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If we examine the evidence given us for an underworld realm of the dead in Norse literature, it will soon be seen that it is far less full and vivid than that relating to the dwelling within the grave-mound. There are a few puzzling allusions to some kind of kingdom beneath the earth but they are vague and inconsistent, and it is scarcely possible to build up any coherent picture from them.

In Vafþrúðnismál (v. 43) the wise giant claims to have gained his wisdom by a descent into the underworld. ‘Of the runes of the giants and all the gods’, he declares, ‘I can tell with truth. I have been into nine worlds below, to Niflhel; there die men out of Hel.'

1 Panzer, Hilde-Gudrun (Halle, 1901), p. 330.

2 Loth, Les Mabinogion (Paris, 1913), I, p. 284.

3 Ibid. I, p. 143.

4 The Death of Muircertach Mac Erca, translated by T. P. Cross and C. H. Slover from the Otia Merseiana (Ancient Irish Tales, Chicago, 1935), p. 523.

Snorri refers to these nine worlds in Gylfaginning (XXXIV) when he tells us that the goddess Hel was cast into Niflheim, and given power over nine worlds, ‘so that she should find places in her abodes for those who were sent to her’. It seems likely, however, that Snorri’s account of the queen of the Underworld is chiefly his own work.

The idea that those who enter her realm have died of sickness and old age sounds like an attempt to reconcile the tradition with the description he has given of Valhöll, especially since the one detailed picture which he himself gives us of Hel consists of the entry of Balder within her gates, who died neither of old age nor sickness. When he goes on to tell us that Hunger is the name of her dish, Famine her knife, Bed of Sickness her resting-place and so on, he is in another realm from that of eschatology and mythology, one of literary personification; and it is to this realm that Hel as a goddess in the literature we possess seems to belong.

Most frequently we find the word hel used simply to signify death or the grave. Fara til heljar, drepa mann til heljar are common phrases for ‘to die’, ‘to slay’. In phrases like biðja heljar, ‘to await death’, þykkir eigi betra lif en hel, ‘life seemed no better than death’, the word is equivalent to the English ‘death’, and like the English word would naturally lend itself to personification by the poets. It is as such a personification, for instance, that Hel appears in the poems of Egill, and is said in the Höfuðlausn¹’ to trample upon corpses in battle, and in the Sonatorrek ² to stand on the headland where the poet’s son has been buried. Whether this personification has originally been based on a belief in a goddess of death called Hel is another question, but I do not think that the literature we possess gives us any reason to assume so. On the other hand, we have seen that certain supernatural women seem to have been closely connected with the world of death, and were pictured as welcoming dead warriors, so that Snorri’s picture of Hel as a goddess might well owe something to these.

Turning from Hel as a mythological figure in Snorri to Hel as a kingdom of the dead, we find that the word is certainly used frequently to denote the place where the dead are, but it may be noticed that the use of it is vague, and it seems to signify the place of the dead in general rather than any one place of the dead in particular. A comparison might be made with the use of Sheol in the Hebrew poets, which is usually rendered vaguely by English trans-

1 V. 10 (Egils Saga, LX).

2 V. 25 (ibid. LXXVIII), p.256.

lators as ‘the grave’. In most of the passages where Hel is introduced as the realm of the dead, it may be noticed that the emphasis is on the journey there made bythe dead. or the living. Whether from the world of men or from that of the gods, and this is, I think, of some importance the understanding of the tradition. In Baldrs Draumar, for instance, the descent is made by Othin, who rides down on Sleipnir to summon the vö!va from her grave, which is said to lie beside the hail of Hel itself. Snorri gives us the longest account of the journey to Hel in his magnificent description of the ride of Hermóðr to bring back Balder.¹ Mounted on Othin’s horse, Sleipnir, he traverses the road by which the dead have passed, and finally leaps over Hel-gate to find Balder sitting on the high-seat within the hall. Evidently Snorri is here using some rich source which we do not know, but even this apparently told him nothing about, Hel once it was reached, except that it was a hall, and all the descriptive power is expended on the journey thither. It will be remembered too that certain passages discussed in the previous chapter contained references to a journey made by dead men to Valhöll, and shoes and a horse and wagon are said in the sagas to be given to the dead to help them on this journey. The poems also sometimes allude to Helveg, the path of the slain, and it is here that Brynhildr is said to encounter the hostile giantess, in Helreið Brynhildar,² though it may be noticed that when the tale is told in Norna-Gests Þáttr (IX) this is interpreted simply as the road leading to the funeral pyre.

Another account of the visit to the Underworld is given in the story of Hadingus; this however is only given in Saxo,³ so that the word Hel is not used. During Hadingus’ visit there he sees the ever-lasting battle taking place, a fair land where green herbs grow when it is winter on earth, and finally a wall which shuts in a strange land, about which no more is told us than that the woman herself could not pass the barrier into it, and that when she cut off the head of a cock she had with her and flung it over the wall it came to life again immediately, and could be heard to crow. It seems clear that this passage is linked up with beliefs in the next world; the idea of the everlasting battle is as we have seen, connected in some way with Valhöll, and also with life within the grave, while the incident of the cock is very similar to the action of the slave-girl who beheaded a cock in the cremation ceremony on the Volga,⁴ and flung it into the

1 Gylfaginning, XLVIII.

2 Prose note at beginning of poem.

3 Saxo, I, 31, p. 37.

4 See p. 46 above.

boat, in the highly symbolic ceremony which must have been concerned with a life after death.

We find Othin depicted as the ruler of the Underworld in a strange story in one of the Fornaldar Sögur, which seems to contain a number of elements from other tales of visits there. He is said to guard a mystical cloak in the ündirdjup, which appears to be the lowest region of the Underworld, guarded by a ring of fire.¹

In none of these stories is there any attempt made to present the Underworld as a place of retribution and punishment Snorri it is true, attempts to make Hel such a place, but his interpretation is likely to be chiefly due to Christian teaching about the after-life. In Völuspá (v. 38), we certainly get a somewhat similar picture, not indeed connected with Hel, but with a mysterious hall called Ná- ströndr, ‘the shore of corpses’, whose doors face northwards, and whose roof is formed of serpents dropping poison. It is said to be prepared for perjured men, murderers and those who beguile the wives of others, and a grim dragon, Níðhoggr, bears away the corpses of the wicked on his pinions It is probable, as Olrik² believes, that this part of the poem, and especially the companion hall of Gimli for righteous folk, is influenced by Christian teaching, but the picture of the dark, loathsome dwelling-place inhabited by snakes is one that is found elsewhere in Norse literature. The serpents that drop poison are one of the unpleasant features of the realm of Geirröðr and Útgarðar-Loki, visited by Thorkillus, and the picture of Náströndr is very like those descriptions of the gruesome interior of the tomb that are found many times in the sagas, and which seem to be related to the Valhöll tradition itself. The idea of the evil men in their dark dwelling-place and of the pleasant fair people in their realm of gold and brightness, may also owe something to that dualistic conception which has already been noticed in certain passages of the literature, like that telling of the two dream-women of Gísli. It is therefore possibly older than Christian eschatology and linked up with the two conceptions discernible behind Valhöll—the dark house of the slain and the bright home of the gods.

In examining the evidence for the Underworld realm of the dead in Norse literature, we seem to be driven inevitably to the conclusion that we are given no justification for assuming a belief in a concrete, simple world of the dead stretching below the earth.

Snorri alone

1 Egils Saga ok Ásmiwdar (F.A.S. III), ,XIII.

2 Olrik, ‘Om Ragnarok’, A.f.n.o. 1902, p. 285 f.

has tried to present something of the kind, but he is not convincing. What we do seem to find, however, in the passages we have examined are indications of what may prove to be more mystical and subtle mantic beliefs. This is particularly suggested by the story of the journey of Hadingus, where the allusions to the everlasting battle, the fair fields, and the resurrection of the dead bird behind the high wall seem more likely to have been originally interpretations of certain ideas about life beyond the grave and the fate of the soul than a piece of straightforward cosmography to be accepted as it stands. The possibility of the numerous tales of journeys to a supernatural land in Norse literature being originally accounts of mantic experiences, adventures of the soul rather than of certain mythological personages, is one at least worth considering, and it will be discussed further in the chapter on The Journey to the Land of the Dead.

Only investigation of the traditions connected with the Underworld on such lines as these can, I believe, throw light on the mysterious ‘nine worlds’ of Vafþrúðnismál, or the placing of Hel (in Grímnismál) under the third root of the ash Yggdrasill, beside the home of the frost-giants and the dwelling of mankind.