Representations of the Pagan Afterlife in Medieval Scandinavian Literature

5

The Imaginary Landscape of Hel in Snorra Edda

and Medieval Vision Literature

And all that night he rode, and journeyed so,

Nine days, nine nights, toward the northern ice,

Through valleys deep-engulfed, by roaring streams.

And on the tenth morn he beheld the bridge

Which spans with golden arches Giall’s stream,

And on the bridge a damsel watching armed,

In the strait passage, at the farther end,

Where the road issues between wailing rocks.¹
In the wake of the god Baldr’s manslaughter, Hermóðr rides to Hel (the realm of the dead), so Snorri tells us, to plead with (the goddess) Hel for Baldr’s release. This particular mythological fiction requires Hel to be the location of the action and one of the story’s protagonists at the same time. Hermóðr’s ride is the first of Snorri’s narratives of the gods to take place within the underworld; it is thus the first occasion upon which Hel is envisioned as a place in Gylfaginning:
En þat er at segja frá Hermóði at hann reið níu nætr døkkva dala ok djúpa svá at hann sá ekki fyrr en hann kom til árinnar Gjallar ok reið á Gjallar brúna. Hon er þkð lýsigulli. Móðguðr er nefnd mær sú er gætir brúarinnar. Hon spurði hann at nafni eða ætt ok sagði at hinn fyrra dag riðu um brúna fimm fylki dauðra manna,

‘ “En eigi dynr brúin minnr undir einum þér ok eigi hefir þú lit dauðra manna. Hví ríðr þú hér á Helveg?”

‘Hann svarar at “ek skal ríða til Heljar at leita Baldrs. Eða hvárt hefir þú nakkvat sét Baldr á Helvegi?”

‘En hon sagði at Baldr hafði þar riðit um Gjallar brú, “en niðr ok norðr liggr Helvegr.”

‘Þá reið Hermóðr þar til er hann kom at Helgrindum. Þá sté hann af hestinum ok gyrði hann fast, steig upp ok keyrði hann sporum. En hestrinn hljóp svá hart ok yfir grindina at hann kom hvergi nær. Þá reið Hermóðr heim til hallarinnar ok steip af hesti, gekk inn í hllina, sá þar sitja í ndugi Baldr bróður sinn, ok dvalðisk Hermóðr þar um nóttina.²
In this one episode we find something that resembles an iconography of Hel, albeit rather a sparse one. The journey Hermóðr makes along the Helvegr takes him through deep and dark valleys; after nine days’ ride a river named Gjll has to be crossed en route, although it does not seem that it actually forms the border of Hel’s lands: the female guardian of the golden bridge, Móðguðr, implies that there is some distance still to travel when she says niðr ok norðr liggr Helvegr. From this reply we also learn of the spatial location of Hel, downwards and to the north. When Hermóðr achieves his destination, Hel is presented as a settlement or stronghold, a series of halls, with a set of what are presumably extremely high gates: it is only because of the supernatural qualities of Hermóðr’s borrowed mount – Óðinn’s Sleipnir³ – that he is able to enter Hel’s dominion.

An iconography of this sort may belong to the ‘myth’ of Hel, information derived from a stable body of mythological lore, or it may be part of Snorri’s ‘fiction’ of Hermóðr’s ride. I suspect on this occasion that there is reason to credit Snorri with a good deal of originality in the telling of this particular tale. Although the sequence of events leading up to, and following on from, Baldr’s death is absolutely central to Gylfaginning’s eschatological progression, because it ultimately precipitates Ragnark, there is no eddic text which narrates precisely the same story. There is only one verse cited in the sequence prior to the extensive quotation of Vluspá which accompanies the prose’s account of the events at the end of the world: this stanza, in which Þkk refuses to weep Baldr out of Hel, is not part of any known eddic poem. In the Codex Regius, Hermóðr is nowhere even named: he appears, paired with the human hero Sigmundr, only in Hyndluljóð 2, which is found in Flateyarbók:

Biðiom Heriafðr í hugom sitia!

hann geldr og gefr gull verðugom;

gaf hann Hermóði hiálm oc brynio,

enn Sigmundi sverð at þiggia.⁴

Hermóðr, as we have seen, also welcomes Hákon into Valhll in stanza 14 of Eyvindr’s Hákonarmál, in which he is paired with Bragi, the mythical poet-god, who, it might be argued, is not numbered among the ‘official’ total of the Æsir: Bragi and Sigmundr are ‘elevated humans’, in John Lindow’s term, rather than gods in the true sense of the word.⁵ Whatever the truth of the matter, Hermóðr barely features in pre-Christian poetry, despite the centrality of his role to the narrative of Baldr’s death as told in Gylfaginning. In post-conversion skaldic verse, there is one text which mentions Hermóðr, and which associates him closely with Baldr’s death. This is stanza 9 of the Málsháttakvæði, a poem which is usually dated to the early thirteenth century.⁶
Friggjar þótti svipr at syni

sá var taldr ór miklu kyni,

Hermóðr vildi auka aldr

Éljúðnir vann sólginn Baldr,

ll grétu þau eptir hann,

aukit var þeim hlátrar bann,

heyrinkunn er frá hnum saga,

hvat þarf ek of slíkt at jaga.⁷

All the principals of Snorri’s story are included here: Eljúðnir is the name given to Hel’s hall in Gylfaginning (SnE I, p. 27). Frigg initiates Hermóðr’s quest to Hel, Baldr is the object of the quest, and Hermóðr the character that rises to the challenge. The phrase ll grétu þau eptir hann implies that Hel’s conditions for the release of Baldr were the same as in Snorri’s account; essentially, then, this stanza agrees in its outline with the events Gylfaginning describes in the aftermath of Baldr’s death. It does not, however, contain any of the details of Hermóðr’s hel-ride which make Snorri’s narrative so richly atmospheric. The Málshættakvæði-poet seems to imply that his tale was sufficiently well known for him not to have to elaborate on this verse (lines 7-8). While there is no reason to doubt it, the evidence for knowledge of the myth is hardly widespread, and is only found in works by Christian Icelanders, working a full two centuries after the conversion.

The discrepancy between the paltry number of references to the mythological fiction of Hermóðr in Hel and its apparent importance to Snorri’s conception of the mythology has led some scholars to postulate the existence of an eddic poem, now lost, on which Snorri drew in the composition of his narrative. The stanza which Þkk speaks has sometimes been regarded as the sole remnant of this poem, which Schröder – whose opinion was that the Codex Regius currently lacks two necessary and integral poems: one on Baldr’s death, as well as one which described ‘Hermods Helfahrt’ – chose to call fr Hermóðs. By analogy with the Þkk-stanza, Schröder hypothesised a dialogic form of poem in málaháttr, which would have resembled Skírnismál.⁸ Richard Dieterle, too, has argued that ‘the myth belongs within the elder Eddic tradition, and is in fact a noninnovative and rather close prose translation of an earlier poem’: he identifies a ‘chiastic structure’ within Snorri’s narrative of the events surrounding Baldr’s death that may best be explained by a single lost poetic source for this whole section of Gylfaginning.⁹ Such a hypothesis can of course never entirely be dismissed, but the burden of proof must rest with those who argue in favour of a lost eddic original. In the absence of such a text, the question that suggests itself is this: if Snorri himself is responsible for the fiction of Hermóðr’s hel-ride in its extant form, may we identify other sources for its mythological content and imagery, without taking the easier option of inventing a single poetic precursor? As we will see, there are enough significant parallels between Snorri’s iconography of Hel and both pagan and Christian traditions associated with death and the underworld to suggest that no one source would likely have contained all the necessary elements, and that – once again – Snorri’s strategy has been to synthesise disparate elements into a coherent whole.