Hel - The Underworld
In Norse mythology, Hel is both the goddess who rules the dead and the realm she rules: the Old Norse word hel names the place and its ruler. She is a daughter of Loki and the giantess Angrboða, and Snorri Sturluson describes her as half blue-black and half flesh-colored. In his account those who die of sickness or old age go to her, and at Ragnarök all of Hel's people follow Loki to the final battle.
Most of you have heard of Valhalla, some maybe even of Folkvangr, the places where those slain in battle are received by their rulers, Odin and Freya. Snorri says the two of them share the slain, half each.
But what happened to those who led their lives rather peacefully, you might ask, and never wished for such glory? Was there an afterlife for the lumberers, farmers, traders, mothers, or the ones too sick and old for the battle? Despite the popular opinion, the afterlife in Norse mythology was not only meant to be "a prize" for the fighters. In Snorri's chapter on Hel it is the manner of death, not merit, that sends people to her: those who die of sickness or old age go to Hel. Hel, the realm and its ruler, will be the subject of our article.
Hel, the Goddess of Death
Our story about the realm of death should begin as a story about any country or place in the world of eternity: with its ruler. The ruler of hel is Hel herself, the fearsome goddess of death. In Norse mythology, Hel is the child of the giantess Angrboða, and the trickster god, Loki, whose own father Fárbauti was a giant. So, besides ruling the dead, Hel comes from giant stock on both sides.
Hel has two siblings. One is Fenrir, a giant wolf who is foretold to kill Odin during Ragnarok (the world’s end) and to be killed in return by Odin’s son Víðarr. The other one is Jörmungandr, a serpent so huge that it lies in the ocean around all lands and bites its own tail. Jörmungandr is the arch-enemy of Thor. Snorri says prophecy warned the gods that the three children would bring them great harm, so Odin had them fetched. He threw the serpent into the sea and cast Hel into Niflheim, and the gods later bound the wolf.
Hel’s Appearance
In Gylfaginning, the first part of Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda (written around 1220), Hel is half blue-black and half flesh-colored, so that she is easy to recognize, and she looks rather downcast and fierce. That one sentence is the only description of her in the medieval sources. Snorri says nothing of bones or rot; the Old Norse word he uses, blár, covers dark blue and black. Modern artists usually turn this into a woman split down the middle: one side a pale woman, often with long, black hair, the other a skeleton. That image, and the reading of her two halves as life and death, are modern.
Much of what you may read about her elsewhere, a skeletal hand held out to be kissed, a long black robe, a limp, a calm and raspy voice, comes from modern fiction, not from the sources. Compared with other gods, she appears very little: she speaks in only one story, the death of Baldr.
The Most Famous Myth about Hel
Probably the most famous story surrounding Hel is related to the death of Baldr. Baldr was a god whose death was told to precede the events of Ragnarok. Snorri says Baldr had great and dangerous dreams about his life, and the poem Baldrs draumar ("Baldr’s dreams") opens with the gods in council, asking why his dreams were so bad. In order to save him, his mother Frigg made fire and water, iron and every metal, stones, earth, trees, sicknesses, animals, birds, poisons and serpents swear an oath not to hurt Baldr. The only thing she did not ask was a young shoot growing west of Valhalla, the mistletoe.
Knowing that nothing could hurt Baldr, the gods made a game of it at their assemblies: some shot at him, some struck at him, some threw stones, and nothing harmed him. Hel’s father, Loki, came to Frigg disguised as a woman and learned about the mistletoe, which Frigg said had seemed too young to demand an oath from. He pulled it up, took it to the assembly and gave it to Hodr, Baldr’s blind brother, who stood at the edge of the ring because he was blind. Loki guided his aim, and the mistletoe went straight through Baldr and killed him. Baldr went to Hel. Snorri gives no reason; modern retellings often say it was because he did not die in battle.
Saddened by the event, Frigg asked which of the Aesir would ride the road to Hel, find Baldr and offer Hel a ransom to let him come home. The god Hermodr the Bold, a son of Odin and Baldr’s brother, volunteered, and rode off on Odin’s eight-legged horse, Sleipnir. Hermodr found Baldr sitting in the high seat of Hel’s hall, stayed the night, and in the morning asked Hel to let his brother ride home with him, telling her how great the weeping was among the Aesir.
Hel said it should be tested whether Baldr was as loved as people said. If all things in the world, living and dead, wept for him, he would go back to the Aesir; if anything refused, he would stay with her. Everything wept, people, animals, the earth, stones, trees and metals, except a giantess sitting in a cave who called herself Þökk. She answered that she would weep dry tears and that Hel should keep what she has. People think, Snorri adds, that she was Loki in disguise. So Baldr stayed with Hel, and Snorri says he comes back only after Ragnarök. This story also serves to show us the inevitability of death.
Hel, the Realm of Death
As we already mentioned at the beginning of our story, you have probably already heard of Valhalla and Folkvangr. Those are the places where people who die in combat go. But there has to be a place where the rest of the people go because not everyone was destined to die in battle.
Some were going to die of sickness and, of course, a lot of people die of old age. Snorri names exactly those two: Hel receives the people who die of sickness or of old age. He does not say where everyone else goes, and the sources never set out one consistent scheme of the afterlife.
Modern books often say that the world of Norse mythology is divided into nine realms spread across the world-tree Yggdrasil, with Hel at the roots. The medieval sources do speak of nine worlds, and Snorri says Hel was given power over nine worlds, but no medieval text names the nine or arranges them on the tree; that picture is modern. What the poem Grímnismál (stanza 31) says is that Hel lives under one of Yggdrasil’s three roots, the frost giants under the second and human beings under the third. Snorri puts her in Niflheim. The name Helheim, used in many modern books, hardly occurs in the medieval texts, which almost always call the place simply hel. Most of you have already heard of Hermodr and his ride to find Baldr. Snorri’s account of that ride is our best source for the road to Hel.
First, he had to reach Hel. He rode for nine nights through valleys so dark and deep that he saw nothing until he reached the river Gjoll (Gjöll). Gjoll could be crossed by the Gjallarbrú, the Gjöll bridge, roofed with gleaming gold. On the bridge he encountered its guardian, the maiden Modgud (Móðguðr). She told him that five troops of dead men had ridden over the bridge the day before, yet it thundered no less under him alone, and that he did not have the color of dead men. The road to Hel, she said, runs down and to the north.
Proceeding further, he reached the gates of Hel, which Snorri calls Helgrindr (Hel-gates). Hermodr spurred Sleipnir, and the horse leapt clean over the gate. In the poem Lokasenna, Thor threatens to send Loki to hel "below Nágrind", the corpse-gate. Valgrind, which is sometimes given as another name for Hel’s gate, is in fact a gate of Valhalla in Grímnismál. Inside, there is a great hall, where Hermodr managed to find Baldr.
The dead of Hel also have a part to play in Ragnarok. According to Snorri, all Hel’s people follow Loki to Vigridr (Vígríðr), the place of the final battle. Notably, the sources never say that Hel herself leaves her realm or leads them, and Snorri says the ship Naglfar, made from the nails of dead men, is steered by the giant Hrymr.
The Difference Between Helheim and Niflheim
Now, for our story, it is essential to tell Hel, or Helheim, apart from Niflheim. We have already established that the goddess Hel rules over her realm. The confusing part is that in the Prose Edda, it is said that Odin cast Hel into Niflheim, the world of mist and cold, and gave her authority over nine worlds, to share out lodgings among those sent to her. She has great dwellings there, with very high walls and huge gates. Her hall is called Éljúðnir, her dish Hungr (Hunger), her knife Sultr (Starvation), her thrall Ganglati and her serving-maid Ganglöt, both names meaning roughly "slow-goer". The threshold of her hall is Fallandaforað, her bed Kör (Sickbed) and her bed-curtains Blíkjandaböl.
But if all of that happens in Niflheim, what is the difference between Hel and Niflheim? Snorri never says exactly how the two relate. He does add a third name, Niflhel, "mist-Hel" or "dark Hel". Early in Gylfaginning he says that wicked men go to Hel and from there into Niflhel, "down in the ninth world", and in the poem Vafþrúðnismál (stanza 43) the wise giant Vafþrúðnir says he has come to nine worlds below Niflhel, where men go when they die out of hel. In Baldrs draumar, Odin rides down towards Niflhel, meets a dog with a bloodied breast coming out of hel, and comes to Hel’s high hall. Modern books often name that dog Garmr, the hound that bays before Gnipahellir in Völuspá; the poems never make the link.
What the sources do not offer is a neat moral map. Snorri’s chapter on Hel ties her realm to the manner of death, sickness or old age, with no word of guilt, and Baldr, the best of the gods, sits in her high seat; in Baldrs draumar, mead stands brewed for him there. The idea that good people go on living ordinary lives in Hel while bad people suffer a second "death of the soul" in Niflheim is a modern reading, not something the texts say.
The clearest picture of punishment comes from Völuspá (stanzas 38 and 39). The seeress sees a hall far from the sun on Náströnd, the "shore of corpses", its doors facing north, poison dripping in through the roof-vents and its walls woven of serpents’ spines. There perjurers, murderers and the man who seduces another’s wife wade heavy streams. The poem does not call this place Hel, and Snorri puts Náströnd in the world after Ragnarök. The same poem has a sooty-red cock crowing beneath the earth "at the halls of Hel" as Ragnarök begins.
Hel in Popular Culture
There are not many representations of Nordic Hel in popular culture, but one of the most interesting is in the video game God of War (2018). In it, Helheim is a frozen realm of ice, and the dead cross a bridge on their way in. This is probably a nod to the Gjöll bridge.
Also, Hel the goddess of death appears in Marvel comics as Hela, part of the Thor franchise. In the film Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Hela is Odin’s firstborn and Thor’s sister. That is Marvel’s invention: in the sources she is Loki’s daughter, and Odin is the god who banished her.
Conclusion
In Christian interpretations, “Hell” is often represented as a nightmarish, spooky place of eternal torture, a punishment rather than a reward. The two words really are related. Old Norse hel and English hell come from the same Germanic word, probably meaning “concealed place”, and when the English became Christian the Old English form, hel, was used for the Christian hell. Norse Hel, though, was not mainly a place of punishment: in Snorri it takes those who die of sickness or old age, and Baldr, the best of the gods, goes there.
So, there you have it fellow Vikings. In these modern and mostly peaceful times that we live in, the chances of going to Valhalla or Folkvangr are not that great. As we have seen here, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing necessarily. After all, who needs to fight all day, only to rise again tomorrow?
Snorri never promises a happy afterlife in Hel, but he does not describe torment there either: Baldr sits in its high seat. Only of the wicked does he say that they go on from Hel into Niflhel. With these thoughts, until the next meeting, we salute you. Skål!
Hel, FAQ
Who is Hel?
Hel is the Norse goddess who rules the dead, and hel is also the name of her realm. A child of Loki and Angrboða, she is described by Snorri Sturluson as half blue-black and half flesh-colored, and she receives those who die of sickness or old age.
What is Hel's realm like?
Snorri places Hel in Niflheim, the world of mist and cold. The road there runs down and to the north through dark, deep valleys, over the river Gjöll and its gold-roofed bridge, to high walls and huge gates. The poem Grímnismál says Hel lives under one of Yggdrasil's roots. In Snorri's chapter on her it is a hall of the dead, not a place of fiery torment.
Who goes to Hel?
In Snorri, those who die of sickness or old age. Warriors slain in battle go to Odin in Valhalla or to Freya's field, Fólkvangr. Snorri also says that the wicked go to Hel and on into Niflhel; the sources never set out one consistent scheme.
Is Hel related to Loki?
Yes. Hel is a daughter of the trickster Loki and the giantess Angrboða, making her a sibling of the wolf Fenrir and the Midgard Serpent Jörmungandr, three beings central to the prophecy of Ragnarök.
What is Hel's role in Ragnarök?
The sources give Hel herself no active role at Ragnarök and never describe her leaving her realm. Her dead, however, do march: according to Snorri, all Hel's people follow Loki to the final battle, and the ship Naglfar, made from the nails of the dead, sails there steered by the giant Hrymr.
Is Hel the same as hell?
They are the same Germanic word, probably meaning 'concealed place', and Old English hel was used for the Christian hell. Norse Hel is not mainly a place of punishment: in Snorri it takes those who die of sickness or old age, and Baldr, the best of the gods, goes there.
Is Helheim the same as Hel?
Yes. Helheim is the name many modern books use for Hel's realm. The medieval texts hardly use it and almost always call the place simply hel, the same word as the name of its ruler.
Keep exploring: the Norse gods of death, the wider afterlife, the Nine Realms, or shop Norse jewelry.