Hel

The bridge over the river Gjöll is roofed in gold, and it rings underfoot. Móðguðr, who keeps it, told a rider out of Asgard that five companies of dead men had crossed the day before and shaken the planks less than he did alone, and that he had not the colour of the dead about him. He had come nine nights through valleys so deep and dark he had seen nothing at all. At the end of that road, behind walls built high and gates built wide, sat the woman who decides what happens next.

Hel is Loki’s daughter, born to the giantess Angrboða alongside a wolf and a serpent, which is not a family anyone in Asgard was pleased about. Snorri Sturluson says the gods read the prophecies, understood what was coming out of that union, and had all three children fetched to Odin. The wolf they bound. The serpent Odin threw into the sea that circles the world. Hel he cast down into Niflheim and gave her authority over nine worlds, with the right to apportion lodging among everyone sent to her: the ones who die of sickness, and the ones who die of old age. It was meant as a punishment. It reads more like a promotion, since sickness and old age take almost everybody.

Her hall is Éljúðnir, a name that means something close to sprayed with sleet, and Snorri walks its furnishings like a man reading an inventory. The dish is Hunger. The knife is Famine. The manservant is Idler and the maid is Sloven, and they move so slowly that watching them is its own small torment. The threshold is Pit of Stumbling. The bed is Disease and its hangings are Gleaming Bale. Nothing in that room is a metaphor. Each object is the thing itself, given a body and set in its correct place, the way a well-run household keeps a spoon for every purpose.

Hel herself is half blue-black and half the colour of living flesh, and Snorri adds that this makes her easy to recognise, which is either the driest line in the Prose Edda or simply a practical observation. The word for that darkness is blár, the same word Old Norse uses of a dead body; a corpse could be helblár, Hel-blue, or náfölr, corpse-pale. One side of her is a woman and the other side is what a woman becomes. Her face is grim and fierce and it does not change.

Almost nothing else about her survives, and that silence is the most interesting thing in the record. Older Eddic poetry does not put people with Hel, it puts them in Hel, as a man is in the ground. Grímnismál lists the three roots of Yggdrasil and sets her under the first of them, with the frost giants under the second and the lands of men under the third, which is a geography rather than a court. The same poem sends a long roll-call of rivers running down through the world of men until they fall to Hel, and rivers fall into places, not into people. John Lindow and Rudolf Simek both read her as a late personification of the grave itself, a word that hardened into a woman, and both find Christian shape in the way Snorri arranges her kingdom. That does not make her false. It makes her a different sort of true: a name for the hole in the ground that eventually stood up and began making decisions.

The one decision that has come down to us is the one that mattered. When Baldr was killed, Hermóðr rode Odin’s eight-legged horse down the long dark to ask for him back, and Hel did not refuse. She set a price instead. If every thing in the world, alive and dead, would weep for Baldr, she would let him go. The Æsir sent riders out in every direction. Stones wept, and metal, and trees, and every beast, in the way those things weep when they are carried from frost into a warm room. Then a giantess sitting in a cave, who gave her name as Þökk, declined. She said Hel could keep what she had. She was Loki, and everyone worked that out afterwards, too late.

Hel does not cheat. She names a price that is theoretically payable and lets the gods discover for themselves that the world contains exactly one thing which will not cry. She is neither cruel nor merciful. She is the rule stating that the dead stay dead unless the entire universe agrees otherwise, and the entire universe does not agree about anything.

Her power is jurisdictional rather than physical. No source has her fighting. She carries no weapon and works no magic. What she has is a place, a gate, a wall and a register, and everything that goes in belongs to her: the plague dead, the fevered, the old, the ones who died without anything dramatic to show for it. Her hall receives them and her servants attend them at the pace of a bad dream. That is the whole of her authority, and it is enormous, because the battlefield takes a minority and she takes the rest.

Her limits sit in the same shape. She holds only what is sent down, which is why the warriors chosen for Valhalla never come her way, and why a god like Baldr sits in her hall at all only because he died the wrong kind of death. She cannot go up. She cannot take anyone who has not already been handed over, and she cannot keep anyone the world unanimously reclaims, though nobody has yet managed the unanimity. She is bound to the same clock as everything else, and the road she rules ends when the world does.

The living hedged against the journey anyway. In Gísla saga, at Vésteinn’s burial, Þorgrímr comes to the mound and says it is the custom to bind hel-shoes on a man so that he may walk in them, and then does it. Somebody, at some point, decided the dead would need good footwear, and the road they were being shod for ran one way.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Hel in Norse mythology?

Hel is the ruler of the Norse realm of the dead, which carries the same name she does. She is the daughter of the trickster Loki and the giantess Angrboða, and the sister of the wolf Fenrir and the world serpent Jörmungandr. Snorri Sturluson writes that Odin cast her down into Niflheim and gave her authority over nine worlds.

What does Hel look like?

Snorri describes Hel as half blue-black and half the colour of living flesh, with a permanently grim and fierce expression. The Old Norse word used for that darkness, blar, is the same one applied to the skin of a corpse, which is why the description is often read as one half of her being dead. He notes that the colouring makes her instantly recognisable.

Who goes to Hel rather than Valhalla?

Hel receives those who die of sickness and of old age, while Odin claims warriors who fall in battle. That division means Hel takes the overwhelming majority of the dead, since most people do not die fighting. Her realm is not a punishment for wickedness; it is simply where an ordinary death leads.

Why did Hel refuse to release Baldr?

She did not refuse outright. When Hermóðr rode to her hall to ransom Baldr, Hel agreed to release him if every thing in the world, living and dead, wept for him. Everything did weep except one giantess called Þökk, who was Loki in disguise, and so Baldr stayed.

What is Hel’s hall called?

Her hall is Éljúðnir, a name meaning roughly sprayed with sleet. Snorri lists its contents as a set of named objects: a dish called Hunger, a knife called Famine, a threshold called Pit of Stumbling, and a bed called Disease with hangings called Gleaming Bale. Her manservant is Idler and her maidservant is Sloven.

Related Entries

Loki, Fenrir, Jörmungandr, Balder, Odin, Sleipnir, Garmr, Níðhöggr, Yggdrasil, Einherjar, Valkyrie, Draugr, Norns, Surtr