Chapter LXI: Section IV: HEL

The goddess, or giantess (it is difficult to decide what to call her), Hel, is painted with vivid colors. She rules over nine worlds in Niflheim, where she dwells under one of the roots of Ygdrasil. Her home is called Helheim. The way thither, Hel-way, is long. Hermod traveled it in nine days and nine nights. Its course is always downward and northward. Her dwelling is surrounded by a fence or inclosure with one or more large gates. Gloomy rivers flow through her world. One of these streams is called Slid, which rises in the east and flows westward through valleys of venom, and is full of mud and swords. A dog stands outside of a cave (Gnipahellir). With blood-stained breast and loud howling this dog came from Hel to meet Odin, when the latter rode down to wake the vala, who lay buried in her grave-mound east of the Hel-gate, and to inquire about the fate of Balder. Horrible is the coming of Hel, for she binds the dying man with strong chains that cannot be broken. Anguish gnaws his heart, and every evening Hel’s maids come and invite him. These maids are also represented as dead women, who come in the night and invite him who is dying to their benches. And to the vision of the dying man opens a horrible, gloomy world of fog; he sees the sun, the genuine star of day, sink and disappear, while he, on the other hand, hears the gate of Hel harshly grate on its hinges, opening to receive him. Hel receives all that die of sickness or old age. But it also seems that others, both good and evil, come there; for Balder we know came to Hel, after he had been slain by Hoder. And Sigurd, who we remember slew Fafner, was afterwards assassinated by Gunnar and went to Hel; and thither went also Brynhild, in her beautiful car, after she had been burned on her funeral pile. Hel’s company is large, but she has dwellings enough for all; for her regions extend widely, and her palaces are terribly high and have large gates. Of course it is all shadows, but it has the appearance of reality.

For Balder,

The decorated seats
Were strewn with rings;
The lordly couch
Was radiant with gold,
And the pure mead
Was brewed for him.

But there seems to have been a place set aside far down in the deepest abyss of Hel for the wicked; for it is said that the evil went to Hel, and thence to Niflhel, that is, down into the ninth world. And it is here, in this most infernal pit, that the palace is named Anguish; the table, Famine; the waiters, Slowness and Delay; the threshold, Precipice, and the bed, Care. It is here Hel is so livid and ghastly pale that her very looks inspire horror.

Hel’s horse has three feet. Hel-shoes were tied on to the feet of the dead, even though they went to Valhal.

Our English word _hell_ is connected with the goddess Hel,[77] and to kill is in Norse _at slaa ihel_ (i-Hel). The faith in this goddess is not yet perfectly eradicated from the minds of the people. Her dog is yet heard barking outside of houses as a warning that death is near. She wanders about from place to place as a messenger of death. In the story of Olaf Geirstada-alf it is a large ox, that goes from farm to farm, and at his breath people sink down dead. In the popular mind in Norway this messenger of death is sometimes thought to be a three-footed goat, and at other times a white three-footed horse. To see it is a sure sign of death. When a person has recovered from a dangerous illness, it is said that he has given Death a bushel of oats, for her wants must be supplied, and Hel wandering about in the guise of a goat, ox or horse, may accept oats as a compromise.

It may also be noticed here, that the so-called Black Plague, or Black Death, that ravaged Norway as well as many other European countries about the middle of the fourteenth century, assumed in the minds of the Norsemen the form of an old hag (Thok, Hel, Loke), going through the realm from parish to parish with a rake and a broom. In some parishes she used the rake, and there a few were spared; in other parishes she used the broom, and there all perished, and the parishes were swept clean.