And fight for his god.
By this Odin means to say, we do not know when the Fenris-wolf may come, and therefore we may need Erik’s assistance. In the same sense the valkyrie is made by Eyvind Skaldespiller, in Hákonarmál, to say:
Now are strengthened the host of the gods,
Since they have Haakon
And his valiant army
Home to themselves brought.
But because the dead who were slain by arms were thought to be called to Valhal, to unite themselves with the hosts of the einherjes, it was not supposed that Hel did not get her share in their being; nor was it supposed, on the other hand, that the soul of every one who died a natural death was shut out from heaven and forced to follow the body down into the abodes of Hel. That it was virtue, on the whole, and not bravery alone, which was to be rewarded in another life, and that it was wickedness and vice that were to be punished, is distinctly shown in the first poem of the Elder Edda, where it says of Gimle:
The virtuous there
Shall always dwell,
And evermore