Representations of the Pagan Afterlife in Medieval Scandinavian Literature

2

The Dualistic Nature of Hel

The word Hel has always been connected with death: its etymological roots are in the grave.¹ But in mythological terms, Hel acquired a good deal of extra significance: Hel is the name given to the realm of the dead and to the goddess who rules over that realm in Norse mythology. Such a bald statement of mythological fact is a typical primary definition of the Old Norse word hel as found in modern reference works. Two of the most recent such books are the dictionaries of Norse (or Germanic, or Scandinavian, or ‘Northern’ – the terminology seems interchangeable) mythology compiled by Rudolf Simek and Andy Orchard, who define the headword Hel thus:

Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology:

Hel: The realm of the dead in Germanic mythology. It is the realm of the goddess Hel who is a literary personification of the realm of the dead.
Andy Orchard, Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend:

Hel: Both the place of the dead, specifically of those who perish of sickness or old age, and the goddess who presides over the Underworld.²
The dictionary format carries with it a reassuring authority, particularly among the non-specialist audience that this type of general guide attracts. If a dictionary says that Hel is first the realm of the dead, secondly the goddess of the realm of the dead, then surely this statement of Hel’s mythic signification must be correct. But this certainty of meaning can be problematic; the very act of defining the myth has a worrying tendency to fossilize it. The myth takes on a fixed, final form in the mind of the reader: in a sense, when we speak of a ‘Norse myth’ what we refer to is the modern conception of the myth, a conception which, as can be seen from Simek and Orchard’s careful presentation of the evidence which underlies their definitions, is almost always a conflation of ideas from an array of sources of differing date, genre and degree of reliability. Acceptance of modern (or medieval) reconstructions of Norse mythology as being true representations of a pre-Christian Scandinavian belief-system is as unwise as it is convenient. As we will see, it is a pitfall avoided by few.

Mythography produces meta-myths, mythologies of and about myths. When the mythographer, be it Rudolf Simek or Snorri Sturluson, goes beyond relating the narrative of individual myths and into the business of collating and systematizing his mythological knowledge to reconstruct a belief-system which he does not share, and presents his reconstruction as fact, then he creates a whole new myth: the myth of one recoverable universal mythological truth, fixed and stable over time.³ The dictionary definitions of Hel are meta-myths, part of the larger meta-mythology which we call Norse mythology. To say that Hel is the Germanic realm of the dead and the personification of that realm and that it/she has a certain set of ancillary characteristics, is to make a statement of faith: we believe pre-Christian Norse belief about Hel to have been like that. Of course, reconstructing belief-systems is the very aim of the student of mythology, who wishes to provide a framework into which to place the extant myths, the better to understand and appreciate them and the people whose religion they represent. I have no quarrel with such an aim. This study, however, will be concerned less with pagan Scandinavian beliefs about the afterlife than with the use of Hel as a literary topos; as such it concentrates on Hel primarily within its textual contexts, and deals with religion only in so far as to acknowledge that belief necessarily informs an author’s outlook. A corollary of this approach is that it calls into question the validity of the modern meta-myth of Hel which, I will show, is founded on what is often very weak evidence. This chapter will examine the evidence of those texts which are generally considered to be the best (most authentically pagan) literary sources for our knowledge of Norse religion, against which it will test the validity of the reconstructed model of Hel’s place in the mythological system.

the meta-myth of hel

As well as the basic definition of the headword Hel, mythological dictionaries provide information about the characteristics of Hel which constitute the meta-mythological reconstruction of its place in pre-Christian thought. These characteristics may be summarised as follows:

1. 
   Hel is both the realm of the dead, and a female personification of that realm.
   
2. 
   Hel receives those people who die (on land) of old age or sickness.
   
3. 
   Hel lies somewhere to the north, and the road to Hel goes downward. Hel is damp, cold and gloomy. Other features of its topography include a river, either icy or filled with weapons, a bridge and a gate. The goddess Hel dwells there in a hall.
   
4. 
   Once someone is in Hel, they cannot leave.
   
5. 
   The entrance may be guarded by a dog or a giantess.
   
6. 
   Mythological figures may journey to Hel for a specific purpose as part of a narrative.
   

The Hel-complex is therefore relatively simple in its reconstructed form. The two most significant factors of the meta-myth are items one and two, the dualistic nature of Hel and Hel’s function as the destination for the souls of people who die of old age or sickness. It is these which imply religious belief. The other features may be seen as more purely literary elaborations based around the basic superstition, in much the same way as medieval Christian vision literature elaborates a basic piece of doctrine – that the wicked go to hell – with an ever-changing array of motifs and imagery in order to illustrate its horrors. As this chapter is concerned above all with the literary manifestations of the meta-myth of Hel, these ephemeral characteristics will be regarded in due course, but first we turn to the most basic question: do Old Norse texts indicate that pre-Christian Scandinavian religions incorporated a belief in a dualistic realm/goddess of the dead, and do the texts support the assertion of the fact that this realm was reserved for those who died, on land, of sickness and old age?