During a recent appearance on the Bleav in Pro Wrestling podcast, Valhalla of The Viking Raiders spoke about her current Viking character and revealed that she acquired inspiration from The New Day’s Xavier Woods for the gimmick.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
Valhalla on how The New Day inspired her character: “Actually The New Day was a big inspiration behind the character,. I had been fully into mom mode, farm mode, just doing my thing on my farm. And Xavier Woods was like, ‘It’d be really cool if you guys had a priestess!’ And they brought it to me and I was like, ‘That is really cool.’ And I put the character together and me and Hunter talked and I just showed up looking ridiculous like I am and he didn’t say anything, so I just kept doing it.” Valhalla re-debuted on WWE television last November when she appeared alongside Viking Raiders tag team members Ivar and Erik, the latter being her husband in real life. The pair celebrated their marriage in 2018 with a viking-themed wedding, in fact.
On how she and Erik are vikings in real life: “Me and [Erik] are vikings in real life. We do viking living history. I’m a big fan of all the fantasy dramas and I read a lot of books. You could say I was training my whole life to be this character. I didn’t even have to buy anything. I just gathered things that were in my house and I just showed up with it.”
