PIXEL VALHALLA: “When moderns think of the afterlife, if they believe in it at all, they tend to imagine the Great Retirement Village in the Sky. It’s a pleasant grassy field next to a placid lake, where it’s always mid-September, rain never falls from the fluffy white clouds, and the sun is always warm but never hot. Waiting on the shore are Grandmama, Uncle Albert, and Rover, who you haven’t seen since he got hit by a car when you were eight but is of course present because as everyone knows, unlike people, all dogs go to Heaven. Getting into Heaven isn’t hard. You don’t have to believe in God or do anything strenuous, you just have to be sufficiently nice. Maybe there’s a Hell, which isn’t very nice, but only serial killers and Hitler end up there. So long as you’re a pleasant person you don’t have to worry about damnation, anyhow. You’ll go to the good place, and once you’re in, you’ll spend eternity padding around and making chit-chat about old times. . . . Famously, the pagan Scandinavians had an entirely different concept of the afterlife.”