Yggdrasil · Cold and the Dead

Éljúðnir (Hel’s Hall)

The dwelling of the goddess Hel, with her table called Hunger.

Myth and literature · Quotation

In Blackwell’s translation

Here she possesses a habitation protected by exceedingly high walls and strongly barred gates. Her hall is called Elvidnir; Hunger is her table; Starvation, her knife; Delay, her man; Slowness, her maid; Precipice, her threshold; Care, her bed; and Burning Anguish forms the hangings of her apartments.

Myth and literature

What the sources say

Gylfaginning says Hel’s dwelling is protected by exceedingly high walls and strongly barred gates. Her hall is called Éljúðnir (Elvidnir in some translations). Hunger is her table, Starvation her knife, Delay her servant, Slowness her maid, Precipice her threshold, Care her bed and Burning Anguish her hangings.

The prose does not say where in the world the hall stands, only that Odin cast Hel into Niflheim and gave her power over nine worlds.

  • attributed to Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda: Gylfaginning (13th century), the passage on Loki’s children
Myth and literature · Context

Names and background

The name is usually glossed as meaning something like sprayed with snowstorms, or damp with sleet or rain, so even the hall's name speaks of cold and wet weather. The hall is known from a single place in the old sources: the chapter of Gylfaginning that describes Hel's dwelling. No other text is cited for it.

Its furnishings carry their own descriptive names. The threshold is a pitfall called Fallandaforað, glossed as falling to peril. Hel's bed is Kör, sick bed, and its curtains are Blikjandaböl, gleaming disaster. Because everything comes from one translation-dependent chapter, the glosses are renderings rather than settled readings.

Historical evidence

Where the sources attest it

Éljúðnir is the name given to the hall of the goddess Hel in Snorri’s Gylfaginning. The name is usually explained as “sprayed with snowstorms” or “damp with sleet or rain”, though that reading rests on how the word is interpreted and is not certain. The same part of the work tells of Hermóðr’s ride to Hel’s realm over the Gjöll bridge.

The hall is known from the Prose Edda; no surviving Eddic poem is cited for the name here, and no archaeological or pictorial evidence for it is known.