Hel

Hel rules Helheim, the vast cold realm beneath the roots of Yggdrasil where the dead who do not fall in battle come to dwell. She is not a devil or a torturer but an administrator of immense power, a figure of quiet and absolute authority whose dominion covers the majority of the dead across all the nine worlds.

Who is Hel?

Hel holds a position unlike any other in the Norse cosmos. Where Valhalla receives the warriors who die gloriously in combat, Hel's realm receives everyone else: the sick, the aged, those who drown at sea, and those who simply live out their days and pass quietly into the dark. This makes her realm the destination of most human souls. She governs Helheim with strict neutrality, and the sources give no indication that she punishes the wicked or rewards the virtuous. The dead simply exist in her hall, removed from the living world. Her nature is underscored by her appearance: half of her body carries the colour and warmth of a living person, and the other half bears the dark pallor of a corpse.

Origins and the name

The word hel in Old Norse means a covered or hidden place, and it is cognate with Old English hell, sharing the same Proto-Germanic root. In the earliest layers of the tradition the word referred to the realm rather than a distinct ruler. By the time Snorri Sturluson composed the Prose Edda in the thirteenth century, Hel had become a fully realized figure with her own hall Éljúðnir, her own servants, and her own seat of authority. The realm is described in sources including the Prose Edda, the Poetic Edda poem Baldrs draumar, and skaldic verse, though the goddess herself speaks very little in the surviving texts. Her silence is itself part of her character.

Myths and stories

Hel enters the narrative most powerfully through the death of Baldr. After Baldr was killed by a mistletoe dart guided by Loki, the god Hermóðr rode Odin's horse Sleipnir down through the nine worlds to Helheim to petition for his release. Hel received him in her hall, where he found Baldr seated in the place of honour. Hel listened to Hermóðr's plea and set a single condition: if every being in all the worlds, living and dead, wept for Baldr, she would release him. Every creature and every stone did weep, except for one giantess named Þökk, who was widely understood to be Loki in disguise. The condition went unmet and Baldr remained in Helheim until after Ragnarok.

The second major story involves the manner in which Hel came to rule her realm. She was born to Loki and the giantess Angrboða, along with her siblings the wolf Fenrir and the serpent Jörmungandr. When the gods learned of these three offspring, they saw in them a prophecy of destruction. Odin had all three brought to Asgard and disposed of them: Fenrir was eventually bound with the fetter Gleipnir, Jörmungandr was cast into the ocean encircling Midgard, and Hel was thrown down into Niflheim and given dominion over the dead. In this way her authority was not something she sought but something imposed upon her by the Allfather.

Symbols and attributes

Hel's defining attributes are duality and threshold. Her two-toned body, half living and half dead, makes her a boundary figure, someone who belongs equally to both states and therefore to neither. Her hall is named Éljúðnir, meaning Damp with Sleet or Misery, and its furnishings are given names that emphasize cold and decay. Her dish is called Hunger, her knife Famine, her threshold Stumbling Block, and her bed Sick Bed. These are not punishments but descriptions of the realm's atmosphere, a place stripped of the vitality and warmth of the living world.

Family and relationships

Hel is the daughter of Loki and the giantess Angrboða. Her brothers are the wolf Fenrir, who is destined to kill Odin at Ragnarok, and the great serpent Jörmungandr, who will kill and be killed by Thor at the final battle. Through her father she is connected to the wider drama of Norse myth, since Loki's schemes are responsible for both the death of Baldr and the chain of events leading to Ragnarok. Hel herself is not described as having a consort or children in the surviving sources.

Hel at Ragnarok

At Ragnarok, the dead do not remain in Helheim. The ship Naglfar, built from the fingernails and toenails of the dead, sets sail from Hel's realm bearing the armies of the deceased into the final battle. Loki commands the ship. Hel's dead thus join the forces fighting against the gods, making her realm a reservoir of the forces of dissolution that will overwhelm the current order of the cosmos. After Ragnarok, Baldr returns from Helheim to help rule the renewed world.

Worship and legacy

Evidence for a distinct cult of Hel in pre-Christian Scandinavia is limited in the surviving sources, which reflects the general tendency of the texts to focus on the Aesir. However, the word hel as a destination for the dead appears throughout the literature with consistency, suggesting that her realm was a deeply embedded concept in Norse cosmology. In modern Heathenry and Ásatrú she is honoured by those who work with ancestor veneration and with the mysteries of death and transition. Her image as a two-natured being who administers the dead without cruelty resonates with practitioners who seek a complex and non-dualistic understanding of mortality.