Valland
Place attested as both a mythical 'Land of Slaughter' and a geographic location west of Norway, across 2 sources.
Valland is attested in two sources that present it in markedly different registers. The Poetic Edda identifies Valland as a mythical place meaning "Land of Slaughter," noting it is "mentioned elsewhere but not further characterized" (Poetic Edda, Notes). The Heimskringla, by contrast, treats it as a real geographic location: "West in Valland, a man had such bad health that he became a cripple, and went on his knees and elbows" (Heimskringla, Ch. 59). This latter passage occurs in an account of King Olaf's posthumous miracles.
The two attestations pull Valland in opposite directions. The Poetic Edda treats it as a mythical toponym whose name -- "Land of Slaughter" -- places it in the symbolic geography of Norse cosmology, yet offers no further detail (Poetic Edda, Notes). The Heimskringla, however, uses Valland as a straightforward geographic reference in a miracle narrative, placing a crippled man "west in Valland" without any suggestion of mythical significance (Heimskringla, Ch. 59). Whether these refer to the same place or different places sharing a name, the sources do not resolve. The gap between a mythical "Land of Slaughter" and a mundane setting for a healing miracle captures the characteristic ambiguity of Norse place-names that straddle the boundary between cosmological and geographic registers.
Appears in: Cross-Source Entities, Places, Norse Tradition