Scandinavia
The following is excerpted from The Conversation essay Norse mythology brims with fierce, fabulous women. Here are 5 of my favourites by Lisa Bennett, Flinders University. It is republished under a Creative Commons license.
Hel
Hel is Angrboða and Loki’s third born, but unlike her brothers, this child is human(ish) in appearance. In the Eddas and Heimskringla (a legendary history of the kings of Norway), she’s depicted as a grotesque “half and half”.
On one side, Hel is fair with healthy pink flesh; on the other, she’s awful-looking and blue. Given the Old Norse word for blue (svartr) also means black, dark or swarthy, it’s often assumed this side of Hel’s body is necrotic and repulsive. No doubt it’s this corruption that causes her gloomy or ominous expression.
In most sources, Hel is known by reputation rather than action. She is ruler of the underworld, land of the dead (known, confusingly, also as Hel) and is therefore both mentioned in curses (“Hel can take him!”) and believed to be in charge of receiving the unworthy dead (those who are too old, too young, too sick, or too female to have died on the battlefield).
In the Prose Edda, however, Hel is given a voice and a form; she’s a character who holds the fate of beautiful Baldr (Odin’s favourite son) in her undead hands.
When Baldr is tragically killed in what we’ll call a freak accident, he enters Hel’s realm, where he will be forced to stay for eternity … unless, Hel declares, every single thing in the world, living and dead, weeps for him.
“Fulfil this condition”, she tells the gods’ messenger, who has come to plead for beloved Baldr’s return, and she’ll send him back to the land of the living.
This episode smacks of the earlier Greek myth Orpheus and Eurydice, so modern audiences already know the mission will fail. The impending doom not only heightens the story’s drama, but underscores Hel’s powerful position in Norse mythology.
Yet She Lives: Fierce and Fantastical Women of Norse Mythology is published by Thames and Hudson
Lisa Bennett, Associate Professor, Flinders University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.