Hildegarde, a warrior goddess from Asgard’s hallowed halls, is one of Odin Borson, AKA Odin’s Valkrior who shepherds the honorable dead to Valhalla. When called upon, she fiercely defends her homeland, and that same loyalty extends to Earth when her allies face world-ending threats.
Fighting Dragons
As a child, Hildegard beats every swordsman, champion, gladiator, foilist, and warrior that Asgard has to offer. Hildegard even bests her combat trainer Mattis multiple times. Believing herself ready, Hildegard demands to fight the gods, but Mattis instead leaves her in a cave guarded by a grumpy dragon. Before he leaves her there to fight it, he teaches her the three T’s: teeth, tail, and toes. She learns the hard way many dragons later.
When she grows up, Odin appoints his own Valkyrior, a group of warrior-maidens as his Choosers of the Slain, and Hildegarde is one of them. As a member of the Valkyrior, she selects worthy warriors who die in battle to join the Einherjar or Honorable Dead, who are then resurrected in Valhalla, the Hall of Heroes.
Asgardian & Valkyrie Abilities
As an Asgardian, Hildegarde is virtually immortal, aging at an extraordinarily slow rate upon reaching adulthood. She is resistant to conventional diseases and injury, and possesses superhuman healing, endurance, and reflexes. Only dispersal of a major portion of an Asgardian’s bodily molecules will cause death, and even then, resurrection via other gods
may be possible. Asgardian flesh and bone are three times denser than human tissue, and average gods and goddesses can lift about 30 and 25 tons, respectively. Many Asgardians possess additional superhuman powers.
When Hildegarde becomes a Valkyrie, she can see, or otherwise sense, the coming of imminent death, or the approach of the cosmic entity Death. She sees a “deathglow” (invisible to most other humans or Asgardians) surrounding people who are in serious danger of dying, though people marked by this glow might escape their demise if their circumstances change. She can also transport herself and a dying or dead person from Earth’s dimension to other-dimensional realms of the dead, simply by willing herself to do so (a service she and other Valkyries traditionally reserve for worthy warriors who have died bravely). She can also return from the realm of the dead at will.
Hildegard’s fighting skills are equivalent to Valkyrior leader Brunnhilde, AKA Valkyrie’s in unarmed combat, swordplay, and horseback riding, specifically winged horses. She often wields a double-sided axe.
Formidable Foes
Hildegard faces many foes, including Ego-Prime, Earth’s Carl Creel, AKA Absorbing Man, the Hell-Lord Mephisto, Mangog, and Dark Elf of Svartalfheim, Malekith and his forces.
Hildegarde’s most formidable foe is Knull, God of the Symbiotes, whom she helps defeat but only after she’s consumed by him and then released through the efforts of the Valkyrior.
Allies-in-Arms
Hildegarde is loyal to her fellow Valkyrior and leader Brunnhilde. She is also loyal to fellow Asgardian Thor Odinson, AKA Thor, God of Thunder, Thor’s Avengers allies, Sif, and the Warriors Three. She even joins the trio and dubs them “The Warriors Four” during the War of the Realms.
Hildegarde’s Heroic History
When Hildegarde’s friend and Valkyrior sister Brunnhilde desired to save Siegmund (Thor)’s lover, the pregnant Sieglinda, she disobeyed Odin’s orders to ensure Siegmund’s demise. Upon Hildegarde’s advice, Brunnhilde hid Sieglinda in the Great Forest where Odin rarely ventured.
In modern times, Odin returned Thor to Earth. When Thor’s foe Sandu trapped Thor beneath a collapsed building, Odin had Hildegarde and Valtrauta convey Thor’s belt of strength, Megingjord, to him to break free. Sometime later, powerful sorceress Amora, AKA Enchantress, briefly endowed socialite Samantha Parrington with Brunnhilde’s spirit, pitting her against Bruce Banner, AKA the Hulk, but withdrew the power after Parrington broke free of her control. As part of a complex plan to create Young Gods to deal with the impending Celestial return, Odin had Hildegarde accompany Thor’s betrothed, Sif, to the rapidly evolving alien Blackworld. There they battled the malevolent Ego-Prime, who pursued them back to Earth, and fought them, Thor, and the Warriors Three until Odin redirected Ego-Prime’s energies to transform three selected humans into his Young Gods. When Thor decried Odin’s manipulations, Odin exiled the group to Earth.
Hildegarde and the others became guests of Thor’s Avengers allies, conflicting with the Hell-lord Mephisto and Absorbing Man before the group returned to Asgard despite Odin’s decree. Finding Asgard deserted, its people taken as slaves by the insectoid Vrellnexians and their reptilian ally Sssthgar, Hildegarde and the others pursued the slavers to the Land of the Golden Star to free their people and into the Dark Nebula, where they battled Xorr the God Jewel. Amora cast Brunnhilde’s spirit into insane mortal Barbara Norriss, then left her to her own devices; Brunnhilde joined Earth’s Defenders as the Valkyrie. Later, when Mangog impersonated an absent Odin to usurp Asgard’s throne, Hildegarde and her sister, Krista (AKA Mist and Mista), joined an Asgardian resistance movement opposing “Odin’s” sudden tyranny while Thor ultimately defeated Mangog.
When the death goddess Hela annexed Valhalla and Ollerus the Unmerciful attacked to claim her title, Hela reassembled the Valkyrior, summoning Brunnhilde from Earth to lead them. Though disquieted at following Hela, the Valkyrior obeyed, battling Ollerus’ forces alongside the Einherjar. They defeated Ollerus with help from the Defenders.
When Odin sought to reclaim Valhalla, he summoned the scattered Valkyrior, including Hildegarde, and instructed Valtrauta and Grimgerda to fetch Brunnhilde from Earth, but, unwilling to forsake the Defenders, she refused. Odin appointed Valtrauta the new Valkyrior commander and told them to recruit a ninth member, but with Hela’s crown manifesting behind them, heralding impending death, everyone they approached declined, until Krista applied. Nine once more, the Valkyrior invaded Valhalla, battling Hela’s fire demons and the corrupted Einherjar; facing overwhelming odds all nine were eventually slain, but Odin defeated Hela, then restored the Valkyrior. Odin initiated a trainee Valkyrior program, so they would never again be reduced below the requisite nine; the Stallions of Doom, who only permitted the worthy to ride them, were arbiters of who could join.
At some point, Hecara became the Valkyrior commander. Meanwhile, Brunnhilde reclaimed her immortal body and reconciled with Odin. A few months later, Eilif Dragonslayer, sole survivor of a lost Antarctic Viking colony, died fighting Fafnir of Nastrond; Hildegarde, Krista. and Grimgerda escorted Eilif, the last Viking, to Valhalla.
Under unrevealed circumstances the Hall of Valhalla fell into disrepair, and Krista, Hildegarde, and Sygnet entered a corpselike slumber within, skeletal remains waiting for Ragnarok; when Thor clashed with freakishly powerful Doop nearby, the battle woke the trio of “Fatal Sisters” but they returned to their slumber after realizing it was not yet time. Ragnarok finally claimed Asgard, and the Valkyrior fell in battle. However, Thor later resurrected the Asgardians, restoring the city of Asgard on Earth near Broxton, Oklahoma; however, he did not restore Hela’s kingdom.
After the Shi’ar kidnapped Jane Foster, AKA The Mighty Thor, Hildegarde, Sif, Fandral, and Hogun approached Odin’s brother Cul Borson, the acting Regent of Asgard and requested an audience with the All-Father. Cul refused and Sif called him a coward. His Thunder Guard went after her, but Hildegarde held up her double-sided axe in support of Sif and threatened them back.
When nine realms fell, including Asgard, to the Dark Elf king Malekith and his powerful allies, most of the Asgardians relocated to a brownstone in the Bronx on Earth. But the final battle of Malekith’s War of the Realms was just beginning. When their building was attacked by Dark Elves, Hildegarde joined Sif and Jane on the roof and discovered the All-Mother Freyja and Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, who had just defeated a troop of Dark Elves. Hildegarde had never seen Spider-Man and immediately desired to kill it. Sif calmed Hildegarde down, defending Spider-Man as a local[5].
Hildegarde then joined the Warriors Three in the War of the Realms that ensued on Earth. Though Volstagg was injured and so they ferried him to safety in search of Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum. On the way, Hildegarde referred to herself as Hildegard the Heroic and the troop soon fought one of Malekith’s allies, a Frost Giant, alongside street heroes Ty Johnson, AKA Cloak, and Tandy Bowen, AKA Dagger. Cloak and Dagger then directed them toward their destination. When they arrived, Hildegarde announced their arrival as The Warriors Four to Jane Foster who was securing people to safety from the invasion[6].
Malekith and his powerful allies from the other Nine Realms nearly conquered Earth but Hildegarde along with Midgard’s heroes and a returned Thor, stood their ground. Hildegard ended up in Wakanda fighting alongside their country’s fierce female warriors the Dora Milaje, Sif, and Aldrif Odinsdottir, AKA Angela, against Malekith’s allies, the Angels of Heven. Hildegarde was upset to discover that a place like Wakanda existed while Asgardians lived in the Bronx and made her feelings known to Sif during battle despite it being a bad time to complain.
When Knull and his symbiote horrors arrived on Earth, Hildegarde is called by Jane Foster, now a Valkryie, to aid against the evil he brings. Hildegard joined forces with Jane, Hel’s Valkyrie and X-Men member Dani Moonstar, AKA Moonstar, and other Valkryies to sever Knull’s connection to the Headless Celestial. Using an old Valkyrie ritual, they weave a needle and golden thread through the fabric of reality that will pierce through the Headless Celestial. But Hildegard was lost to Knull’s forces and devoured by Knull’s symbiote. The Valkyries pull the thread connecting Knull’s necrosword to the dead, pulling it from the fabric of reality and the loss is felt not only by Knull, but also by Hildegarde who is released from her Symbiotic prison. Her strength joins the others in the fight.
