Description

Hel is a giantess (jötunn) and/or goddess, queen of Helheim, the underworld where many of the dead who did not die in battle dwell. The meaning of her name is “Hidden” just as the underworld and the dead being “hidden” or buried beneath the ground or passed across the veil. She is the daughter of Loki and the giantess Angrboda. Her appearance is often described as being half-black or blue, half-white. One half of her body is alive, a beautiful pale fleshed woman, and on the other she is just bones, the personification of death. To me she is a gate keeper to other realms, a soul guide who can cross into the world of the living to lead the dead down the road to Helheim.

The Hel in the Norse mythos is not the same as in the burning inferno of punishment in which christians believe, it is simply a realm of dead souls, it has food and comforts, and is indeed a very mundane place. However there is a place of punishment for those guilty of murder and other crimes within the realm of the dead, called the Náströnd or the Shore of Corpses . In a castle on the shore serpents chew on the bodies of criminals as they writhe in horrendous pain, then it is said the dragon Nidhogg sucks the blood from the corpses, leaving bleached white remains… Beyond the misty Shore of Corpses lies the road to Helheim where the rest of the dead continue downwards into the darkness and to Hel. In some interpretations Helheim and Niflheim are the same place and interchangeable terms, although I find this very confusing and it makes more sense to me that Helheim and Náströnd are parts of the larger cosmic realm of Niflheim which is a cold, misty dark place of the dead, under a root of Yggdrasill, where the well Hvergelmir resides, from which many rivers flow and north of the void of creation (Ginnungagap). It plays a role in Ragnorak as well, becoming the place where the perpetual cycle of creation, destruction and rebirth is enacted eternally.

When I started to work on this piece I had a vision of a barren shoreline of black sand surrounded by misty skies and dark waters. On the shore was a giant fallen tree, with its roots spread out like bleached boney fingers reaching upwards and outwards. In the centre of the corpse tree was a dark hollow which progressed to pitch black. Then slowly from the dark centre came a face of a beautiful woman with a knowing smile, she turned to face looking straight out of the hollow and the other so far hidden side was revealed to be bone and rotting flesh. She solidified and pierced me with a fierce stare from her living eye as an Ouroboros serpent spun endlessly in the her dead eye socket. Parts of the dead tree poked through the bone and all around her runes are burnt into the roots and many bone ladders hang from black rags. She rises up and out of the dark hollow to guide the innocent dead, beyond the shore of corpses, past the serpents of Nastrond into the void to reach Helheim.