Winifred Hodge Rose
Primitive Germanic *saiwalo; Gothic saiwala; Old Saxon seola, siole; Anglo-Saxon sawol, sawl, sawel; Old High German seula, sele; Old Frisian sele; Old Frankish sela; Old Norse sál (a later word borrowed from Anglo-Saxon).
In the next several articles of this series I will discuss the soul that was called Saiwalo in primitive Germanic and has descended into modern English as our word ‘soul.’ Academic authors I have read concur that the Heathen concept of the Seola / Sawol / Saiwala was an afterlife soul, with little involvement in Midgard life except in keeping the body alive by its presence, and that it naturally heads to Hel after physical life, where it continues existing as an individual being often known as the ‘shade’. This is based on studies about this soul in the early Continental Germanic and Anglo-Saxon writings; I shall examine this evidence in more detail in later articles. The Old Norse word ‘sal’ apparently did not exist during Heathen times, and was borrowed during early Christian times from Old English ‘sawl’. However, in this and following articles, I will argue that the rich and vivid imagery of ‘the dead’ in Old Norse tales includes beings which in other Germanic cultures would be called ‘Seolas, Sawols, Saiwalas’ and so forth.
As with other life-souls (Ferah, Ahma / Ghost, Hama, Aldr), the presence of Saiwalo in the body is essential for physical life and its absence causes death. Yet, it is not as involved in our personality and Midgard activities as many of our other souls are, except in one important way: it is the source of our ability to create images in our ‘mind’, or actually in our Saiwalo soul, whence our mind can access them. This is a conclusion I’ve drawn about Saiwalo, and I shall provide my evidence and reasoning as this series of articles proceeds.
Each of our souls has characteristic ways of shaping our perceptions, experiences and actions, and through them, shaping the world around us, as I’ve discussed about the various souls in previous articles. In the case of Saiwalo, its characteristic way of action is ‘imaging’ and populating our imagination with these images. These images then shape our perceptions and reactions, for example: forming stereotypes, forming our own self-image, dreams and daydreams, aspirations and longings, setting goals for ourselves by imagining desired outcomes, developing fears based on our inner images of threatening people and circumstances, imagining a longed-for vacation, using images to degrade ourselves and others…the list could go on forever, covering both ‘good’ and ‘bad’, beautiful and ugly forms of imaging. PTSD, the uncontrolled eruption of terrible images into one’s awareness, reflects a type of spiritual injury to the Saiwalo soul in addition to its physical dimensions.
So much of what we perceive, think, feel, and act upon is rooted in and motivated by these images in our minds. And yet, my sense of our Saiwalo is that it is the generation of images itself, and not the resulting thoughts, emotions, and actions, that forms Saiwalo’s primary activity. Consistent with ancient understandings of this soul, Saiwalo does not play an active role in our Midgard life and our personal characteristics. Its role in Midgard is passive: generating and absorbing images according to its own inner processes, which are rooted in Hel. Our other souls in Midgard, our mind and body, all actively pick up and respond to those images, and in turn generate material that our Saiwalo uses to modify its images and create new ones. As for the Saiwalo-in-Hel (as opposed to Saiwalo-in-Midgard), it does show some evidence of activity and personality absorbed from its Midgard life, as we shall explore through the following tales.
This leads to one other aspect of Saiwalo’s nature that I want to mention briefly here; I will pursue it in more detail in later articles. I think that Saiwalo itself is always rooted and present in Hel, even while we are alive in Midgard, and absorbs powerful cosmic energies filtering up from Ginnungagap, Hvergelmir, and Niflheim, the realm of proto-being. These are the energies which form and feed our Saiwalos. These energies rise into Hel and are picked up and used by all the Saiwalos there: those who are currently supporting living humans in Midgard and those who currently are not. Saiwalos-in-Midgard also filter image-material down into Hel through their roots.
In Hel, all these energies and imageries mix together, decomposing and recombining, fermenting and fertilizing, and from this seething soup of potential, Saiwalo forms the images, the language of imagination, that rise back into Midgard and shape the perceptions and experiences of Saiwalo-in-Midgard beings, namely ourselves. This resembles the activity of the Hagalaz rune in its form as a seed-crystal that thaws and freezes repeatedly (hail forming and melting), each time producing a new crystalline shape out of the formless, primal water.
In my perception, these activities are a fundamental aspect of Hel’s function in the spiritual ecology of the Worlds. Among other things, Hel serves as a sort of wetland, processing spiritual ‘waste’ through metaphysical analogs of microbiological activities, mysterious roots and worms and wriggling things, soil and water chemistry and the like, and provides fertile soil and pure water for all the teeming spiritual life growing on the Tree of Worlds. In this context, we can see the damaging nature of the Christian insistence that Hel is a terrible place of punishment and despair, from which our Saiwalo souls must be ‘saved’ and sent to ‘heaven’. ‘Heaven’, the God-Homes or divine realms, are the proper domain of our Ahma / Ghost, our ‘spirit’, not of Saiwalo, which has its own important work to do in Hel. This misrepresentation of Hel and its resulting cultural impacts and imagery leads to severe disruption not only for our individual souls, but for the spiritual ecology of the Worlds as well, including the spiritual health and wellbeing of our own Midgard.
So, this is the nutshell version of where I’m going in this study of our Saiwalo soul over the course of this and several more articles. I’ll start with a rather circular definition: I define Hel as the ‘place’ where Saiwalo souls dwell and do their work, and define Saiwalos as the beings who dwell in Hel. Hel and Saiwalos define each other, just as an ecosystem is defined by its characteristic components acting together, while the components function thanks to the interactions of the ecosystem. This seemingly pointless definition will make more sense, I think, as we proceed to examine old tales, not only of Hel and the dead, but also tales of ‘Hel-like places’ and people who are ‘like dead’ but not entirely. The main purpose of this article is to gain a broad, visceral sense of Heathen Hel and the beings who dwell there.
Hel as the Hidden Land
The imagery that we have of the afterlife is one of the areas where Saiwalo’s image-generating activity is especially powerful, since it comes from Saiwalo’s very roots: Hel itself. In fact, I suspect that Hel itself, or the human perception and experience of Hel / the afterworld of the dead, is the product of multiple Saiwalos imaging their surroundings together. There are beautiful places in Hel, such as the feasting hall of Baldr and Nanna, and tales of Odainsakr, the Acre of the Not-Dead (see Simek p. 239). And there are horrible places such as Nastrond (Gylfaginning, in Faulkes p. 56). Feasting halls of the dead, entered through cliffs and mountains, welcome newly-dead kinsfolk, as is told in Eyrbyggja Saga ch. 11. Even the implacable Sea-Goddess Ran provides pleasant accommodations to some of the dead: “In those days it was believed that drowned people had been well-received by Ran, if they came to their own funeral feast”(Eyrbyggja Saga p. 138). These are just some of the Heathen images of Hel or the afterworld of the dead. In my perception, Saiwalos of folks from other beliefs shape their own regions of Hel based on what living people are taught and believe about the afterlife domains, including the Christians’ idea of hell as a horrible place of punishment.
“In Germanic mythology, Hel is not a place of punishment, hell, it is simply the residence of the dead” (Simek p. 137). Grimm also says it is “not a place of torment or punishment.” He continues with an interesting observation: “When Ulphilas (the Gothic translator of the Greek Bible) uses halja (Gothic Hel) it is always for Hades (the Greek realm of the dead, not a place of punishment)…whenever the (Greek) text has geenna (Gehenna, the Hebrew place of punishment) it remains gaiainna in Gothic—it was an idea for which Gothic had no word.” (vol. II, p. 800.)
‘Hel’ comes from proto-Indo-European *kel, meaning ‘to cover, conceal, save.’ It is related to many relevant words including ‘heliand’, the ‘one who saves’, hall, helmet, hollow, coverings. (Watkins p. 40.) A number of Germanic Goddess names are probably rooted in this word, including Nehalennia, Huld, Hlodyn, Hludana, and Frau Holle (Simek p. 154). These Goddesses are protectors, guides and teachers, earth-goddesses; they are not presiders over lands of torment. Hel is a place of concealment, of refuge: it is the Hidden Land.
Faring to the Edge of Hel
Let’s proceed by looking at some vivid images of afterlife scenes from Old Norse literature. One of my favorites comes from Hervor’s Saga, a part of Heidrek’s Saga. The relevant portion of it is included in Larrington’s Poetic Edda as “The Waking of Angantyr”, and is also discussed in Ellis (pp. 159-161, 174-5). According to Christopher Tolkien, Heidrek’s Saga is “one of the most ancient of all extant Germanic heroic lays” (p. xiv) and shares features with much of the West Germanic poetry and the earliest Edda poems (p. xii). It is likely that the oldest material goes back to the wars of the Goths north of the Black Sea in the late 4th to early 5th centuries, and the characters may overlap with those of the early Old English poem “Widsith” (p. xiii). Given the great age of this poem and its connections with other early Germanic poetry / history, we can figure that its portrayal of afterlife beings and places is not too heavily influenced by Christian theology.
Hervor’s Tale
(Quotations are from Peter Tunstall’s translation, Chapter 5, except as otherwise noted.)
Hervor, the posthumous, headstrong daughter of the berserker Angantyr and leader of a band of Vikings, decides to go claim the famous sword Tyrfing that was buried with her father and his eleven berserker brothers on the ‘haunted island’ of Samsey. Her Viking band refuse to set foot on the island after sunset, so she proceeds alone.
Hervor finds a shepherd, who is terrified when she asks the way to the burial mounds and tries to persuade her to turn back, telling her that “all out here is horrible to humans” (Larrington v. 4). “Fire is blazing, barrows open, field burns and fen”…after telling her this, the shepherd runs off. Undaunted, Hervor continues until she ‘sees where the grave-fire is burning’ and is ‘not afraid though all the mounds were in her path and the dead standing outside. She waded through the flame as if through fog until she came to the barrow of the berserks.’
Though the dead stand at the doors of their howes, shadows against the fire, they apparently are in a state resembling sleep, for Hervor calls out to them: “Awake, Angantyr! Hervor wakes you! ….Under forest roots I rouse you all.” As she receives no response at first, she resorts to threats and curses. Her father rebukes her for shouting and cursing at the dead: “Hervor, daughter, what drives you to call so? Brimful of bale-runes…mad have you gone, waking up dead men.” Her father doesn’t want her to take Tyrfing because it is cursed, and an argument ensues.
As the father and daughter argue, ‘then the mound opened and it was as though the whole barrow was fire and flame’ leading Angantyr to say: “Helgrind (Hel-gate) gapes and graves open, all is fire on the island’s rim.” He urges her to hurry back to her ship, but she refuses: “your daughter’s ‘muntun hugar’ does not tremble though dead men there in the door she see.” ‘Muntun’ I take to mean a combination of ‘muna’, her mind (cp. Muninn) plus ‘tun’, a hedged enclosure, thus ‘her Hugr in the enclosure of her mind’ is not afraid, or perhaps ‘her mind enclosed within her Hugr’ is not afraid. Larrington, using a different version of this verse, translates: ‘Hervor’s hard-forged spirit (Hugr) swelled in her breast’ (v. 8). This is interesting phrasing considering what I have written in previous articles about the Hugr-soul ‘swelling in the breast’ as it builds up power. Hervor’s Hugr soul, swollen with power, enables her to deal with these terrifying scenes and the otherworldly fire.
Angantyr warns her that the sword will bring evil not only to her but to all her house and descendants. Hervor, in her frustration, responds by threatening to cast a very interesting curse (vigi): unless they give her the sword Tyrfing, Angantyr and his brothers shall “all lie there, undead with dead (daudhir medh draugum) in the dank rotten”. The translation in Ellis says: “I will ordain it that you dead shall all lie and rot with the corpses, lifeless in the grave” (p. 180).
I think that the draugr or animated corpse (animated, I believe, by its decomposing Hama soul) is different from the image of its living self, the ‘shade’, that Saiwalo creates after death, even though they have similar appearance. This passage, distinguishing between ‘the draugr’ and ‘the dead’, is one piece of evidence for this argument. There would be no point inflicting a curse that ‘the dead will rot with the corpses /draugar’ unless ‘the dead’ (apparently not rotting) and the ‘corpses / draugar’ (subject to rot) are not the same thing. Another corroboration is that the draugr, guarding its treasures, is usually shown to be hostile and savage in the tales, not acknowledging even its closest kin or beloved friends: it tries to kill all comers. By contrast, the dead Angantyr is calm and caring towards his daughter, trying to persuade her to abandon her dangerous intentions. He is not acting like a draugr.
Though Old Norse did not have the soul-word ‘sal’ (pronounced ‘saul’) until they borrowed it from Old English ‘sawl’ during early Christian times, I believe that the shade or the ‘image of the dead person which is not a corpse’, that often appears in Old Norse tales, is the same as the being referred to as ‘saiwala, sawol, sele, seola, etc’ in all the other Germanic languages. More precisely, this image of the dead person is a creation of the Saiwalo soul. I call this Saiwalo self-image the Dwimor, and will explain my reasons for choosing this word in forthcoming articles.
Angantyr tells his daughter, “I say you aren’t, girl, like other humans, to walk among howes.” Hervor answers “I did think I was human (mennskr), at home with the living, till down I came to your dead men’s hall.” He finally gives in, telling her that the sword is “wrapped right round in flame; one girl only on earth up there I guess would dare to take that glaive in hand.” These words, along with the otherworldly fire and the images of the dead, show that this scene takes place within the domain of Hel. “Down I came to your dead men’s hall” and “one girl only on earth up there” indicate that they are in an underworld setting, even though there is no account of Hervor traveling downwards in the story.
As Hervor departs she bids the ‘heilir in haugi’, the ‘hale men in the howes’, to rest. It’s rather remarkable to call dead men ‘hale’, meaning healthy, whole, unharmed, especially since these twelve berserks were all killed in battle. This goes along with my argument that the beings Hervor encounters are not rotting corpse-draugar, but are natural / hale beings in the realm of the dead, beings which I believe would be called ‘Sawol / Seola / Saiwala’ etc. in other Germanic languages. Hervor may be congratulating her kinsmen for having escaped her threatened ‘vigi’, her harmful curse-magic, by giving her the sword. Instead of being cursed to rot with their corpses, they remain whole and unharmed.
Hervor’s final words are “I thought I trod between the worlds when all about me fires burned.” I think it’s very clear that this is exactly what Hervor did: as she passed through the fires she entered the otherworld of the dead, no longer, for that brief time, in Midgard at all. The fires formed a boundary between Midgard and the regions of Hel.
A final note about Hervor’s ancestry; the relevance of this will appear when I discuss story-motifs relating to Hel and faring to Hel. Tunstall’s Appendix A presents the prologue from one of the versions of Hervor’s Saga, which explains that Hervor is descended from giants, and from Alfar as well. Chapter 6 of Tunstall’s translation tells how Hervor, in her male guise as Hervard, visited Jotunheim and Ymisland, populated by a great blending of giants and humans, from whom she was descended. She stayed with the giant-King Godmund, who ruled Glasisvellir. Odainsakr, the Deathless Acre, was said to be within his domain as well. Gudmund, Glasisvellir, and Odainsakr appear in many ancient tales about journeys to otherworlds, the dead, and Hel, which I have no space to recount here (nor to sort through the mixed Heathen, Christian, and Classical Pagan strands), but want to note that Hervor / Hervard traveled there. Her connections with giants, alfar, and afterworlds / otherworlds are hinted at in the Saga, when Angantyr tells his daughter he doesn’t think she is like other humans, and she answers that ‘I thought I was human…till down I came to your dead men’s hall.’ I will show with more examples that journeys to the land of the dead or the Hidden Lands often feature giants.
Common Motifs Relating to Hel and the Dead
There are motifs or patterns in this wonderfully descriptive Saga that show up in many other encounters with the otherworlds and with the dead. (1) A difficult journey to the world of the dead or its borderlands. (2) An eerie fire which marks the place of the dead and the treasures of the dead, and forms a boundary which is difficult for the living to pass. (3) The dead are apparently ‘sleeping’ and need to be awakened before responding to those who call them. (4) Necromancy, the ability of the dead to foretell the future, as Angantyr does when he tells Hervor that the sword will bring ill to herself and her kin-line. There’s another theme that shows up surprisingly often in these tales: (5) the presence or influence of giants. Two other common motifs which are not shown in Hervor’s Saga are (6) the presence of a dog or dogs, and (7) the idea that living folk make a great deal of noise when they enter Hel, but the dead are very quiet. Let’s look briefly at some other tales that feature these motifs.
Brynhild’s Ride to Hel
The Valkyrie and wife of Gunnar, Brynhild, was placed within a funeral wagon after her suicide; then the wagon was burned. The poem “Brynhild’s Ride to Hel” in the Poetic Edda describes her journey to Hel riding in this wagon. Note that Brynhild’s corpse and the wagon were burned in Midgard, but their ‘images’ or Dwimors proceeded on the Hel-way as recounted in the poem. This is not Brynhild’s only encounter with otherworldly flames, however. She had previously been a Valkyrie, a chooser of the slain and thus someone on the border between life and afterlife. She chose death for the ‘wrong’ person, according to Odin’s commands, and was punished by being cast into a magical ‘sleep’, surrounded by a high fire which only the bravest man and horse in the world (Sigurd and Grani) could pass through.
Brynhild’s and the Valkyrie Sigrdrifa’s tales are conflated in the various poems of the Poetic Edda, treated as being the same story. When Sigrdrifa, surrounded by otherworldly flames, is awakened from her magical sleep by Sigurd she tells him: “Long I slept, long I was sleeping” (Sigrdrifa’s Lay), sounding much like the dead Volva being reluctantly awakened in “Baldr’s Dreams”: “I’ve been dead a long time”. The magical sleep has much in common with the sleep of death, the sleep from which Hervor must awaken her father. As the dead Brynhild (her Dwimor) travels on the Hel-way, she passes through the homestead of a giantess with whom she trades insults, and tells the giantess her tragic tale.
Baldr’s Dreams
Here’s another journey to Hel, as shown in the Edda poem “Baldr’s Dreams” (Larrington’s translation). After Baldr has a series of baleful dreams, the Gods and Goddesses gather in council, and it is decided that Odin will seek an explanation from the dead Volva. Odin fares to Niflhel, where he meets a fierce dog coming from Hel. Then, ‘on rode Odin, the earth-road resounded’, and from there he approaches the east gate of Hel where he knows that the dead Volva lies. He awakens her from death using Valgaldr or galdors of the slain, and demands that she ‘tell me news from Hel.’ Here is the motif of necromancy. Interestingly, the Volva complains about having to travel ‘this difficult road’ in response to Odin’s val-galdor, showing that the dead as well as the living may have to travel far in order to meet together. The other motif that shows clearly here is the ‘sleep’ of the dead soul, who is reluctant and resentful about being awoken. This is similar to Angantyr and his brothers’ very slow awakening, where Hervor has to shout curses at them to get them to wake up. Finally, Odin accuses the Volva of being ‘the mother of three ogres’, implying that she also is a giantess.
Hermodhr’s Journey
After Baldr was slain, his brother Hermodhr rode toward Hel for nine nights through valleys dark and deep, and came to the bridge Gjollr at the boundary of Hel. Its giantess-warder Modgudh told him that recently five battalions of dead men had ridden over this bridge, but had made no more noise than the living Hermodhr riding over it alone. (Prose Edda, p. 50.) When Hermodhr succeeds in reaching Baldr and Nanna in their feasting hall in Hel, he sees them and the hall adorned with wealth and beauty. Nanna gives him rich gifts to take back with him for Frigg and Fulla. Here again we see the theme of wealth and beauty in Hel, as well as the theme of ‘soul-mates’, Baldr and Nanna reunited in death, a theme I will return to later.
Thorstein Cod-Biter
Moving from the Eddas to the Sagas, we see a beautiful tale of welcoming the dead in Eyrbyggja Saga ch. 11. Unbeknownst to his kin, Thorstein Cod-Biter and his fishing crew had recently drowned. One autumn evening Thorstein’s shepherd was out near Helga Fell, the holy mountain of Thorstein’s kin, when he saw a sight both tragic and marvelous. “He saw the whole north side of the mountain opened up, with great fires burning inside it and the noise of feasting and clamor over the ale-horns.” He saw that “Thorstein Cod-Biter and his crew were being welcomed into the mountain, and that Thorstein was being invited to sit in the place of honour opposite his (dead) father.” This was how Thorstein’s kin realized he had drowned. (p. 38.) I would call this holy mountain hall of the dead an antechamber or region of Hel. Hel, I think, includes all of the many locations where the Saiwalo-dead (not Draugrs) may dwell.
These are just a few of the plentiful tales of encounters with the dead in Old Norse. Hilda Ellis’s book The Road to Hel offers many examples of such tales, and discusses many of the themes or motifs I listed above. (It is easily available as an e-book. The version I have uses her married name, Hilda Roderick Ellis-Davidson.)
Hel-Motifs in Tales of Hidden Lands
Now, it’s interesting that there are a number of tales which show many of the motifs relating to Hel or the world of the dead that I identified above, but which involve living beings (Gods, giants, heroes) rather than dead ones. I find this very meaningful; I believe it shows that ancient Heathens had very rich and varied imagery about the world of the dead, and the interactions that were possible between the living, the dead, and those in-between those states, as well as with the Gods, Goddesses, Giants, Alfar, and other beings. Let’s look at two examples here.
Skirnir’s Journey
(Translations from Carolyne Larrington, Poetic Edda)
Skirnir, the friend and servant of Frey, is another traveler who journeys far, passes through eerie flames and encounters a giantess. Frey has conceived an overwhelming longing for the giantess Gerda, and Skirnir offers to go to her dwelling and gain her favor for Frey. Though there is no suggestion that the actors in Skirnismal are actually dead, this poem is intriguingly full of motifs relating to the otherworld of the dead, including its connection with Frey, the lord of Alfheim and of dwellers in the mound: also the dead.
Skirnir asks Frey to give him “that horse which will carry me through the knowing, dark, flickering flame”. This flame is clearly not a normal Midgard fire, which is neither ‘knowing’ nor ‘dark’; it is an otherworldly flame like the ones Hervor and Sigurd encountered. The ‘knowing’ quality of this flame can ‘decide’ who is allowed to pass through it, as we see in the tale of Brynhild / Sigrdrifa, where only Sigurd and his horse Grani are able to pass through the flames around the Valkyrie. Likewise, Hervor was able to wade through the flames as though they were fog, and was ‘the only girl up there’ in Midgard who would dare lay hand on the flaming sword Tyrfing.
Skirnir begins his journey by noting that it is dark outside, just as Hermod rode to Hel through dark and deep valleys for nine nights (not days). He next reaches Gerda’s steading, defended by dogs. We see the world of the dead defended by dogs in other Edda poems, including “Baldr’s Dreams”. Dogs also show up in German folklore as companions of Goddesses associated with the dead, as I describe below.
Gerda’s watchman sits on a mound, reminiscent of a burial howe, and asks Skirnir “are you doomed, or are you dead already?” Apparently, it would be no great surprise to him if Skirnir had approached him as a dead man. Gerda, inside her hall, asks what is the noise she hears outside? “The earth trembles, and all Gymir’s (her father’s) courts shudder before it.” The realm of the dead trembles, resounds, makes a loud noise when the living approach it, as we see in Hermodhr’s and Odin’s journeys to Hel. This description is striking here, because normally one would not expect that a puny non-giant would be able to make the earth tremble when approaching a giant’s hall!
Gerda asks: “Why do you come alone over the wild fire to see our company,” just as the dead Angantyr asks Hervor the same question. One of the gifts Skirnir offers Gerda is Odin’s ring Draupnir, which was “burnt with Odin’s young son” Baldr, after his death, went with him to Hel, and was later returned. Skirnir also offers eleven gold apples, possibly apples from Idunn. If so, these apples would offer life to the one who eats them, another hint that this may be an afterlife setting. Gerda refuses, saying that “I lack no gold in Gymir’s courts, my father’s wealth is at my disposal.”
Skirnir follows with threats of many horrible curses, finishing with naming the giant “who’ll possess you down below the corpse-gates”, clearly a Hel-location, though there is no mention in the poem that Skirnir threatens to actually kill Gerda. Again, I am not suggesting that the players in this drama are ‘dead’, but rather that the drama takes place in an otherworld that shows many of the characteristics of the world of the dead, including the idea that giants live there and / or are encountered on the way there.
This poem, as a whole, is often considered to celebrate Frey’s powers of fertility overcoming Gerda as a representative of frozen ground or barrenness. As I shall show in a later article, the Saiwalo / Hel-Dweller soul may also have connections with fertility. In this light, Gerda can be seen as an underworld-being until brought into a different realm, Barri, to meet the fertile God and come to life.
Svipdag’s Quest
Young Svipdag begins his quest in “Groa’s Chant”, and continues it in “The Sayings of Fiolsvin” (Larrington, Poetic Edda). His stepmother is angry with him and forces him to go on an extremely difficult, complicated and dangerous quest to woo the maiden Menglod. Although the poem is of very late composition, the tale itself may reflect a fertility cult myth similar to the tale of Frey and Gerda. Svipdag reveals his father’s name as sun-bright (Solbjartr, v. 47) and his mother’s as Groa, derived from ‘grow’; both aspects (sun and growth) relating also to Frey and to fertility. (Simek p. 307.) One of the “girls who sit peaceably at Menglod’s knees” (vs. 37) is Aurboda, who is also named as the mother of Gerda (Song of Hyndla, v. 30; Larrington p. 319), and hence a giantess. As with the Skirnismal poem, in Svipdag’s quest we see many of the same motifs relating to the Hel-world, though the protagonists are not dead.
Svipdag goes first to the grave of his mother Groa and calls her to awaken from her sleep, begging for her help on the quest by giving him protective galdors. Groa asks why he calls on his mother “who has turned to dust,” showing that she is not a corpse-draugr. Several of the galdors she gives him indicate that he will be faring through the land of the dead during his quest. Verse 8 says that if mighty rivers threaten his life, they will diminish and turn back toward Hel. Verse 9 says “if your enemies lie in wait on the gallows-path (the road of the dead), may their spirits (Hugrs) swerve into your keeping, and their minds (Sefa) turn to reconciliation.” Verse 13 says “lest night overtake you…on ‘niflvegi’ (the misty path, or the Niflheim-way),” Svipdag will be protected from being harmed by “a dead Christian woman.” It sounds to me like Groa anticipates that Svipdag will be faring through Niflheim / Hel and will encounter harmful spirits there. It’s tempting to read this as Svipdag actually having to fare through the very worst, most run-down neighborhood down there, namely the Christian version of ‘hell’, for which he will certainly need protective spells!
Having received his mother’s galdors, Svipdag presumably passes through a number of adventures, the ‘long and difficult journey,’ and then arrives at the gates of Menglod’s hall. We can assume, considering Svipdag’s need for all the arcane galdor-protections en route, that this hall is in the Hidden Lands, the Underworld. Ellis has a long discussion of the idea that Menglod’s dwelling is indeed in the land of the dead (p. 177-8). The keep or fortress Svipdag approaches is described as the ‘seat of the Thurs-tribe’ (Jonsson p. 174), showing again a connection between the underworld and the giants. It is guarded by a pair of savage dogs. The warder of this fortress is Fjolsvinn, meaning ‘much-wise’, which is a by-name of Odin. He ‘stands before the entrance and keeps watch on all sides of the threatening flames’ (Ellis’s translation of vs. 2, p. 178), showing the presence of otherworldly fires as we have seen in other tales.
The same thing happens to Svipdag as happened to Frey: Frey, sitting on Odin’s High Seat, saw Gerda with her white arms shining all the way from Giant-land to Asgard, and fell in love with her. Svipdag says from outside the great hall: ‘these courts glow, it seems to me, round the golden halls; I would love to make my home here.’ He asks about the ruler of these halls, and is told that she is Menglod, who has power over the wealth-filled halls. (Vs. 5, 8). Gerda, too, lives in a hall filled with wealth, and hidden treasure is characteristic of the halls of the dead, as I shall return to.
Later (vs. 31-32) Svipdag asks a question of Fjolsvinn: “what that hall is called which is encompassed with knowing, flickering flame?” He’s told it’s called ‘Lyr’ according to Larrington, but ‘Hyrr’ according to Jonsson, which he interprets as meaning ‘tillokkende’ or ‘expanding, increasing, enlarging.’ This ever-enlarging feature is characteristic of the land of the dead, which must continually expand to fit all the dead into it. “This treasure-store is one which, through all the ages, men will know only by repute.” It isn’t clear which hall Svipdag is asking about, whether it’s the hall standing in front of him or some question of lore. Since at the beginning of the poem the ‘threatening flames’ are mentioned, and since most of the questions and answers between Svipdag and Fjolsvinn relate to Menglod’s hall and the complicated activities that are demanded of Svipdag so he can enter it, I choose to think that the ‘knowing flame’ and the treasure-store do refer to Menglod’s hall, as they also relate to Gerda’s hall, the halls of the wealthy dead, and Valkyries thrown into a magical, deathly sleep. In the end, it is revealed that Svipdag and Menglod were destined for each other, and they join together in love and joy.
Fairy Tales
The late poem about Svipdag and Menglod shows many similarities with more recent fairy tales from Germanic lands. In “Sleeping Beauty” and “Snow White” we see the deathly sleep of the heroine, that can only be overcome by a lover undertaking a difficult quest which has killed others who have tried it. Only one prince makes it through the wall of thorns, or the forest guarded by dwarves, to awaken his soul-lover with a kiss and bring her back to life. A review of other classical fairy tales will show many of the same Hel-related motifs I listed above.
Frau Holle and Walburga
The tale of Frau Holle’s Well contains some of these themes as well. A girl falls into a well, which was a not-infrequent tragedy that killed young children in times when the family well was the necessary source of water. This girl, however, does not die but falls into Frau Holle’s Underworld land through the well. ‘Holle’ is of the same derivation as ‘Hel’: that which is hidden, or that which hides or conceals. Frau Holle is a great Being who rules not only a Hidden Land below Midgard, but also the airs above Midgard where she shakes snow down upon the earth. This kind-hearted girl, arriving in Holle’s Land of green meadows below, helps beings who call out to her, including an overloaded apple tree about to break, and bread in an oven, at risk of burning. She then meets Frau Holle and works diligently as her servant for a period of time. Frau Holle then rewards her by literally showering her with gold and sends her through a gate, back to her home. (Told in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Children’s and Household Tales, and in various places on the internet.)
The resemblance between Frau Holle’s realm and the underworld of souls is strengthened by the saying that “nurses fetch babies (I would say, babies’ souls) out of Frau Hollen Teich”, Holle’s pond or pool. Another saying is reminiscent of Hervor wading through the flames around the burial mounds as if it were fog, and the glimpse of the feasting halls of the dead inside the holy mountain. “When fog rests on the mountain, ‘Dame H(olle) has lit her fire in the hill.’” (Both quotations in Grimm v. 4 p. 1367).
As I mentioned earlier, one of the motifs that shows up in tales relating to Hel and the dead is the guardian dog or dogs, which also appear in other Indo-European mythologies such as the famous three-headed dog Kerberos guarding Hades’ realm of the dead in Greek mythology. According to Rochholz (p. 20), writing about German folklore in 1870, “Grey hounds accompany the three Norns. The fertility Goddesses Frau Harke, Frau Gode, and Frau Frick have always a hound beside them,” as well as Frau Berchte. Walburga has power over dogs: speaking her name is a charm to tame fierce or even mad dogs. Nehalennia’s altars usually show her accompanied by a dog. In German folklore there is a “Windhound” which apparently runs with the Wild Hunt but sometimes stays behind and must be placated with offerings during Spring to protect new crops from wild weather (p. 22).
All of the deities mentioned: Norns, German Goddesses, and the Wild Hunt, have some association with death and the dead. Some of the German Goddesses as well as the Wild Hunt, in their own different ways, collect wandering souls of the dead from Hallows-tide through Yuletide, and we can envision the dogs playing their roles as hunters, herders, guides and guardians of the souls in these activities.
I see Wal-burga’s name as meaning ‘the burg or refuge of the slain’, though Simek gives it as coming from ‘Wald-burga’ (p. 370). The latter could mean ‘the burg or refuge in the woods’, though ‘wald’ also means ‘power, the wielding of power’. Hence Wald-burga can mean ‘the burg or fortress of she who wields power’, a fitting name for a Goddess of the dead. The Woods are also a metaphor for the Otherworld, a dark place where one may well encounter death. All of these meanings shape Walburga, or Waelburga as I like to call her, in my mind as a Goddess who protects and guides the dead, and gives them a refuge (Hel). While not meaning the slightest disrespect to the Goddess Hella, it is Waelburga whom I see as the power in whose embrace the dead rest. Urglaawe considers that Walburga is the same being as Frau Holle, who “guides the cycle of life, death, and rebirth in all areas of existence” (Schreiwer p. 40, 66.) For myself, I see Walburga as the sister of Eostre / Ostara, together showing the relations between fertility, life, brightness and new beginnings, versus darkness, danger, death, decomposing the old and reconfiguring it to become new again. (See my article “Waelburga and the Rites of May”.)
Some Overarching Themes
So, these are a tiny fraction of the many fascinating, richly-imagined tales of the Hidden Lands, the dead, the Hel-Dwellers, as well as those who visit there and those who rule in those domains. There are several overarching themes in these tales that can help us in our quest to better understand Hel and its Dwellers. One is the theme of Hidden Treasures and arcane Knowledge. The dead are buried with riches, heirlooms, objects of power. The residence of these treasures in the company of the dead seems to add further power or main to them. Someone courageous (or foolhardy) enough might be able to retrieve such treasures for themselves, after being subjected to grueling tests of courage, endurance, or in fact tests of good-heartedness, as Frau Holle requires. Through the powers of necromancy, humans, Gods, and other beings may be able to obtain valuable hidden knowledge from the dead in Hel.
Another theme is the quest for the ‘Soul Mate’, as we saw in a number of these tales. This theme has a several layers: the simple enjoyment of fairy tales, possible cultic purposes for fertility rites (I will write more about Hel and fertility later), as well as a more soul-oriented layer. This latter layer features heavily in Jungian psychology, which interprets the quest for the soul-mate as a quest to know and integrate with one’s own soul. I agree with this interpretation and approach it from a Heathen standpoint, though it is more complex given that we have multiple souls. These tales of the underworld and Hel lead us more specifically on the quest to know our own Saiwalo souls.
The theme of “hidden treasure” can be seen as “Power”: the powers of heirlooms, wealth, weapons, and other items imbued with the magical energies of the Hidden Lands. The theme of “arcane knowledge” picks up the thread of “Mysteries” which pique and draw our imaginations along a questing path. The theme of “soul mate” is triggered by “Beauty” which irresistibly calls to the soul, a great source of creative inspiration. These all lead to another theme, one I call the ‘Fascination of the Imagination.’
Combining the search for hidden treasures / power, arcane knowledge / mystery, the soul mate / beauty, and all the challenges and eerie settings involved in questing for these, results in tales that are really irresistible and fascinating. We always want more! Ancient tales going all the way back to Gilgamesh’s quest for immortality, Odysseus’s ventures into Hades, Orpheus’s attempt to rescue his wife Eurydike from Hades, medieval wonder tales and heroic quests, fairy tales, ghost stories, modern fantasy tales in books and films: these all build on, and contribute to, the activity of imaging that our Saiwalos engage in. These tales and images can lead our awareness toward our own Saiwalo and to the Hel-domain, the Hidden Land, in which it dwells. And in fact such tales, and new tales of our own, can help us shape, and re-shape, our own experience and perception of Hel, its Dwellers, and its Rulers, allowing our Saiwalos to create a domain of beauty, mystery and power around themselves, rather than one of torment and degradation, or of barren emptiness and despair.
Bookhoard
Ellis, Hilda Roderick. The Road to Hel: A Study of the Conception of the Dead in Old Norse Literature. Cambridge University Press, London. 1943. (Some editions of this book have the author under her married name of Ellis-Davidson.)
Eyrbyggja Saga, transl. Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards. Penguin Books, London, England. 1989.
Faulkes, Anthony, transl. Edda Snorri Sturlason. Everyman, Charles E. Tuttle Co., Rutland, VT. 1995.
Grimm, Jacob. Teutonic Mythology. Transl. James Steven Stalleybrass. George Bell and Sons, London. 1882.
Jonsson, Finnur, ed. De Gamle Eddadigte. G.E.C. Gads Forlag, Kobenhavn. 1932.
Larrington, Carolyne, transl. The Poetic Edda, revised edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 2014.
Rochholz, E.L. Drei Gaugottinen: Walburg, Verena, und Gertrud, als Deutsche Kirchenheilige. Sittenbilder aus Germanischen Frauenleben. Verlag von Friedrich Fischer, Leipzig, 1870.
Rose, Winifred Hodge. “Waelburga and the Rites of May”, Idunna #71, Spring 2007. Also available on this website.
Schreiwer, Robert, and Ammerili Eckhart. A Dictionary of Urglaawe Terminology. www.urglaawe.org. 2012.
Simek, Rudolf; transl Angela Hall. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. D.S. Brewer, Cambridge, 1993.
Tolkien, Christopher, “Introduction” in G. Turville-Petrie, general editor, Hervarar Saga ok Heidhreks. Viking Society for Northern Research, University College, London. 1956. www.vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/Text%20Series/Hervarar%20saga%20ok%20hei
Tunstall, Peter, transl. “The Saga of Hervor & King Heidrek the Wise”, dual language version. www.germanicmythology.com/FORNALDARSAGAS/HevararSagaTunstall.html. 2005.
Watkins, Calvert. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, 3rd Edition. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston MA. 2011.
This article was first published in Idunna: A Journal of Northern Tradition #121, Fall-Winter 2019.