Offerings To Hel

Volunteer to help maintain cemeteries.

Collect dead animals to breathe new life into.

Be kind and accept all.

Leave fruit outside for Her. Allow it to rot.

If you do not want something, respectfully but firmly make sure others know.

Admire the beauty of not only life, but death as well.

Wear black or grey.

Validate your emotions, even that which are negative.

Make sure your will is up to date.

Recognize that all life is equal.

Dry roses and leave them out for Her.

Visit graveyards and spend time with the spirits. (Practice spiritual precautions when doing this).

Meditate.

Carry an organ donor card.

Spend time watching the world move around you.

Support those who are struggling.

Plant a flower garden and tend to it often.

Live as though your life could end tomorrow.

Visit hospitals and comfort the ill.

Be respectful to all.

Accept the change in your life.

Recognize that pain is necessary to growth.

Listen to Her wisdom and learn from what She says.

Enjoy the rebirth of the Earth from the dead of winter.

Trace the curves of animal bones and admire their beauty.

Be patient.

Work towards universal compassion.

Hel and Odin

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 (“giant, glutton, overeater”) 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 Loki’s 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 (“harm-bidder”, “bringer-of-sorrow”). 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 son’s 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 (“Place of Mists”). In Baldur’s 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 ‘hidden’, 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 can’t 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, Freyja’s 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 wasn’t 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, isn’t 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.

Hymn to Hela Below the dry desert, below the driftwood Cast by cresting waves, below the humus and rot, Below the grave and abattoir, below the gates of the charnel-house, Lies the Lady’s serene land, lies Helheim, largest of the Nine Worlds.   Under a gentle gray sky, under a vacant sun and moon, Under silence and severity, under Her firm, flesh-stripped hand, Under the wide crown of the Tree and under the waters of Niflheim, There is the hall of forever, there is the final hearth and home. And in the body’s bone scaffold, in the heart’s ambient chambers, Through tendon and gristle, through the brain-pan and chest cavity, Among the ever-dividing cells, among the veins and corpuscles, Heed you Her voice, hear Her speak in every exhalation: I am your death and what lies after, I have drawn the borders of your life. I am your most patient friend, and I am your most implacable foe. I am the mistress of the dead, and I am the guardian of the living. I am the secret way home, yet I know from where you first came. Hail to the underworld goddess, hail to Helheim’s ruler, Daughter of the mighty Hag, hail, Angrboda’s pride, Hail the Trickster’s child, born of the flame-haired firebrand, Baldr’s jailor and protector, Mordgud’s friend and companion. Hail the ancestors’ mistress; hail the Keeper of the Dead! You are the gallows and the axe; hail, Lady of endings! Hail to the One who rules below, mighty in her inevitability. You are the labyrinth’s center. Hail, Hela Half-Rotted!

Hail to Angrboda, esteemed mother. May you strengthen our resolve as the resilience of enforced boundaries.

Hail to Hel, divine hostess. May you cool our scorched hearts as the soothing balm of peaceful healing.

Hail to Fenrir, revered warrior. May you amplify our voices as the cathartic scream of denied truths.

Hail to Jörmungandr, venerated observer. May you occupy our hearts and minds as the quiet strength of inward reflection.

“[Sigyn] bore him a son, Narfi, and shortly afterward another son, Vali. 

[…] The first of Loki’s children was tied to a pine tree and was now longer than the pine tree it was tied to. It was called Jormungundr, and it was a serpent. 

[…] [Odin] stared at the girl: on the right side of her face her cheek was pink and white, her eye was the green of Loki’s eyes, her lips were full and carmine; on the left side of her face the skin was blotched striated, swollen in the bruises of death, her sightless eye rotted and pale, her lip-less mouth wizened and stretched over skull-brown teeth. “What do they call you, girl?” asked the all-father. “They call me Hel,” She said, “if it pleases you, All-father.”

[…] It was a wolf cub, grey and black, with eyes the color of dark amber. The wolf cub ate its meat raw, but it spoke as a man would speak, in the language of men and the gods, and it was proud. The little beast was called Fenrir.”(The Children of Loki, Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman)

I'm getting close to releasing my Dungeon Synth album. This time I worked on Hel. Asgard will be the final track and illustration.

To me, Hel is not necessarily a hostile place. It may be dull, dark, quiet, and cold, but it is mostly a place of peace, to each their own. In Norse mythology, Baldr received generous hospitality there, and some sagas describe it as a place where people reunite with their families. However, there are also a few places of punishment for those who committed serious wrongs.

Hel is a controversial and complex topic. Sometimes the word does not even refer to a specific realm, but rather to the general place where people go after death.

I might even share one of the tracks this time, feel free to like and comment!

birdtober day 15: raven