It has been a while since I have posted something, but I have been doing a lot of reading and thinking, particularly about death. In this blog I want to look at Hel and Odin, who share some traits as gods who collect the dead, but who seem to be working in opposition to each other. Hel is an outsider just like her parent Loki. She is a jötunn (âgiant, glutton, overeaterâ) born in Jotunheim, and a force of chaos and destruction, as opposed to the Aesir/Vanir, who mainly seem to be forces of creation and order. Odin, as god of war, however, does not shy away from causing a little chaos and destruction, but then, Odin is also of jötunn parentage.
Hel is described by Snorri as being half a corpse, monstrous like her siblings Fenrir, the giant wolf, and Jormungand, the giant serpent, but unlike them she takes a human form. The gods receive a prophecy (Prose Edda, Gylfaginning) concerning Lokiâs monstrous offspring, and Odin has them brought from Jotunheim to Asgard. Jormungand is thrown into the sea, Hel is made ruler of the underworld, but Fenrir is fostered in Asgard. Why does Fenrir get this treatment? Perhaps simply because Odin likes wolves (he already has two pet wolves, Geri and Freki), or perhaps because he thinks the wolf will be an asset to him, as his dead warriors in Valhalla are. Hel is not given a place at Asgard, and she seems to be as much a prisoner of the underworld as she is its ruler, which to me suggests that the other gods see Hel as a danger to them. I think Hel embodies death or death of the gods. She is a harbinger of doom, and omen of Ragnarök. She is the daughter of Loki, after all, and Angrboda (âharm-bidderâ, âbringer-of-sorrowâ). What with Hel being half a corpse, she is a visible reminder of that which we will all one day become. The Norse gods are not immortal, and I think especially Odin is afraid of death and/or losing his mind, which would mean losing all the knowledge and experience he has gained (in Gylfaginning he says he is afraid of Huginn and Muninn not returning to him). On his wanderings, Odin queries spirits and jötunns about the afterlife and his own and his sonâs demise. Is Odin trying to cheat death or to put it off as long as possible? He lets people who have died live on in his hall. These people make up his army that he will use to fight against the forces of death/chaos at Ragnarök. Hel could be a personification of death coming to stop Odin before he discovers the secret to not dying.
Before they are brought to Asgard, Hel and her brothers never harmed the gods, so by taking them from their home and banishing and chaining them, do they not have a hand in fulfilling the prophecy? If Hel is death, she cannot be killed, only temporarily ignored or warded off. Is this why the best thing Odin can do is to make her ruler of the underworld? She does not die and disappear there, but it seems she cannot leave either. She can still influence the other realms, though her influence only extends to taking in the shades of those who have died of old age and sickness.
What is this place Hel is made ruler of? The sources contradict each other. According to some, it is located under Niflheim (âPlace of Mistsâ). In Baldurâs Dreams in the Poetic Edda, Hel is described as being located in Niflhel. In another tale it is said to be located under one of the roots of Yggdrasil, the world tree. In any case, Hel in Old Norse means âhiddenâ, so Helheim = Hidden Place. It seems fitting that there is no conclusive answer as to where it is, because it is not for us living people to know.
Niflheim is said to have existed before anything else did. It is a cold, dark and misty place, but it is not a void, it has material, it has rivers. The water running out of Niflheim turns to ice and fills up the Void (water = a source of life). It makes sense to me, therefore, that this is the sort of primordial place where people return to after they die to become material once again. When we think of someone dying, we picture them going somewhere else, but if, like me, you do not believe in any sort of afterlife, they are in fact not going anywhere. Still, they are no longer Here with us, we canât see them or talk to them, and since Nowhere At All is kind of hard to imagine, we assume they must be Somewhere Else.
It seems to me that Folkvang, Freyjaâs meadow where she receives half of those who have died in battle, and Valhalla are just temporary stops on the way to Somewhere Else (a.k.a. Hel, the Hidden Place). Valhalla in particular sounds like some terrible limbo, a Groundhog Day/Russian Doll kind of time loop, where the fallen warriors eat, drink, fight, die and rise again the next day to repeat the same process, until the inevitable end, Ragnarök, comes. Odin keeps his guests in a state of intoxicated forgetfulness.
Like Odin, Hel has an army of dead people, but unlike him she does not seem to have amassed it on purpose. She lends the dead people to her parent Loki, who captains this army at Ragnarök. Perhaps she wasnât too happy about the fact that she and her brothers were kidnapped and then banished/locked up. Additionally, I think her function is to end everything so the cycle can begin again. Odin and the others need to make way for the next generation of gods.
If gods die, then, do they also go to Niflheim/Niflhel/Hel? It does appear to be the case. A feast is prepared in Hel for Baldur, and he goes there after he is killed by the mistletoe dart. He does not die in battle, but his death is an accident. Niflheim/Niflhel/Hel seems to be a place where ordinary people go, and where there is calm and rest. Snorri calls the being Hel cold, and uncaring about the fate of humankind, but that is just what a mortal person would say about death, isnât it? Yes, death sometimes may seem cruel and unjust, but I suppose there is equality in death, and as Neil Gaiman wrote, we all get what everybody gets: a lifetime. Hel treats everybody the same, regardless of the life they have lived. They do not have to die honourably or prove themselves in battle to be granted entry to her realm. She also ends the suffering of those who are old and sick. As distressing as it may be to us, life cannot exist without death.
There are different motives that can be attributed to Odin and his thirst for knowledge. It could be a fear of death, wanting to stop the prophecies about Ragnarök becoming true, or a desire to make the most of his time in the face of his inevitable demise, or a bit of both. A relatable guy. I want to end this blog with a quote from Sayings of the High One: âCheerful and merry every man should be, until he comes to death."
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