furies and Angels and though Valkyries
> would be one  step away from period practice I think I could argue
> it. I found no  conflicts.

I'd advise treating them as gods rather than as heraldic charges: orders 
named after non-Christian gods are considered to follow the "saint's 
name" meta-pattern and are one step from period practice.

Of course, you still have to demonstrate that "Valkyries" is a word in a 
period language.  The first forms of Valkyrie in English, referring to 
Scandinavian mythology, are from the eighteenth century.  (The OED s.v. 
Valkyrie does give the Old Norse word: valkyrja, plural valkyrjur.) 
However, there was a related Old English word.  Under Walkyrie, the OED 
says:

     1. OE. Mythol. The designation of a class of goddesses or female 
dæmons supposed to hover in or ride through the air over battle-fields 
and decide who should be slain: corresponding to the Scandinavian VALKYRIE.
   The OE. word (apart from the transferred sense 2) is found only as 
the rendering of L. Bellona, the goddess of war, or of names of the 
Furies and Gorgons of classical mythology. Possibly the conception may 
have been less definite in Old English heathendom than in the 
Scandinavian belief of later times, according to which these 
‘war-maidens’ were twelve in number.

Sense (2) is "witch" or "sorceress".  Under this sense, there's the 
spelling "walkyries" from the 1300s.  The standardized Old English 
singular is w{ae}lcyrie (the {ae} stands for an a-e ligature).  It looks 
like the plural might be something along the lines of w{ae}lcyrian, but 
I don't know enough about Old English to tell you off the top of my head 
whether that's nominative.

Ursula Georges.