Since we’ve seen Hel fall in the latest episode of Brat-halla, I thought I’d pose an interesting question to our Norse-savvy readers:
How does Hel really die?
The winning answer will get bragging rights–I’ll probably even design a virtual certificate of merit. But note, this will go to the "winning" answer, which is subject to my insane judging skills. It could be the correct answer or the funniest or the most entertaining or the most well-researched or even the craziest (think: Marvel "no-prize" worthy). It could go to the shortest answer or the longest answer. Whatever answer I like the best will take the prize, so feel free to submit as many answers as you like to get my attention.
For obvious reasons of bias, Seth, Anthony and my wife Rayna can submit answers but aren’t eligible to receive bragging rights (it could upset the team dynamic), but they’ll be eligible for various honorable mention categories that I’ll announce with the winner.
Bragging rights? We don’t need no stinking bragging rights.
Normally I would say:
When Hel(l) freezes over…
but perhaps I should….. nah.
1. The undead rise up on strike.
2. She slips on some ice (for irony/wtf sake)
3. Human disease (for the lulz)
4. Marrow deficiency
5. She taunts Odin, who accidentally picks up Gugnir (instead of a normal spear) and throws it
This is hard to wrap my head around…as a heathen and Norse medievalist my better judgement prevents me from theorizing…BUT I will say that as Hel is a realm that can be reached by the living as well as the dead, I would say she experiences some sort of dramatic sequence of dying, walking on the bridge to Hel, entering the gates, and then taking her regular seat in the hall. Maybe she has to wade through the backed-up newly dead, apologizing profusely “but I was just inescapably engaged in the act of dying, I’m sure you know how it is…”.
Or maybe she will get to Hel and find that she is incapable of returning to her seat as a wholly-dead deity, leaving Hel open to whoever wants it, which means the sons of Muspell will wrangle up all the dead there (who must be bored as Hel from an eternity decidedly devoid of fighting and meading) and use them for their Ragnarọk fighting force.
Or maybe the Valkyrjur take her to Valhalla through her sword-wound and she and Óðinn spend some time together before he lends her Sleipnir (does he exist yet?) to get back to Hel. I can see them at the kitchen table drinking cups of tea/wine, Óðinn all like “It’s so nice to get some quality time with my granddaughter, you know our schedules just never work out,” or even better, “You never call! Can an old man just hear from his grandkid every once in a while? Kids had respect for their elders back in my day! My grandfather smelled like sweaty ice and cow spit but I always made time for him!”
Or maybe she gets there and someone else is in her seat! I can see Freyja as a new character smirking majestically at Hel’s return and demanding the choice of the dead (as stated in the Prose Edda – but not necessarily those who die in battle – in Egils saga Thorgerd says she will go to Freyja when she dies of starvation) which maybe will require Hel striking a deal with the Valkyrjur/Óðinn, which leads to the war between the Æsir and Vanir.
The possibilities are endless!
This one popped into my mind at work…thinking about how when you’re dealing with immortal people, the only way to end their existence is to go to a time before they existed. Angrboða was the mother of Fenrir, Jörmungandr, AND Hel. Maybe she felt remorse or thought she could delay/end Ragnarọk if she went to a time before sexing up Lóki and changed how things played out, and thus also “un-existed” Hel.
Hel don’t die, just go back home!
Hel don’t die, just take a break!
“Go to Hel” is to die, and Hel can’t go to Hel, can she?
Alright, just to show off i will provide the single most theorized, insane, well educated, and generally interesting submission yet.
Hel (having died) will be sent, not to the Hel area, but to the Hell area, which for the norse was basically exile. She would sit in a small room for all eternity with little air (which shouldn’t matter) no exit (obviously) and basically whatever she can conjure for herself. But since rebirth was a common thing for the norse, she would then be reborn as a young girl (or boy?) and would have to relive her life as a temporary mortal. I think of it as kind of an immortal penalty box. Once she was reborn and had gone through her life, she would be sent back to being an immortal, having payed her penalty for being a dead immortal. For a long period of time she would basically live in perfect comfort in her own little room while she was in exile. She could do whatever she wanted, having the ability to conjure objects (apperantly) and the other gods (especialy Hod) could visit her at any time through a prison-like window, or just being conjured into the room. And as if that wasn’t enough, she would have to put up with whatever idiot norsemen got sent to Hell (and consequently, Hel) most of which she would probably end up destroying or just having to live with.
There, now not only have i explained the process, but i’ve thrown in possible pages for the comic as well. BEAT THAT MYTHOLOGISTS!!!
One word for you…she dies…wait for it …wait for it…wait for it…HELISHLY.
She is peppered by a thousand arrows from the bows of the finest warriors under Odin’s command…actually while gearing up for a 5k road race she decides to take a trail through these woods she hasn’t been through before, tripping over a branch from a large tree she falls down a ravine, breaking both her legs. After several weeks of sitting there and eating nothing she has a leap of faith…deciding to change her name from Hel to Helga she finds that her legs are healed. She pursues a career as one of the Swedish Bikini girls and now lives in a small hamlet on the outskirts of Helsinki.
Hel ceases to exist with the epiphany that she is merely the Snorri-driven, anthropomorphized incarnation of a location.
Or swine ‘flu.
Take your pick.
[Sorry, influenza A(H1N1). Wouldn't want to upset those pig farmers...]
Many scholars (Lindow, Davidson, Simek) see the figure of Hel as a largely (and originally) a personifacation of Hel the place (or even, just “the grave”) rather a Goddess proper. Personifacations of places were common in the Christian literary tradition and a side from some rather ambiguous migration period bracteates, there’s little evidence for Hel as a goddess in the heathen period. Most of the referrences to Hel as a entity (rather than place) come from Snorri, a christian writer.
Assuming this premise is correct, and using the idea that Gods exist because we believe in them (a common theory), Hel would have been created by Christians misunderstanding the religion of the people they were converting. She therefore would have “died” (or maybe just poofed out of existence) once the conversion was complete; the Christians, satisfied with a job well done, would stop caring about her.
However, fitting with a diety who’s realm is death, she would have been reborn with the Heathen revival. As people start once again believing in the old gods, she would then poof back into existence. Probably with one hel (pun intended) of a hang over.
Following your proposition, how ironic then, for the Heathen revival to bring back a goddess originally born out of ‘Christian misunderstanding’. Add identity crisis to the hangover!
Considering the religions life negating ideology (i.e. it’s focus on the afterlife rather than the here and now), it is somewhat fitting that Hel, who is perhaps the first true “Christian Goddess,” is a death Goddess.
Also, it’d be rather amusing to have Hel convert to Chritianity in the comic and stop believing in all the other characters.
Hel doesn’t die during Ragnarok, no, she comes back for the sequel Ragnarok II, Gotterdammerung. This time, it’s personal. Later she’s written out due to “artistic differences” (salary). In the prequel she is replaced by Discord.
4 words:
Chuck Norris roundhouse kick.
Well since Hel isn’t specifically pointed out in the Doom of the Gods, (had to translate the passage at one time) And some Su..(guy) burned up the whole planet after Odin was swallowed by Fenris wolf. and Thor got poisoned by the big snake guy. Then my guess is after the world burned and she is laughing up on top of a hill, she tripped and fell into a burning tar pit.
I’m guessing her lower half will turn pink and fleshy, but since she’s dead and her torso’s decaying, nobody’s going to be willing to check.
Loki was poisoned several times in this comic and recovered from all of them.
Just a normal non-magic non-epical non-divine sword hit? she will be back at any moment…
Ok, Hel still hasn’t hooked up with Dygve the Brave, which she needs to do later in the mythos. As a child of Loki and Angrboða she is a shapeshifter. As half dead and half alive, every mortal wound she takes causes the dead/rotting side to change places with the live/fresh side and she is in a constant state of change (which implies she gets killed a lot).
The real question is whether she was killed enough to banish her back to her throne prior to her being able to reassert herself or whether she was just killed enough to force a typical switch.
This one looks like a “just a switch” — though the real question is whether or not this counts as winning the bet and discharges the debt or not.
My thought is that it does.
As for how she really dies, when you decide she should be finally killed off? Probably at some point rather than killing her living side someone heals her dead side, and then when the switch hits, she becomes completely dead instead of just half dead.
After all, in the Norse, Hell is already frozen over, so that can’t be what marks the event.
However, while that is a great heroic story method for killing Hel, I’m not sure it is twisted enough. On the other hand, Hel’s embrace isn’t really PG-13ish enough either, though I can’t think of how that would kill her.
Good question. I like the “someone heals her” and that kills her (at least for a solid while rather than a brief forced shift), perhaps Hod does it? Except he doesn’t seem like a healer.
The vagaries of Seid magic … cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seid
“And some Su..(guy) burned up the whole planet after Odin was swallowed by Fenris wolf. and Thor got poisoned by the big snake guy. Then my guess is after the world burned and she is laughing up on top of a hill, she tripped and fell into a burning tar pit.”
That is Sutur, the fire giant … But Hel remains to welcome everyone home and empties the place out in the repopulating of the earth when it is renewed with the new gods who replace the old ones.
Perhaps she dies when hell empties out and she is reborn with the rest, no longer trapped in a state of both being alive and being dead?
Okay, so I cheated and looked around before I posted. Mainly because I couldn’t remember Hel actually dieing. However, I started to think for a second and I came to this conclusion: This is a trick question.
The term “Go to hell” originated from this mythology, translating into something very similar to “You can die”. So, this question of “How does Hel really die?” is translated into “How does Hel really go to Hel?”. In conclusion, the answer is: Odin casts her into the realm of the dead. And we all know he does this because none of the gods have any idea how Loki’s children are going to be, and they cast them into various realms and locations to keep them in check.
Maybe my brain is twisted around itself too much. This is my theory, and my answer.
Wait? Did I miss the real answer?Or did I miss the real question? I’m so confused.
Well, ya got a point there.
Well… let a gamer speak (Oo)…
Of course she dies when her Hit Points drop to zero (or -10, depends on your system) and the automatic resurrection applied phlebotinum (I think the rezz system of every game can be classified as this… I can be totally wrong though because I confused something) bugs/is down due to maintenance. as part of her is undead, she can’t be resurrected by divine powers as those make her deader-than-dead. “living” part of her… well… see resurrection applied phlebotinum.
Well, as GURPS has the definitive Vikings book (GURPS Vikings, for 3e), I’d say that Hel has to be dropped to -5xHP to actually *die*. That blow knocked her down to under 0 HP, but she has a godlike HT, so she can heal normally.
From a mythological standpoint, for Hel to actually die Death itself has to be destroyed. This produces the paradox of how someone can die when there is no Death, so the conclusion is that Hel *cannot* die.
Just wanted to let everyone know I’m loving these answers… keep ‘em coming!
Also, one more. In that Viking game, where you play as a viking, killing things.. .your main goal is tto stop Hel…. I think he might be the death of her too….. don’t know. Haven’t played it.
Hel(l) dies of neglect when Frigga comes to her senses and realizes that I am the Grimm she wants, and when that happens, not only will Hel(l) freeze over, but all a Grimmy will know is pure heaven…heavenl;y bliss….
Um….yeah….(wipes a tear from his eye)…Im gonna need a moment…
Grimmy
just may be the inspiriation for the Odineye character
Well, she is half dead so according to video-game lore a phoenix down should do the trick…
There are lots of good answers here already too
Well reading through accounts of the originial Hel, yours is rather different than that. Also being the daughter of Loki makes the relationships here a little twisted, to say the least. Since I also cannot find a specific mention of the fate of Hel in literature, I will go with this as my answer:
Ennui
Considering the accounts of the realm she rules, this seems appropriate if not entirely too likely. She should get out more.
In childbirth.
But her bottom half’s half corpse, I don’t think that would be a problem.
Hmm, how to kill the queen of the Damned?
“Bless you, my child”
……or Hod works up the nerve to finally give her a kiss, and she dies of shock.
Oh, one MOOORE THING…..for all you gamester out there:
the +12 hackmaster! yeah!
After the Ragnarok, aaaall of the gods and monsters and stuff go to nifflheim, and Hel kills herself ’cause she can’t take so much annoing people (and gods and monster and stuff). How she does that? It’s her problem to find out how to kill an immortal, not mine.
Hel dies the same way everyone else dies – lack of oxygen to the brain!
Hel decides she is tired of the single and lonely life and tries a little romance with some of her demon friends. Everything is going great for a while and then the MOMENT comes… needless to say Hel did not realize what she was getting herself into and despite how wonderful it was… she doesn’t make it back to tell the tale.
If she did that, Hod would kill her.
Hel leads her armies on Vigrid plain at Ragnorak, but no one really knows what happens to her.
Hmm. I’d say Hel dies when she freezes over. Probably on her wedding night if Hod has anything to say about it.
LOL! I love that one!
Seriously, you guys have done way awesome research. There are some really great answers/suggestions here.
My suggestion: Another attempt by the other pantheons to get their game back from that last big loss. Hades has to save face in front of Persephone or perhaps Persephone does the deed herself…
With as many innocent bystanders as she can take.
Redundancy.
Some bloke with a beard and a nifty set of sandals came along and promised everyone eternal life if they just accept him as their savior.
Its simple, Hel was killed by the lil brats in her sleep and subsequently was reincarnated in Hollywood to create “Dont Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead”
There are apparently some people in the Heathen revival who cannot deal with the concept of Hel as a person, or even Loki, being addressed as deities or even (gasp) worshipped. There is this idea that certain beings should rather be kept out of the Heathen revival. As if you could just pick which ones you want to “revive”.
The theory that Hel and Loki are Christian inventions isn’t really “more right” than other theories. A daughter of Loki is already mentioned in Ynglingatal, which is generally assumed to be quite a bit older than the Snorra Edda (some people will say that Snorri himself invented it and just portrayed it as an ancient source, but this is a fringe hypothesis). And the mention of the goddess of death by Saxo (especially in the light of his comments about the reluctance of the Danish people to accept Christiantity) pretty much shows us that such a being was not an invention of Christian scholars on Iceland. Lastly, the other Indo-European religions mostly have/had gods/goddesses of death, too, so it’s not really that uncommon (Hades was even called after the place, just like Hel, so there’s another parallel).
How does Hel die? She goes to Hel (the place), probably via the Hel-way. She’s done this before. Hence, as Hod says, Odineye could join her there, and look forward to a warm welcome
Norse Heathenry knows the concept of travelling between the worlds (seen in Brat-Halla all the time, too), so I suspect both of them could simply come back (both have done inter-world-travelling before), perhaps even to re-inhabit their corpses (the body is but one component of a being in Heathenry, compare the story of Ask and Embla (yeah, sure, a Christian invention, too)). But who knows what Hel can do – I just doubt she can “die” in the sense of “vanish”. This would be untipical for Norse Heathenry, too, because “dying” never meant “be gone”, it just meant “go elsewhere”.
I look forward to how this all will resolve
Throwing spears around in Asgard can really end in misery, too.
“Lastly, the other Indo-European religions mostly have/had gods/goddesses of death, too, so it’s not really that uncommon (Hades was even called after the place, just like Hel, so there’s another parallel).”
The indoeuropean death god is Hades/Wodin/Pluto/Etc. As Wodin becomes Odin and displaces Thor/Jupiter/Zeus/Ba’l as the head god, he ceased to be a death god (though he kept the seid magic side of things with the sex/darkness/shapechange aspects) and Hel took his place.
What is interesting about the migration is that Odin somewhat also displaces the Sun god in the pantheon, though he does not survive the fight with the wolf, while the displaced sun god/war god does survive being swallowed by Garm in the last conflict.
I still like the concept of Hel being slain by being healed, though it would be fun it she coupled that with another transition in status. I can even see her eventually joining up with Hod as she retains her darkness aspects in most cycles. (Note that Hod is, of course, the appropriate master of dark and poetry, Odin really is not, though that is part of the cycle that marks him).
The twists you could work into such a thing …
Odineye, having killed Hel, is forced into an ascension as the god of Hell, Hel, who has only switched state rather than been killed (her dead half is now alive, her alive half is now dead), is mistakenly killed by Hod when he invokes magic to heal her, then revived by his tears, and is suddenly all alive. She leaves it to Odineye to figure out how to handle the traditional embracing of fallen kings that was one of the duties of the master or mistress of Hell, and leaves with the Valkyries, telling Hod that she will see him when he is older.
As for dying on her wedding night, that is the petite morte, probably something she was unable to experience when she was half alive and half dead. Would be appropriate, perhaps she can displace another in the ascension/rebirth game. I don’t remember the classic Hod having a spouse though.
With the fact that Hod הוד is the Hebrew word for “majesty”, “splendor” or “glory” and # Höðr, a god in Norse mythology, often spelled Hod, one could have some fun …
Especially since Balder and Hod meet in Hell and then are reborn into the post Ragnarok world, it would be appropriate for Hel’s death to actually occur at that time so she could go with them, being able to escape Hell and her position there by actually dying for real as a part of the transition.
Which means she would need to be killed “for real” at a later time.
Anyway, I’m probably over analyzing it all. I do like the idea of her dying right now and using that as an excuse to switch places with Koe, who would well surprise the Odineye, while leaving Hel free to find a new position. If that is what she wanted.
The real problem with coming up with a death for Hel is knowing what you want to do with the plot. With that knowledge it would be easy to come up with a death that was thematic and at the same time humorous and surprising.
Hm…
Death for Hel would be forced submission to intercourse with Odin eye. After all, what kind of girl, human or goddess, wants to survive tentacle rape?
That or she is eternally frozen to ‘death’ after one of Hod’s emo fits. -shrugs-
well you DO have it that she kills a phoenix in her own domain of Helheim, but there’s not really any indication it KILLS her per se…
and i havent learned yet how if or how Hel dies in Ragnarok, but i would say her authority over the unliving will be stripped away by odin and her undead half will betray her living half. or just die completely, leaving her half dead, to rot the rest of the way.
Hmm, she could get licked to death by the fenrir after they discover that Odineye didn’t really kill her and are overjoyous …
Hel dies in the conflagration when Surtr will burn all Nine worlds with fire at the end of ragnarok (and is consumed in the fire himself.). her death then opens the way for baldur to be reborn after ragnarok
Hel suicides after listening to too much elf poetry.
[...] The "I’m Not Afraid of Paradoxes" Award goes to: Annie. [...]
Holy crap. I won! XD
she is playing on an online shooting game, after being killed, her character is repetitively teabagged, which prevents her to respawn. angered by this, she smashes her computer with a whack-a-mole hammer, then has to go to best buy to buy another. once there, she is constantly followed around by assistants asking if they can help her. finally she responds in anger ” you are not a lost puppy! now begone!”. the assistant is so scared that he dies. someone saw this act, and calls the po-lice. Hel realizes this, and steals one of bestbuy’s jetpacks. she activates it and then burts through the ceiling of the bestbuy. she then spends a two hour journey in air towards north vietnam. she then spends the next seven years in a small vietnamese fishing village as a fugitive. then she bears a baby boy. but the village shaman cursed the baby, and the baby turned into a bull. the bull attacked Hel and she was forced to kill her own baby boy. she leaves the country, filled with grief, and goes to an american chuck-e-cheese. she then committed suicide by suffocating in the ball pit.
just had to submit
Random (dance) battle to the death with Jesus.
Hel kicks the bucket by… Literally kicking the bucket! But it is no ordinary bucket… It’s an Dwarf-smithed bucket, enchanted and strong, and she ends up breaking her foot. But since her foot is dead, she ends up loosing her balance and falling off Bifrost bridge and getting impaled on some nasty sharp rocky things.
Why is there an enchanted bucket on Bifrost Bridge, you may say? Well.. Why not.
For some reason I thought of a quote:
“Hel hath no fury like a woman scorned”
Could explain why she is dead from the waist down. I also wonder how one could feel pain and punishment if one was dead, so maybe they are only all “half-dead” like Hel.
In physics they say that mass tells space how to curve, and space tells mass how to move. eg. two aspects of the same thing.
What if Hel the woman, and Hel the place are just two aspects of the same thing? It’s not a paradox, it’s just that Hel and Hell ARE the same thing. coming into being when scorned and ceasing to exist when she is no longer so?
just my two bits