Helheim

Helheim, the realm of Hel, is the Norse land of the dead that receives those who die of sickness, old age, or any death that is not on the battlefield, the great majority, in other words, who do not go to Valhalla or Folkvangr. It lies in the cold and dark beneath the roots of the world-tree Yggdrasil, in the northern, downward direction, and is ruled by the being Hel, a daughter of Loki whom Snorri describes as half living flesh and half corpse-blue, an image of death itself.

The realm is walled and gated (the gate Helgrind) and guarded, cut off from the living by the resounding river Gjoll; the road to it, the Helvegr, leads downward and northward. The Eddas' most vivid glimpse comes in the story of Baldr: when the beloved god is killed and goes to Hel, the god Hermod rides the long dark road to beg his return, and Hel agrees to release him only if every thing in the world will weep for him, a condition Loki, in disguise, refuses to meet, so that Baldr must remain. Helheim is not primarily a place of torment (that role belongs more to specific regions like Nastrond, the "corpse-shore" of the oath-breakers); it is the ordinary, cold, quiet destination of the ordinary dead, the shadowed underside of a cosmology whose bright hopes were reserved for those who fell in war.

Hel is a being before she is a place, and the sources move between the two without marking the change. She is Loki's daughter, thrown down by Odin to govern the dead who do not fall in battle, and she is described as half living flesh and half corpse. Whether Helheim is her hall, her whole realm, or simply where she is depends on the sentence.

The fullest account is Hermod's ride. When Baldr dies, Odin's son rides nine nights down and northward, crosses a bridge over the river Gjoll guarded by a woman who notes that he does not have the colour of a dead man, and finds Baldr seated in the hall. Hel agrees to release him if every thing in the world will weep for him. Everything does except one giantess, who is generally assumed to be Loki, and Baldr stays. It is the only bargain in the mythology that is refused on a technicality.

Snorri's descriptions of a hall with named furnishings and a shore of corpses for oath-breakers read very much like a Christian hell, and probably are. The older sense is plainer and grimmer: the dead go down, most of them, without judgement or torment, and the place is cold and it is not a punishment. That distinction is the same one Sheol carries in the Hebrew Bible.