Hel| The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Hel
(Underworld)

                Most of us know Hell as the
Christian realm of eternal suffering ruled by Satan, which came from the root
of the Proto-Germanic language, which is an ancestor of both Old Norse and Old
English. Apart from having similar names that sound the same, the realms of the
dead have nothing in common.  Old Norse
sources are not clear on how one would end up in the afterlife realms, which
there more than one, one of the others is being Valhalla. What is clear is that
where one goes after death has nothing to do with moral behavior, belief, or
punishment.

                The dead in Hel do much of the
same kinds of things that Viking Age men and women did: eat, drink, fight, and
sleep and so on. It was a neutral ground – not for the eternal bliss or
torment.  There is only one source that
describes Hel as an unpleasant place, Prose Edda, which was written by an
Icelandic Scholar Snorri Sturluson. The source was written long after Norse
paganism had given away to Christianity and ceased to be living tradition.
Which stretches any evidence that Hel was what he claimed. The book was also
more of a comedic story than a source of valuable information, such as, He
called Hel –Hunger, and her servants, Slow and Lazy- that’s just some to say
the least.

                Though Hel is spelt with one L,
it sounds exactly like Hell from the Biblical sense. The word, however, means
“Hidden.” Occasionally there were texts found that referred to Hel as
“Helheim,” or “The Realm of Hel.” But those texts are wide and far between and
even so much can be called modern text instead of Old Norse. And like Hell from
Christianity, Hel is thought to be located underground, but there are a few
sources claiming that Hel is actually somewhere in the North where the cold and
dark world is much like a grave. It is also said in some works that a dog
guards the entrance to Hel, like Cerberus does in the Greek mythology.

                 

                Hel

               

               

                Popularly known as Loki’s
daughter, and the daughter of Angrboda. This half giantess rules over the cold
and dreary underworld where the dead dwells. Like the Underworld she rules
over, her name means “Hidden.” And much like the rest of her family, such as
her brothers Fenrir and Jormungand, she is one to be feared; she is presented
as being greedy, harsh and cruel – unfortunately her personality is little
underdeveloped and not much is known about her due to the lack of survival of
Old Norse Literature that is found on her.

                It was told that when Hel was
born, disease came into the world and where she’d sweep into towns and cities,
plague would follow. Her appearance is described in a very few ways: one being
half black and white with a grim and fierce expression on her face, another
half beauty, half ugly and even one where she’s an ugly half dead hag with
gangrene legs and a hideous face.

                Stated in the Eddas, she may as
well have had authority over the Nine Worlds or Realms, which the Norse
believed in. Since she was the goddess of Hel and was concerned with the dead,
and all things die, this strongly implies that she covers everyone and
everything that can die in the whole cosmos. Thus, the nine worlds.

                She had two sidekicks, a plate
named Hunger and a knife named Famine. These items and names circulating around
the reality of the people who starved from the land being so cold and harsh on
the crops.

                Due to there being very few old
stories on her, the only surviving myth in which she’s prominently in is that
of “The Death of Baldur.”

                Baldur was a beloved God who was
slain by Loki. The Gods sent a messenger named Hermod to retrieve Baldur from
Hel. However, Hel wouldn’t have any of that and refused to give up her prize so
easily but being Loki’s daughter, she told Hermod, that she would only release
Baldur if every last thing in the universe wept for him. Only one person out of
the entire cosmos refused to weep for him, it was a Giantess, who was Loki in
disguise. Due to this, Hel was able to keep Baldur in her clutches…

Ragnarok

                It
is safe to say that Ragnarok is probably one out of many- “Wars of the Gods,” that
majority of Comic, Fantasy, Sci-fi, mythology fans has heard of and even some
for the common folk who are not interested in thus things. Ragnarok was a war
that the Vikings and Norse men believed firmly would be the “End of Days.” It
probably was for them. A great winter came shortly after some natural disasters
happened that people of that time thought was the gods fighting.

                The
greatest cause of Ragnarok is thought of to be Loki – after having killed
Baldur and the eventually imprisonment, Loki escaped his chains only to attack
and kill another God.  Now I am no
history major but this is from my viewpoint: Loki killed Baldur, a beloved God
– the Gods didn’t punish Loki for that – instead they sent to retrieve Baldur.
It was Hel, herself – Goddess of the Dead and Underworld – who said no, unless
everyone wept. I am not stepping a boundary when I say I wouldn’t be surprised
that Hel knew her father would help her with this plan to keep Baldur. And so
when Loki disguised himself as a Giantess and didn’t weep, Baldur was kept.

                For
this trickery, Loki was imprisoned. Angered, and out of many years, he escaped
and killed another God, thus Ragnarok started.

                If
Hel would have given up Baldur in the beginning, Ragnarok may have not started
when it did. I am not saying that Ragnarok may have NEVER started, just not
from those instances.

                Hel,
may have been the sole source of why Ragnarok had started at that time period.

                All
else I could find on her is that Baldur did end up escaping during the War and
when he did, Hel marches against Asgard with a legion of Dead. This is right
before the battle is over, everything dies and the world is broken. At least in
the stories.

                That
is literally all I can find on this very mysterious woman of a great power and who
comes from a powerful family full of destruction. I even went to my local book
stores in hopes to find any new information in Mythology books and even a few
Norse Myth books as well but I found very few sentences with little difference
from what I found online. The whole Ragnarok deal is just my opinion – I could
be a hundred times off but when I read it in the book it just clicked for me
and maybe I romantized it a little. So tell me, what do you think?