Viking Hel and the Afterlife

Where did a Viking go when they died? Not to one place but to many. The fallen might go to Valhalla or Freyja’s field, the drowned to the sea goddess Ran, and some families to a holy mountain. For most people, though, the destination was Hel. The name means something like ‘the hidden place’, and confusingly it is also the name of the goddess who rules there. Viking Hel and the English word “hell” share a root, but, as we will see, not a meaning.

Are Viking Hel and Hell Related?

Most of what we know about Hel comes from Snorri Sturluson, an Icelandic Christian who wrote his Prose Edda around 1220, more than two centuries after Iceland converted, so his picture of Hel deserves some caution. The name itself is a trap. Old Norse hel and English “hell” really are the same word: both come from a Germanic root meaning ‘to cover or conceal’. But sharing a word doesn’t mean sharing an idea. The Christian Hell is a place of punishment, while the older Norse Hel seems to have been simply the dim home of the ordinary dead. Snorri, who knew both, may have let one color the other.

Rivers of Hel

As in many mythologies, the dead must cross water. In the Poetic Edda, when the hero Sinfjötli dies, a mysterious ferryman, widely understood to be Odin, carries his body away across a fjord.

One river is called Gjoll. It is spanned by a bridge with a golden roof guarded by the maiden Modgud. Another name for the goddess Hel is “Man Gjallar” translated as ‘Girl of Gjoll’.

A second river may also belong to Hel. The Völuspá describes Slid, which “falls from the east through poison valleys, with knives and swords” (st. 36).

Where Is the Viking Hel?

Norse sources place Hel below the earth. Snorri says the god Hermod rode “down and north” for nine nights to reach it, to beg for the return of Baldur. But the imagery doesn’t always fit a simple underground map, and Professor Jackson Crawford, a translator of the Poetic Edda, suggests that other realms may border Hel sideways rather than sit above it.

Who Is the Viking Hel?

Hel the goddess is the daughter of Loki and the giantess Angrboða (‘Harm-Bidder’), which makes her the sister of the wolf Fenrir and the Midgard Serpent (more on both in Vikings and Dragons: A Primer). Snorri says Odin cast her into Niflheim and gave her authority over everyone who dies of sickness or old age. She is half blue-black and half flesh-colored, and she looks, as Snorri puts it, gloomy and grim.

Niflheim for the Dead

Niflheim, Hel’s realm, is full of homes and farms. The fences are tall and the gates are huge. Hel’s hall is called “Storm-Increaser.” Her plate or bowl is “Hunger.” Her knife is “Starvation” or “Famine.” The slaves “Walking Man” and “Walking Woman” or “Lazy-Walkers” serve Hel. The door’s threshold is “Falling Pit” or “Stumbling Block.” Her bed is “death bed” or “sick-bed.” Her tapestries are “Glittering Misfortune.” The archaeologist Neil Price, in Children of Ash and Elm, thinks these names are Sturluson’s inventions.

A Complicated Viking Hel

In the end, Crawford says that Viking Hel may just be the overarching term for the grave and all afterlife possibilities in Norse mythology. There are a few examples of the dead being in Hel while also inhabiting their corpses when someone opens their graves (the draugar of the sagas). Norse afterlife concepts are more than just the Heaven and Hell of Christianity, and the mists of time have made it more difficult to decipher what the Norse really thought of the afterlife.

Jackson Crawford talks about Christian influence on the sources, the afterlife, and Hel herself in these three short videos:

Read next: Norse Afterlife: Where Did Vikings Go When They Died? · Draugar: Zombies of Norse Mythology · Ragnarök: End of the World as Vikings Knew It