Hel (location)
Hel, the afterlife realm of Norse mythology, takes its name from the being who rules it. That ancient name eventually gave rise to the Modern English word 'hell.' Yet the journey from the Norse afterlife to that familiar English word holds surprises that go far beyond the destination. What kind of place was Hel? The Norse texts that describe it vary and sometimes contradict each other. Together they trace a realm more structured and more storied than a single word can suggest.
The Proto-Germanic feminine noun haljō is where the story of Hel's name begins. It meant 'concealed place' or 'the underworld.' The word derives from the Proto-Indo-European root kel- and *kol-, meaning 'to cover, conceal, save.'
Old English 'hell,' Old Frisian 'helle,' Old Saxon 'hellia,' Old High German 'hella,' and the Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐌻𐌾𐌰 all descend from that single ancestral form. Each branch of the Germanic language family carried its own version of the same name.
The Latinized Gothic plural haliurunnae, recorded by the historian Jordanes, is the key to the first of two compound words. The philologist Vladimir Orel interpreted that Gothic form as meaning 'witches.' Old English rendered the idea as helle-rúne, carrying the sense of 'sorceress' or 'necromancer.' The Old High German equivalent was helli-rūna, meaning 'magic.' The second element of all these forms is *rūnō, the Proto-Germanic precursor to the Modern English word 'rune.' One alternative reading treats that second element as an agent noun from the Gothic verb rinnan, meaning 'to run or go.' Under that reading, the literal sense of the compound becomes 'one who travels to the netherworld.'
A second compound, *halja-wītjan, draws on a different root. Old Norse hel-víti, Old English helle-wíte meaning 'hell-torment,' Old Saxon helli-wīti, and Middle High German helle-wīze all trace back to this form. Its second element connects to words meaning 'understanding' or 'right mind': Old English witt, Old Saxon gewit, and the Gothic un-witi, meaning 'foolishness.'
Valhalla, the afterlife hall of the heroic slain, turns out to share a root with Hel itself. Modern English 'hall' and its Germanic relatives descend from Proto-Germanic hallō, meaning 'covered place,' which in turn goes back to Proto-Indo-European kol-. That is the same root as the kol- behind haljō. At the deepest level of language, a concealed realm of the dead and a hall of slain warriors are the same kind of space. That shared ancestry would prove meaningful when Norse poets came to describe what lay beneath one root of the world tree Yggdrasil.
In the poem Völuspá, a sooty-red cock crowing from the halls of Hel is one of three birds whose calls will signal Ragnarök. The other two are Fjalar in Jotunheim and Gullinkambi in Valhalla. Even at the threshold of the world's ending, Hel has a role to play.
Grímnismál, stanza 31, places Hel in the Norse cosmos with unusual precision. One of the three roots of the world tree Yggdrasil leads down to Hel. The other two lead to the frost jötnar and to Mankind. The poem goes no further in describing what lies at that root's end.
In Guðrúnarkviða I, a woman named Herborg describes the grief of preparing funeral rites for her family. She calls this process 'arranging their journey to Hel.' For the poets of the Poetic Edda, Hel was simply where the dead went.
The poem Helreið Brynhildar, whose title translates as 'Brynhild's Hel-Ride,' puts that journey at the center of its narrative. Brynhildr travels along a road on the border of Hel in a lavish cart. That cart is the very one in which her corpse was burned. She encounters a dead gýgr, a female giant, at a burial mound belonging to the gýgr. The encounter becomes a heated exchange in which Brynhildr recounts her life.
In Baldrs draumar, Odin rides to the edge of Hel to investigate nightmares his son Baldr has been having. He uses a spell to raise the corpse of a völva, a Norse seeress, and introduces himself under a false name. The völva is reluctant but produces prophecies about Ragnarök. Niflhel is mentioned as lying just outside Hel. The bloody dog Garmr appears as Odin approaches. The road leads toward what the poem calls the 'high hall of Hel.' Odin reaches the grave of the völva near the eastern doors, and there the poem's description of the realm ends. Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda would later offer a far more detailed picture of the realm, beginning with what happened when a beloved god died.
Gylfaginning, the central book of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, opens its account of Hel in chapter 3. It is described there as the place 'evil men' go upon death, located in the ninth of the Nine Worlds.
By chapter 34, the description has become richer. Hel the being was cast down into the realm by Odin himself, who made her 'ruler over Nine Worlds.' The location is given as Niflheim. A very large dwelling with huge walls and gates stands there; its interior bears the name Éljúðnir. There Hel keeps a servant, a slave, and various possessions, and she holds authority to grant lodging and items to those sent to her.
The most vivid account of the realm comes in chapter 49, through the eyes of Hermóðr, described in the Prose Edda as Baldr's brother. Following Baldr's death, Hermóðr sets out on Sleipnir to retrieve him. He rides for nine nights through valleys so deep and dark that he saw nothing. He eventually arrives at the river Gjöll, whose name means 'Noisy,' and finds the Gjöll bridge above it. The bridge has a roof made of shining gold.
Guarding the bridge is Móðguð, whose name translates as 'Furious Battler.' She tells Hermóðr that the bridge echoed more under him alone than under the entire party of five who had just passed. That party was Baldr, Nanna, and those burned in their funeral pyre. Móðguð also notes that the dead in Hel appear as a different color than the living. To reach Hel itself, she tells him, he must go 'down and to the North.'
Continuing along the Road to Hel, Hermóðr reaches the Gates of Hel. He remounts Sleipnir and together they leap far over the gates. Inside the hall, Hermóðr finds Baldr sitting in a seat of honor. He spends a night in Hel. The following day, he presses Hel, the being, to release Baldr. Hel gives him an offer. Baldr leads Hermóðr out of the hall and gives him gifts from himself and from Nanna for the living Æsir. Hermóðr retraces his path to the land of the living. The offer ultimately fails, and in chapter 50 the blame falls on Loki.
Chapter 53 of Gylfaginning, a brief passage near the end of the book, changes the story of Hel's inhabitants. Baldr and Höðr return from the realm into the post-Ragnarök world. They sit together, call to mind their 'secret wisdom,' and speak of the Midgard Serpent and Fenris-Wolf. That vision of Hel, where the dead could one day return, would surface again in a twelfth-century Danish chronicle.
King Hadingus is eating dinner in Book I of Gesta Danorum when a woman arrives carrying stalks of hemlock. She asks him if he knows where such fresh herbs can grow in winter. He wants to find out. The woman muffles him with her cloak and pulls him into the ground. The author Saxo reasons that the gods wished for Hadingus to visit in the flesh the place where he will go after death.
A dark and misty cloud is the first obstacle after they vanish underground. Beyond it, they follow a path worn smooth from heavy use over many ages. They pass men wearing rich-looking robes and nobles dressed in purple. The path eventually opens into sunny regions where the hemlock plants grow.
The journey continues until they reach a river of blue-black water. It moves fast, full of rapids, and is filled with various weapons. They cross a bridge above it. On the other side, two armies meet in endless battle. Hadingus asks the woman who these fighters are. She tells him they are men who died by the sword. They present an everlasting display of their destruction, attempting to equal the activity of their past lives.
A wall then stops their progress, one that neither can find a way over. The woman attempts to leap it, but despite her slender and wrinkled body, cannot clear the top. She removes the head of a cock she has been carrying and throws it over the wall. The bird crows on the other side. It has returned to life. Hadingus then returns to his wife, and his next challenge is a threat by pirates.
Hilda Ellis Davidson, writing on Snorri Sturluson's account of Hel, reached a striking conclusion. She stated that 'it seems likely that Snorri's account of the underworld is chiefly his own work.' That is a remarkable claim about what has become one of the most detailed descriptions of the Norse underworld.
Snorri's description of Hel as the place for those who die of disease or old age caught Davidson's particular attention. She noted that the one detailed account Snorri gives of Hel follows Baldr's death. Baldr, after all, had not died of old age or sickness. The idea that disease and old age send a person to Hel, while violent death sends warriors to Valhalla, may have been Snorri's invention. Davidson saw it as his attempt to make his two afterlife locations cohere with each other.
Davidson further observed that Snorri may have been drawing on a 'rich source' now unknown to us. But even if that source existed, she suggested, it may have told him very little. What it offered beyond the bare fact that Hel was a hall may have been slim. What Snorri built around that bare framework, Davidson added, may at times have been shaped by Christian teachings about the afterlife. Snorri's detailed descriptions of Hel in the Prose Edda are not corroborated outside Baldrs draumar. That poem itself does not appear in the original Codex Regius. It is a later addition, often appended to modern editions of the Poetic Edda.
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Common questions
What is Hel in Norse mythology?
Hel is an afterlife realm in Norse mythology and paganism, ruled by a being of the same name. Both the dead and, in certain accounts, living figures travel there. The realm is located in the ninth of the Nine Worlds, within Niflheim.
Where is the realm of Hel located in Norse cosmology?
Hel is situated in the ninth of the Nine Worlds, in a region called Niflheim. One of the three roots of the world tree Yggdrasil leads down to it, according to the poem Grímnismál. To reach it, a traveler must go 'down and to the North,' crossing the river Gjöll on a bridge with a golden roof.
Who rules the realm of Hel in Norse mythology?
The being who rules Hel also bears the name Hel. Odin cast her into the realm and made her 'ruler over Nine Worlds.' She presides over a great hall called Éljúðnir and can grant lodging to those who died of disease or old age.
What does the word Hel mean etymologically?
The word Hel descends from the Proto-Germanic noun haljō, meaning 'concealed place' or 'the underworld.' That form comes from the Proto-Indo-European root kel- or *kol-, meaning 'to cover, conceal, save.' It shares this ancestry with Modern English 'hell' and, through a related form, with both 'hall' and 'Valhalla.'
What did Hermóðr find when he rode to Hel to retrieve Baldr?
After riding nine nights through dark valleys on Sleipnir, Hermóðr crossed the river Gjöll on a golden-roofed bridge guarded by Móðguð. He leapt the Gates of Hel and found Baldr sitting in a seat of honor inside the hall. Hel gave Hermóðr an offer for Baldr's release, but the attempt ultimately failed, with Loki bearing the blame.
What is the difference between Hel and Valhalla in Norse mythology?
Valhalla receives warriors who died in battle. Hel receives those who died of disease or old age, according to Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda. The scholar Hilda Ellis Davidson suggested this distinction may have been Snorri's own invention rather than ancient tradition.