{"id":23,"date":"2020-03-12T14:19:49","date_gmt":"2020-03-12T14:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vikingsof.me\/blog\/?p=23"},"modified":"2022-09-01T23:17:48","modified_gmt":"2022-09-01T22:17:48","slug":"the-road-to-hel-is-not-paved-with-good-intentions-it-has-a-gold-roof","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vikingsof.me\/blog\/the-road-to-hel-is-not-paved-with-good-intentions-it-has-a-gold-roof\/","title":{"rendered":"The Road to Hel is not paved with good intentions, it has a gold roof"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I am constantly being told that the road to\nhell is paved with good intentions. So, I decided to do some digging just in\ncase I have been misinformed. This is what I found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hel in the Eddas<\/em>\nwas a little bit different to the similar sounding Hell of Christianity. For a\nstart Hel was ruled over by Hel the daughter of Loki. To me that could get\nmightily confusing on the to day administration of the place. For a start does\nbeing told to go to Hel mean person or place? Does the person want us to report\nto the boss or just go to a place usually reserved for the dead? I guess the\nonly way to find out is to go there. The question is how do we get there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not wanting to die, the best way to find out is to look for directions from the Prose Edda,<\/a><\/em> especially concerning the death of Baldur and his time in Hel (the place not the person…). This is not a ramble<\/s> blog about Baldur, so I will keep it light and promise to talk about him and his misfortunes at a later date. Right now, it is about going to Hel and the best person for that was Herm\u00c3\u00b3\u00c3\u00b0r who volunteers to ride to Hel (the place, not the being) to get Baldur out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riding on  Slipnirr, Odin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 8 legged steed, he\nrides the Helvegr or hell road. Snorri Sturluson, the author of the Edda, almost\ncertainly got this from earlier poetry, as Herm\u00c3\u00b3\u00c3\u00b0r has to ride through more\nalliteration than a one eyed Aseir could shake a stick at. He has to ride nine\nnights through deep and dark valleys which looks something like this in written\nform: D\u00c3\u00b8kkva dala ok dj\u00c3\u00bapa<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riding through all the alliteration he comes to the river Gj\u00c7\u00abll spanned by a bridge Gjallabr\u00c3\u00ba which is covered by a roof of gold. Here he was met by a young woman called M\u00c3\u00b3gu\u00c3\u00b0r who asks him why he is riding to Hel. A reasonable question as he was not dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She comments that 5\ngroups of warriors passed that way yesterday which is interesting as it sounds\nlike this was the default destination for people at the time. This is probably\nbased on an earlier belief system where everyone goes to Hel. Being a coward\nand incredibly lazy this works for me as I have to put no extra effort into the\nafterlife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Herm\u00c3\u00b3\u00c3\u00b0r who was not a\ncoward asked M\u00c3\u00b3gu\u00c3\u00b0r if she had seen Baldur, to which she says she had. He had\nridden there earlier. This ties in with the fact Baldur was cremated with his\nhorse, which is incredibly useful if you are Baldur, not so good if you are his\nhorse. With stories like these it is not so good for any horse. The amount of\nDanish horse burials is quite staggering\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, if you want to go\nto Hel, while avoiding the whole dying thing, head to the river Gj\u00c7\u00abll and look\nout for a bridge with a gold roof. After that go down and north. While this is\nnot quite Google Maps it is a good start for a time when maps were a bit thin\non the ground. It is also the start of a phrase that lasted hundreds of years.\nBeing told to go down and north was for hundreds of years like being told to go\nto hell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just like Rome, there appears to be many roads to Hel, just in case there is congestion. It also suggests it is more like a physical place than a conceptual one. In the poem Helrei\u00c3\u00b0 Brynhildar<\/em> in the Poetic Edda<\/a><\/em>, Brynhildar rides to Hel after her cremation on a wagon. Again, not so good for the wagon, not so good for the horse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of finding a\nbridge of gold she rides through the farm of a giant woman whose name we are\nnot given. Which is not that helpful, but just adds to the idea that this is a\nplace where you journey to and where you can meet fairly normal things (for the\nEddas).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing with both\nof these directions is that there is very much a physical road you can ride,\nwhich is part of your transitioning across. It also seems mundane compared to\nother concepts of the dead. Okay, a gold roof is pretty swish, but we are\nriding on a bridge over a river, or on a road past a farm\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Hel itself does not\nseem to bad either, there are no tortured souls, roasting sinners or other\nunpleasantness. Baldur even got a feast, which has got to be better than\nturning up hungry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My takeaway from the\nroad to Hel is that it is not paved with good intentions, the chances are it is\nnot even paved at all. No matter the state of the road it leads to a place,\nunderground or not, it is a place, not some mystical state. You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find Hel\nat the centre of the earth just by digging and you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wake up there after\nfalling badly off your horse. You can (if you are insane or a hero like\nHerm\u00c3\u00b3\u00c3\u00b0r) go there before you die, but my advice is that Miami is probably nicer\nthis time of year. Should you wait until the end of your life there are no real\nentry requirements and you are likely to find some interesting people and the\noccasional Valkyrie, so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not all bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am constantly being told that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So, I decided to do some digging just in case I have been misinformed. This is what I found. Hel in the Eddas was a little bit different to the similar sounding Hell of Christianity. For a start Hel was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,3],"tags":[61,23,21,20,30,22,29,41,26],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literature","category-religion","tag-afterlife","tag-baldur","tag-edda","tag-hel","tag-hermodr","tag-odin","tag-old-norse","tag-sagas","tag-slipnirr"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Road to Hel is not paved with good intentions, it has a gold roof<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hel in the Eddas was a little bit different to the similar sounding Hell of Christianity. 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