Hel: Goddess of the Dishonored Dead

Hel was the foretold daughter of Loki and Angrboda, prophesied to become the goddess of death and the ruler of Helheim. In the age of Kratos she remained unborn, for those who were to be her parents were still children, yet the giants had already recorded her destiny among the children of Loki who were fated to shape the end of the Aesir.

The foretold daughter of Loki#

Hel was named in prophecy as the daughter of Loki, the Jotunn name borne by Atreus, and of Angrboda, the last of the giants of Ironwood. By that descent she was three parts Jotunn and one part god, for through Loki she carried the blood of the Olympian line of Kratos as well as the giants of Jötunheim. She was foretold to stand among three siblings, the others being the great wolf Fenrir and the World Serpent Jörmungandr, each of them children destined to play a part in the doom of the Aesir.

In the age of the saga Hel had not yet come into being, for Loki and Angrboda were still children, and her birth was a thing of times to come. Even so, her name was already carved in the world. Upon the Jotnar shrines raised by Jörmungandr she was written in the old runes as a child of Loki and Angrboda and a sibling of Fenrir and the Iron-Wolves, set down by the giants who had foreseen the whole of what was to be.

Goddess of death#

It was Hel's foretold destiny to become the goddess of death and the queen of Helheim, holding dominion over the dishonored dead. Among the powers ascribed to her were necromancy and command over the ghosts of the slain, and as a being of divine and giant blood she was reckoned likely to be immortal, beyond the harm of all but the mightiest powers. In the older tellings of the Norse she was a daughter of Loki feared by the Aesir, banished to Helheim and given authority over the dead of the Nine Realms, a ruler whose place even the gods were bound to respect.

The title of Hel#

After the events of Ragnarok, a deeper truth of the name came to light. When Freya asked Mimir how he had persuaded Helheim's ruler to lend its dead to the war against Asgard, he answered that the realm's keeper, the giant Hræsvelgr, wished to retire, and that he had promised to find someone to take her place as Hel. So it was learned that Hel was not only a person but a title, given to whoever ruled the realm of the dishonored dead, a charge that one day the foretold daughter of Loki might come to bear.