The Valkyries

   Valkyries, in northern mythology, the daughters or attendants of Odin, goddesses of fate. Clad in full armor and on horse-back, they rode through the air to the scene of battle to determine its course and to choose for Odin heroes worthy of Valhall. Die Walküre, which had its premiere in Munich, 1870, was composed by Richard Wagner as the second opera of his Ring of the Nibelungen. It has as its theme the disobedience of Brünnhilde, one of the maidens of death.