Valkyries as troll-women and priestesses of Odin-- combinable?

In my project based on the Volsunga Saga, Valkyrior or Valkyries play a significant role just as in the original (Sigurd's grandmother Hljod was a giantess who worked as a Valkyrie and brought about the birth of his grandfather Volsi His brother Helgi falls in love with the Valkyrie Sigrún and Sigurd eventually falls in love with Brynhild).

This version borrows a bit from Njáls saga with the Valkyries being depicted as weavers of fate. They are also depicted as female initiates of an order of sorceresses with special religious relationships with Odin. My problem is this: I want to stick at least partly to the old image of wolf-riding, fate-controlling battle-maidens but also want to explain how Valkyrior can also be the beautiful supernatural protectors of heroes (and how Sigurd can fall in love with Brynhild). So basically I want to figure out how to combine these two contradictory images, or a way it's possible, if it even is possible.

edited 28th Oct '13 4:37:36 PM by MorwenEdhelwen

Anyone have ideas?

Speaking as someone with zero familiarity with your source material(s), how are those two things necessarily mutually exclusive?

edited 27th Oct '13 2:24:27 PM by CrystalGlacia

Depending on how they are portrayed they can either be earthly or spirits.

Why are these earthly qualities and supernatural qualities mutually exclusive? Nobody is forcing you to follow the myths exactly; myths have been subject to reinterpretations since their inception. Your work is not going to be unlikeable because you decided to reinterpret a race of mythological origin.

edited 28th Oct '13 6:14:24 AM by CrystalGlacia

I think the problem is that the two images are so opposed. "Troll" in sagas can mean "a huge, ugly person." In the way they are described in the Eddas they are jotnar who are hostile to humans.

edited 28th Oct '13 4:36:54 PM by MorwenEdhelwen

While I'm not terribly familiar with the sagas specifically, I seem to recall that female trolls have at times been represented as looking like attractive human women; further, Wikipedia's article on trolls indicates that in an earlier period the word "troll" seems to have been very broadly-defined, while in a later time it did come to be more closely-defined, but that "... trolls are also attested as looking much the same as human beings, without any particularly hideous appearance about them ...".

Thanks, that helps!