Bloodthirsty men
And perjurers,
And him who the ear beguiles
Of another’s wife.
There Nidhog sucks
The corpses of the dead.”
Sæmund’s Edda (Thorpe’s tr.).
Pestilence and Famine
Hel herself was supposed occasionally to leave her dismal abode to range the earth upon her three-legged white horse, and in times of pestilence or famine, if a part of the inhabitants of a district escaped, she was said to use a rake, and when whole villages and provinces were depopulated, as in the case of the historical epidemic of the Black Death, it was said that she had ridden with a broom.