Helheim

Hel the Realm, Hel the Being

Hel is both a place and a person. The goddess Hel — daughter of Loki and the giantess Angrboða, sister of Fenrir and Jörmungandr — rules the realm that bears her name. Odin threw her "down into Niflheim and gave her authority over nine worlds, so that she would allocate lodgings and provisions to those who were sent to her — namely those who die of illness or old age." The allocation of authority is Odin's act, not a natural law. He chose her.

Hel herself is described as half living and half dead: one half of her is flesh-colored (the living side), the other half is blue-black (the dead side). She is grim-looking. She is not evil. She simply administers what is — the dead come, and she receives them. Her hall is called Éljúðnir (damp with sleet). Her dish is Hungr (Hunger). Her knife is Sulltr (Famine). Her threshold is Fallandaforað (Stumbling-block). Her bed is Kör (Sickness). The names of her hall's furnishings are the experiences of dying — not punishment, but the last things the dying know before they arrive.

Who Goes to Hel

The Norse afterlife was not binary (saved/damned, heaven/hell). It was plural. Different deaths led to different destinations:

• Those who died in battle and were chosen by the valkyries went to Valhöll (half) or Fólkvangr (half, chosen by Freyja)
• Those who drowned at sea went to Rán's hall — the sea-goddess Rán who catches the drowned in her net
• Some remained near their burial mound as mound-dwellers (haugbúar), protecting their kin and accepting offerings
• Those who died of illness, old age, accident — the vast majority of people — went to Hel
• Oath-breakers, murderers, and the vilest dead went to Náströnd — a shore in Hel's realm where Níðhöggr feeds on their corpses

The division is not moral in the Christian sense. A farmer who lived well and died of fever went to Hel. A cruel man who died in battle might go to Valhöll. The Norse afterlife sorted by cause and manner of death, not primarily by virtue. Hel is not a realm of the damned — it is a realm of the ordinary dead, which means most of the dead.

Baldr in Hel — The God Who Went Down

The most detailed account of Hel as a place comes from the myth of Baldr's death. When Baldr was killed by the mistletoe dart guided by Loki and thrown by the blind god Höðr, his body was burned on his ship Hringhorni. He went to Hel.

The gods sent Hermóðr — a son of Odin — riding Sleipnir to bargain for Baldr's return. He rode for nine nights through dark valleys before reaching Gjöll — the roaring river at the boundary of Hel — and crossing the gold-thatched bridge Gjallarbrú. The bridge-guardian Móðguðr told him the bridge thundered less under the recently dead army she had seen the previous day than it did under his single horse. She sent him further down and north.

He found Hel's gate. Sleipnir leaped over it. Hermóðr found Baldr in the hall — in the seat of honor. He spent the night there and in the morning asked Hel to release Baldr. Hel's answer: if every being in the nine worlds — living and dead, stone and tree and ash — wept for Baldr, she would release him. If even one did not weep, he stayed.

The gods sent messengers throughout the nine worlds asking all things to weep for Baldr. Everything did — stones, trees, metals, animals. But the giantess Þökk (thanks — possibly Loki in disguise) refused. "Let Hel keep what she has." Baldr remained. He stays in Hel until after Ragnarök, when he will return to the new world along with his brother Höðr. Hel released what she held — but only at the end of everything.

Hel and the Christian Hell

The English word "hell" derives from the Old Norse/Old Germanic word for this realm — from the same root as Hel the goddess and Helheim the place (*halja — the concealed place, from the verb "to cover, conceal"). The Old English hell originally translated the Latin infernum (the place below) using the indigenous Germanic concept. As Christianity developed its theology of punishment after death, the English word that had described a morally neutral realm of the ordinary dead acquired its connotations of fire, torture, and damnation.

Hel — the Norse realm — is not the Christian hell. It is not a place of punishment except in its specific sub-region of Náströnd. Most of its inhabitants are simply the dead, living a diminished version of life, receiving offerings from their living descendants, waiting through the long dark. The conflation of Hel with hell is one of the most consequential mistranslations in the religious history of the English language.

Death Well Died

The Norse relationship with death in Hel was not primarily one of dread. The sagas record people facing death with equanimity, even humor — not because they expected Valhöll, but because going to Hel was simply where most people went, the way water flows downhill. The anticipation was not of reward or punishment but of continuation in a diminished form, among one's ancestors, in the household of a ruler who was cold but fair.

The custom of placing grave goods with the dead — food, tools, weapons, horses, thralls in some wealthy burials — reflects a belief in the continued existence of the dead as beings with needs and preferences. The dead needed these things. The dead were real. Hel was real. It was not a comforting theology; it was an honest one. The dead are there. They are ours to remember.