Hel
Hel is the ruler of the Norse world of the dead, which is also called Hel: Loki’s daughter, half blue-black like a corpse and half flesh-coloured. She receives those who die of sickness and old age, and her name lives on in the word hell.
Meaning
In Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, Odin casts Hel, the daughter of Loki and the giantess Angrboda, into Niflheim and gives her “power over nine worlds”, to share out among “men dead of sickness or of old age”. She is “half blue-black and half flesh-color (by which she is easily recognized)”. Store norske leksikon calls her grim and frightening, and so greedy that she seldom gives up the dead who come to her. Hel (said like “hell”) is both the goddess and her land. Lex traces the name to Proto-Germanic *haljō, read traditionally as “the hidden, the covered”, or by newer research as a loan from Proto-Finnic meaning “the guardian of the land of the dead”. Like the other gods she is known from the Eddas, written by Christian writers in the Middle Ages (National Museum of Denmark). Some Heathens honour her today as the keeper of the dead (The Troth).
Origin and history
Hel was not first a place of punishment. Store norske leksikon says the old sources make her land the home of most of the dead, a wretched place but not a punishment, and that Hel as a place of torment arrived with Christianity; Lex finds Christian influence already in Snorri’s picture of her. Lex compares the joyless life there with the Greek land of the dead, Hades. The Church kept the word. Old Norse helvíti meant “Hel’s punishment” (Lex) and became the Christian hell, English hell and German Hölle carry the same word, and Norwegians still say i hjel, “to death” (Store norske leksikon). The goddess is older than the Eddas: The Troth points out that the skaldic poem Ynglingatal calls her “Loki’s girl”, a belief that dates at least to the ninth century, and that the oldest skaldic poetry clearly names her a goddess.
The road down and north
“Down and north lieth Hel-way”, the maiden who guards the bridge tells Hermodr in the Prose Edda. Store norske leksikon follows the road: over the roaring river Gjoll on a bridge roofed with shining gold, through the cave where the hound Garm keeps watch with blood on his breast, to the last gate, Helgrind, huge and heavy. The Eddic poem Grimnismol puts her land under one root of the world tree: “Three roots there are that three ways run / ’Neath the ash-tree Yggdrasil; / ’Neath the first lives Hel” (see Yggdrasil). Snorri names everything in her hall for misfortune: her dish is Hunger, her knife Famine, her threshold Pit of Stumbling, her bed Disease and her bed-hangings Gleaming Bale.
Hel and Baldr
After Baldr is killed, Hel holds him and sets the terms for his return: every thing in the world, living and dead, must weep for him. The giantess Thokk, whom the Prose Edda takes to be Loki, will not. In the Eddic poem Baldrs Draumar, Odin rides down to Niflhel “Till the house so high of Hel he reached”, and the dead seeress tells him that “Here for Baldr the mead is brewed”. The Troth notes that these older accounts make her “more hospitable, and far less ‘hellish’” than Snorri’s, and suggests that Thokk, who says “Let Hel hold what she has”, could be Hel herself.
Hel honoured today
The Troth writes that “there is nothing against her worship and many Heathens today certainly worship Hel”, and lists her among the gods less commonly worshipped. Most Heathens who depict her, it says, show her two halves as left and right, as the drawing here does, and black or deep blue and white are the colours they give her. One member describes Winter Nights rituals at which “we honored her as keeper of the dead, especially our ancestors.”
Read next
- Next in Norse gods and their symbolsThe NornsThe Norns are the women of Norse myth who shape fate. Three are named, Urd, Verdandi and Skuld, who live by Urd’s well at the foot of the world tree Yggdrasil; in the Völuspá they carve men’s fates on wood, and other sources make them spinners and weavers.
- Lex compares the joyless land of Hel with the Greek land of the dead, HadesHadesThe Greek god of the dead and king of the underworld, brother of Zeus and Poseidon. Ancient writers give him a helmet that makes its wearer invisible and the many-headed dog Cerberus; Greek vase painters gave him a sceptre and a horn of plenty. The two-pronged bident often drawn in his hand has no secure ancient example.
See also
Baldr, Loki, Yggdrasil, Goddesses of death, Odin, Frigg.
Sources
- Hel (Store norske leksikon), Ellen Næss, Store norske leksikon
- Hel (Lex), Finn Stefánsson, Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon
- The old religion, National Museum of Denmark
- The Prose Edda (Brodeur translation), Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (trans.), 1916, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Internet Archive), Gylfaginning, chapters XXXIV and XLIX
- The Poetic Edda (Bellows translation), Henry Adams Bellows (trans.), 1923, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Project Gutenberg), Grimnismol, stanza 31; Baldrs Draumar, stanzas 2–3 and 7
- Hel (The Troth), The Troth
- The Gods (The Troth), The Troth, table
- Hel (Dictionary.com), Dictionary.com
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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