HEL, or Hela, in Scandinavian mythology, the goddess of the dead. She was a child of Loki and the giantess Angurboda, and dwelt beneath the roots of the sacred ash, Yggdrasil. She was given dominion over the nine worlds of Helheim. In early myth all the dead went to her: in later legend only those who died of old age or sickness, and she then became synonymous with suffering and horror. Her dwelling was Elvidnir (dark clouds), her dish Hungr (hunger), her knife Sullt (starvation), her servants Ganglate (tardy feet), her bed Kör (sickness), and her bed-curtains Blikiandabol (splendid misery).
HELDENBUCH, DAS, the title under which a large body of German epic poetry of the 13th century has come down to us. The subjects of the individual poems are taken from national German sagas which originated in the epoch of the Migrations (Völkerwanderung), although doubtless here, as in all purely popular sagas, motives borrowed from the forces and phenomena of nature were, in course of time, woven into events originally historical. While the saga of the Nibelungs crystallized in the 13th century into the Nibelungenlied (q.v.), and the Low German Hilde-saga into the epic of Gudrun (q.v.) the poems of the Heldenbuch, in the more restricted use of that term, belong almost exclusively to two cycles, (1) the Ostrogothic saga of Ermanrich, Dietrich von Bern (i.e. Dietrich of Verona, Theodorich the Great) and Etzel (Attila), and (2) the cycle of Hugdietrich, Wolfdietrich and Ortnit, which like the Nibelungen saga, was probably of Franconian origin. The romances of the Heldenbuch are of varying poetic value; only occasionally do they rise to the height of the two chief epics, the Nibelungenlied and Gudrun. Dietrich von Bern, the central figure of the first and more important group, was the ideal type of German medieval hero, and, under more favourable literary conditions, he might have become the centre of an epic more nationally German than even the Nibelungenlied itself. Of the romances of this group, the chief are Biterolf und Dietlieb, evidently the work of an Austrian poet, who introduced many elements from the court epic of chivalry into a milieu and amongst characters familiar to us from the Nibelungenlied. Der Rosengarten tells of the conflicts which took place round Kriemhild’s “rose garden” in Worms—conflicts from which Dietrich always emerges victor, even when he is confronted by Siegfried himself. In Laurin und der kleine Rosengarten, the Heldensage is mingled with elements of popular fairy-lore; it deals with the adventures of Dietrich and his henchman Witege with the wily dwarf Laurin, who watches over another rose garden, that of the Tyrol. Similar in character are the adventures of Dietrich with the giants Ecke (Eckenlied) and Sigenot, with the dwarf Goldemar, and the deeds of chivalry he performs for queen Virginal (Dietrichs erste Ausfahrt)—all of these romances being written in the fresh and popular tone characteristic of the wandering singers or Spielleute. Other elements of the Dietrich saga are represented by the poems Alpharts Tod, Dietrichs Flucht and Die Rabenschlacht (“Battle of Ravenna”). Of these, the first is much the finest poem of the entire cycle and worthy of a place beside the best popular poetry of the Middle High German epoch. Alphart, a young hero in Dietrich’s army, goes out to fight single-handed with Witege and Heime, who had deserted to Ermanrich, and he falls, not in fair battle, but by the treachery of Witege whose life he had spared. The other two Dietrich epics belong to a later period, the end of the 13th century—the author being an Austrian, Heinrich der Vogler—and show only too plainly the decay that had by this time set in in Middle High German poetry.
The second cycle of sagas is represented by several long romances, all of them unmistakably “popular” in tone—conflicts with dragons, supernatural adventures, the wonderland of the East providing the chief features of interest. The epics of this group are Ortnit, Hugdietrich, Wolfdietrich, the latter with its pathetic episode of the unswerving loyalty of Wolfdietrich’s vassal Duke Berchtung and his ten sons. Although many of the incidents and motives of this cycle are drawn from the best traditions of the Heldensage, its literary value is not very high.
This collection of popular romances was one of the first German books to be printed. The date of the first edition is unknown, but the second edition appeared in the year 1491 and was followed by later reprints in 1509, 1545, 1560 and 1590. The last of these forms the basis of the text edited by A. von Keller for the Stuttgart Literarische Verein in 1867. In 1472 the Heldenbuch was adapted to the popular tastes of the time by being remodelled in rough Knittelvers or doggerel; the author, or at least copyist, of the MS. was a certain Kaspar von dor Roen, of Münnerstadt in Franconia. This version was printed by F. von der Hagen and S. Primisser in their Heldenbuch (1820-1825). Das Heldenbuch, which F. von der Hagen published in 2 vols, in 1855, was the first attempt to reproduce the original text by collating the MSS. A critical edition, based not merely on the oldest printed text—the only one which has any value for this purpose, as the others are all copies of it—but also on the MSS., was published in 5 vols. by O. Jänicke, E. Martin, A. Amelung and J. Zupitza at Berlin (1866-1873). A selection, edited by E. Henrici, will be found in Kürschner’s Deutsche Nationalliteratur, vol. 7 (1887). Recent editions have appeared of Der Rosengarten and Laurin, by G. Holz (1893 and 1897). All the poems have been translated into modern German by K. Simrock and others. See F. E. Sandbach, The Heroic Saga-Cycle of Dietrich of Bern (1906). The literature of the Heldensage is very extensive. See especially W. Grimm, Die deutsche Heldensage (3rd ed., 1889); L. Uhland, “Geschichte der deutschen Poesie im Mittelalter,” Schriften, vol. i. (1866); O. L. Jiriczek, Deutsche Heldensage, vol. i. (1898); and especially B. Symons, “Germanische Heldensage,” in Paul’s Grundriss der germanischen Philologie (2nd ed., 1898).
HELDER, a seaport town at the northern extremity of the province of North Holland, in the kingdom of Holland, 51 m. by rail N.N.W. of Amsterdam. Pop. (1900) 25,842. It is situated on the Marsdiep, the channel separating the island of Texel from the mainland, and the main entrance to the Zuider Zee, and besides being the terminus of the North Holland canal from Amsterdam, it is an important naval and military station. On the east side of the town, called the Nieuwe Diep, is situated the fine harbour, which formerly served, as Ymuiden now does, as the outer port of Amsterdam. In this neighbourhood are the naval wharves and magazines, wet and dry docks, and the naval cadet school of Holland, the name Willemsoord being given to the whole naval establishment. From Nieuwe Diep to Fort Erfprins on the west side of the town, a distance of about 5 m., stretches the great sea-dike which here takes the place of the dunes. This dike descends at an angle of 40° for a distance of 200 ft. into the sea, and is composed of Norwegian granite and Belgian limestone, strengthened at intervals by projecting jetties of piles and fascines. A circle of forts and batteries defends the town and coast, and there is a permanent garrison of 7000 to 9000 men, while 30,000 men can be accommodated within the lines, and the province flooded from this point. Besides several churches and a synagogue, there are a town hall (1836), a hospital, an orphan asylum, the “palace” of the board of marine, a meteorological observatory, a zoological station and a lighthouse. The industries of the town are sustained by the garrison and marine establishments.
HELEN, or Helena (Gr. Ἑλένη),in Greek mythology, daughter of Zeus by Leda (wife of Tyndareus, king of Sparta), sister of Castor, Pollux and Clytaemnestra, and wife of Menelaus. Other accounts make her the daughter of Zeus and Nemesis, or of Oceanus and Tethys. She was the most beautiful woman in Greece, and indirectly the cause of the Trojan war. When a child she was carried off from Sparta by Theseus to Attica, but was recovered and taken back by her brothers. When she grew up, the most famous of the princes of Greece sought her hand in marriage, and her father’s choice fell upon Menelaus. During her husband’s absence she was induced by Paris, son of Priam, with the connivance of Aphrodite, to flee with him to Troy. After the death of Paris she married his brother Deïphobus, whom she is said to have betrayed into the hands of Menelaus at the capture of the city (Aeneid, vi. 517 ff.). Menelaus thereupon took her back, and they returned together to Sparta, where they lived happily till their death, and were buried at Therapnae in Laconia. According to another story, Helen survived her husband, and was driven out by her stepsons. She fled to Rhodes, where she was hanged on a tree by her former friend Polyxo, to avenge the loss of her husband Tlepolemus in the Trojan War (Pausanias iii. 19). After death, Helen was said to have married Achilles in his home in the island of Leukē. In another version, Paris, on his voyage to Troy with Helen, was driven ashore on the coast of Egypt, where King Proteus, upon learning the facts of the case, detained the real Helen in Egypt, while a phantom Helen was carried off to Troy. Menelaus on his way home was also driven by stress of winds to Egypt, where he found his wife and took her home (Herodotus ii. 112-120; Euripides, Helena). Helen was worshipped as the goddess of beauty at Therapnae in Laconia, where a festival was held in her honour. At Rhodes she was worshipped under the name of Dendritis (the tree goddess), where the inhabitants built a temple in her honour to expiate the crime of Polyxo. The Rhodian story probably contains a reference to the worship connected with her name (cf. Theocritus xviii. 48 σέβου μ᾽, Ἑλένας φυτὸν εἰμί). She was the subject of a tragedy by Euripides and an epic by Colluthus. Originally, Helen was perhaps a goddess of light, a moon-goddess, who was gradually transformed into the beautiful heroine round whom the action of the Iliad revolves. Like her brothers, the Dioscuri, she was a patron deity of sailors.
See E. Oswald, The Legend of Fair Helen (1905); J. A. Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets, i. (1893); F. Decker, Die griechische Helena in Mythos und Epos (1894); Andrew Lang, Helen of Troy (1883); P. Paris in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités; the exhaustive article by R. Engelmann in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie; and O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie, i. 163, according to whom Helen originally represented, in the Helenephoria (a mystic festival of Artemis, Iphigeneia or Tauropolos), the sacred basket (ἑλένη) in which the holy objects were carried; and hence, as the personification of the initiation ceremony, she was connected with or identified with the moon, the first appearance of which probably marked the beginning of the festivity.