Greetings, dear readers! And welcome to my first ever post on this blog, quite exciting isn’t it? Before I start on with the actual blog post, I should explain the purpose and thematic (or gimmick) of this blog! I started this blog with the intent of studying and discussing women in mythology from a girl’s point of view. As we all know, mythological women all tend to be a bit helpless or scatter-brained, a reward and goal for all the super radical male heroes to sweep up after slaying a demi-god or two. These situations of course are often written by day-dreaming men, It isn’t particularly a bad thing but sometimes people take the way men write women to be literal and actually truthful.
tl;dr (too long, didn’t read): I’m gonna study a bunch of mythological women and discuss my gripes with how floaty they’re portrayed or how absolutely bad ass they are. Now that I have properly introduced you to my blog, it’s time to discuss the first lady of the week!
Hel: The Goddess of Death, the Norse harvester and ruler of the land beyond the living. She is the daughter of Loki and Angrboda, making her siblings to the Warg Fenrir and the world serpent Jormungand. Her power over the dead is unmatched and having such blood from Loki makes her a very deadly and powerful being. She’s one of the strongest women in mythology, she’s pretty metal as well, being depicted to sail in her war ship made out of corpse fingernails with her undead army at the end of the earth. Her personality is cold and harsh, caring not for the pleas of neither the living or the dead. She’s absolutely SHREDDED too (as shown in the picture.) with a face that’s half white and half black, in an expression both fierce and grim.
The only surviving tale she was featured in is The Death of Baldur in which Baldur was slain by Hel’s father, Loki. The gods wanted Baldur back, thus sending an emissary named Hermod to request Hel to return Baldur back to the living. Hel made a little bit of a gamble; If every single living thing in the universe wept for the death of Baldur, she would release him from the cold grasp of death. This wish was not fulfilled as Loki disguised himself as a giantess who refused to weep. Because of that one refusal, Baldur was forever doomed to death.
That’s all I have for this terrifying yet empowering lady of myth. Join me next time for Aphrodite!
Alice in Wonderland 