If Odin’s paradise appears to us but little attractive, his hell, on the other hand, seems to have been far from terrible, especially if we compare it with the hell of some of our great poets, such as Dante and Milton.
The hell of the Scandinavians occupied the lowest depths of the world and consisted of two parts, Nastrond and Niflheim. The latter is a kind of dismal vestibule shrouded in darkness, in which are seen wandering about the mournful seolas of those who have been neither good nor bad, neither heroes nor scoundrels, and of all who have not fallen by the sword. To die on one’s bed or in an armchair, was a wrong in Odin’s eyes, a grievous wrong, though not exactly a crime, since he punished it only with a temporary detention in those damp, low places, where darkness, silence, and weariness seemed to combine for their punishment. The dwellers in Niflheim had scarcely any amusement except their reciprocal yawns, and from time to time a flash of dim light which reached there when the little black Alfs came in or went out, busily engaged in conveying a load of souls.
The great criminals were thrown into Nastrond, the real hell. What is very remarkable is, that here there were no braziers and burning gridirons to be seen, no furnaces and masses of flames as in all the other hells. This was a hell of ice; it froze here hard enough to split iron, and the damned shivered with cold. Dante mentions something of the kind in his great work, but between the Florentine and the Scandinavian there can be no doubt who borrowed from the other.
It was quite natural after all that in these win-tery regions of Scandinavia, where cold is the greatest evil to be dreaded, intense, continued, eternal cold should have become the terror and the punishment of the criminal. The idea of a hell of fire, so far from keeping them from the fatal slope, might very well have tempted some chilly scoundrel to commit a great crime.
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The poor wretches who were shivering in Nastrond with stiffened hands and eyes full of frozen tears, felt their tortures increased whenever Hela, the pale goddess, the queen of that place, Death itself, cast upon them a glance from her lack-lustre eyes.
Yes, it was Hela who reigned over this frightful iceberg; her palace is called Misery, her gate the Precipice, her reception room Grief, her bed Disease, her table Famine, and her throne Malediction!