Going to Hel: Consequences of a Heathen Life

[Electronic God-Man]

Well, my mind is blown. I found another essay by this William P. Reaves character. He has his own website here: http://www.germanicmythology.com/

This one takes on a more controversial topic: the afterlife in Germanic religion.
I'll let the abstract speak for itself.

For a moral code to remain in effect in any religion, there must be consequences for not following that code. Since Heathenism has a highly developed moral code, it stands to reason that it also spoke of the consequences of leading a life in accordance with or in opposition to its own moral standards, yet according to popular belief there is no mechanism for that to happen . primarily because Snorri.s Edda doesn.t mention a court to judge the dead or any reward for leading a pious heathen life; warriors go to Valhalla and everyone else goes to Hel, a dreary, dismal place. Do the sources of Heathen belief confirm this view?

Once again, his argument seems rather convincing, even though it goes against the grain. What I'd like to know is how does this, if true, change our conception of Heathen morality?

Loddfafner, read it!

Link to the essay online: http://www.germanicmythology.com/ori...20to%20Hel.pdf

I've also attached a PDF.

[TheBorrebyViking]

I just am seeing the title. Going to Hel? Nah, I plan on dying in Combat, one way or another. If it means a violent death fighting a war for my race/nation, or snapping and putting a 48 round mad in my 92fs, it depends.

[Electronic God-Man]

I just am seeing the title. Going to Hel? Nah, I plan on dying in Combat, one way or another. If it means a violent death fighting a war for my race/nation, or snapping and putting a 48 round mad in my 92fs, it depends.

Read the article and some of your views on the Heathen afterlife may change.

[Logan]

Many ways one might look back upon our distant fathers, R-U106, beliefs Electronic God-Man. I prefer what's below. The Northern is still in want of a Robert Graves. Sometimes the telling can seem a bit like an annointed version of Sherlock Holmes. It never was a comprehensive belief system. Interesting attempt nevertheless, which does provide an answer.

Their morality is best seen in Beowulf. These values, though altered in time, do remain.





http://books.google.com/books?id=q1o...page&q&f=false

[Electronic God-Man]

Many ways one might look back upon our distant fathers, R-U106, beliefs Electronic God-Man. I prefer what's below. The Northern is still in want of a Robert Graves. Sometimes the telling can seem a bit like an annointed version of Sherlock Holmes. It never was a comprehensive belief system. Interesting attempt nevertheless, which does provide an answer.

Their morality is best seen in Beowulf. These values, though altered in time, do remain.

I think that Mr. Thorpe's conception of Germanic religion is overly simplistic.

It may not have been a comprehensive system in the sense that all Germanic peoples believed in the same thing, however I do believe that it was a complete religious system. The fact that it was not the same complete religious system throughout Northern Europe does not mean that Heathens of any given time and place had only bits and pieces of a mythology to work with. That is our situation now, a thousand years afterwords. They, the Heathens of their own time, would have had a complete, unified system. Unified doesn't mean that Heathens in Iceland saw the exact same religion as the Heathens in Denmark, or even that the Heathens in northern Denmark held the same beliefs as the Heathens in southern Denmark. However, I think that each tribe and/or area would have had a unified system that comprised all their basic beliefs.

The reason I bring up morality is because most people see the religion as not strongly orientated towards an afterlife where individuals are judged for their earthly actions and then punished or rewarded accordingly. If what this essay presents is true, I would imagine it must alter the way we view the way Heathens lead their lives. It's no longer "Do what is right, because it is honorable." it's "Do what is right because it is honorable, and if you don't you'll end up suffering in Niflhel with the Frost-Giants!"

That being said, I could imagine that the Eddas are only representing the beliefs of one place or time, and that there were other conceptions of the afterlife. Still, the Eddas are our primary source with which we glean nearly everything of the Heathen belief system and they have seemingly been proven accurate whenever we can compare them with other sources.

[TheBorrebyViking]

Read the article and some of your views on the Heathen afterlife may change.

See, I don't believe truly. I take morals and a guide to living from our ancestors religion, but I'm atheist myself.

[Aemma]

Nice site. Thanks for this Soten. For some reason I thought that another member here had a link to this website elsewhere, but I might very well be mistaken. At any rate, Mr Reeves' argument is convincing enough. I'm not sure I agree with the whole "judgment" bit despite his strong (enough) support in heathen texts. I will need to re-read the work and more carefully. But one thing that did jump out to me is his focus on the Thurs/Jotnar which is a category of deity that usually gets a very VERY bad rap in many mainstream heathen circles. It's exciting to see his positive treatment of them in this article. People often forget that Heathenry is more than just devotion to the Aesir, or to the Vanir. The Jotnar are as important.

Anyway, thanks for getting my feet wet again. Gah! I've been missing this kind of thing, enormously!

[heathen_son]

"There is no need to interpret this judgement of souls as a Christian interpolation, since a similar court is found in most all Indo-European mythologies."

Seems a bit of a weak reason to dismiss the idea. Snorri was educated at Sæmundr fróði's school in Oddi, who studied in Franconia. Is it probable that the classics were taught to him there and thus, Snorri learned this at Oddi which influenced his writing? Bare in mind that the context of the Edda's is the high skaldic culture of Christianised Norway/Iceland. A somewhat particular source.

I doubt an idealised "heathen moral code" existed. Rather, "custom" and "the law" was the benchmark of what was moral/immoral, and this differed from one group to another.

The consequences of breaking the law speak for themselves (fines, outlawry, hanging, drowning) and perhaps this is the mechanism that Reaves has overlooked. Sure, the sacredity/divine origin of law was manifested in myth (the spring of forsitesland for example) and perhaps that is the Indo-European connection, but I wouldn't go to the extremes of saying that there was a heathen idea for the final judgement of the soul upon death.

Further, bare in mind that oath-breaking was not uncommon, and leaders seemed inclined to do so at their convenience. They didn't appear to act with much concern for a post-death judgement of the soul, which, for such superstitious peoples, suggests it didn't exist.

I am more inclined to accept that heathen's saw hel (or the burial mound, or similar) as the place where all men (excluding the niding) go to when they die. Snorri paints it as a bleak place, but I think this is his Christian bias showing through. To the heathen mind, going to hel's hall, the place where the dead go, was just a fact of life. This pursuit of a glorious death into Valhalla is either a Germano-Christian synthesis of myth, or a classically influenced poetic evolution of hel. Either way, it was something that the common heathen man didn't know, or didn't care about.












And still, I read this back and see how I could have overlooked things! I am more Anglo than Norse.

[Electronic God-Man]

"There is no need to interpret this judgement of souls as a Christian interpolation, since a similar court is found in most all Indo-European mythologies."

Seems a bit of a weak reason to dismiss the idea. Snorri was educated at Sæmundr fróði's school in Oddi, who studied in Franconia. Is it probable that the classics were taught to him there and thus, Snorri learned this at Oddi which influenced his writing? Bare in mind that the context of the Edda's is the high skaldic culture of Christianised Norway/Iceland. A somewhat particular source.

I think that the essay draws on some sources outside of the Edda that at least fit into the model of a judgment after death. At any rate, the evidence for an afterlife judgment would seem to be interspersed within the Edda to a degree that would also suggest its nativeness. It's not as if Snorri just slapped it on at the end. It would seem as though it was somewhat important if in fact the Gods were riding to Urd's Well every day to "judge" and the one thing that never dies is the "doom/judgment" of dead men.

It's pretty easy just to say that certain things are later Christian additions. I would take the suggestion seriously, because in the end we will end up saying that the entire Edda is just imagined by Snorri and we should just drop it at that. However, we still have the Poetic Edda to contend with.

I doubt an idealised "heathen moral code" existed. Rather, "custom" and "the law" was the benchmark of what was moral/immoral, and this differed from one group to another.

What about that wouldn't be a moral code? They lived their moral code as custom, enforced by law. I was going to say that many cultures don't simply write down "This is our moral code..." but then I remembered Loddfáfnismál, which basically does that.

The consequences of breaking the law speak for themselves (fines, outlawry, hanging, drowning) and perhaps this is the mechanism that Reaves has overlooked. Sure, the sacredity/divine origin of law was manifested in myth (the spring of forsitesland for example) and perhaps that is the Indo-European connection,

I'm not understanding how the consequences of breaking Germanic law in any way negate the possibility that ancient Germanics believed in judgment after death. Christians have laws, including capital punishment. Do they not believe in judgment after death?

As for the Indo-European connection, I had to look but it seems as though the ancient Greeks also believed in a judgment after death. Some stayed in Hades, others to Tartarus and the best to the Elysian Fields. Though that appears to be a development through time and possibly only in certain sects, YET still uninfluenced by Christianity. I'll have to take a better look at the Greek situation though, and other IEs.

but I wouldn't go to the extremes of saying that there was a heathen idea for the final judgement of the soul upon death.

Why? "Cattle die, kinsmen die, you yourself will die, I know one thing which never dies, the judgment on each man dead." And certainly the Gods travel to Urd's Well every day to "judge" something. Furthermore, it is generally accepted that they believed that some men were destined for Valhalla (interestingly I also saw it suggested that not all those slain in battle go there), some for Folkvangr, some for Hel, etc. That already entails a sort of judgment. How do they pick them out and tell who to go where? I certainly agree that the concept of the afterlife wasn't the same as a Christian one, but that doesn't negate the point.

It's interesting to me that we've formulated a view of Heathen beliefs from admittedly late sources, and because no one immediately recognized much about the afterlife (and because the afterlife certainly wasn't as clearly highlighted as it is in Christianity) we've decided that Heathens themselves didn't think much about it and that really there wasn't anything to it. You just die and sit in Hel, but if you die in battle you go to Valhalla. Then when we see some evidence for a much different conception of the afterlife we assume that it can't be...because we hadn't realized it before? It goes against our idea of their afterlife, which we only seem to have formulated based on lack of evidence.

Further, bare in mind that oath-breaking was not uncommon, and leaders seemed inclined to do so at their convenience. They didn't appear to act with much concern for a post-death judgement of the soul, which, for such superstitious peoples, suggests it didn't exist.

Certainly you are aware that politicians lie everywhere and in every age? My response is that lying most certainly IS a sin in Christianity, yet it seems so odd that our Christian politicians lie all the time. For what it's worth, "Oath-breaker" was a hefty accusation in those days.

I am more inclined to accept that heathen's saw hel (or the burial mound, or similar) as the place where all men (excluding the niding) go to when they die. Snorri paints it as a bleak place, but I think this is his Christian bias showing through. To the heathen mind, going to hel's hall, the place where the dead go, was just a fact of life. This pursuit of a glorious death into Valhalla is either a Germano-Christian synthesis of myth, or a classically influenced poetic evolution of hel. Either way, it was something that the common heathen man didn't know, or didn't care about.

Actually, Hel is described as being quite pleasant. Green, warm, swans, etc. It's Niflhel which is cold as a witch's tit and populated with Frost-giants and rotting corpses.

Valhalla was something that the common heathen didn't know about? It's true that the audience listening to these poems/stories were sometimes those in the royal halls, however they were definitely also presented to the common people. Also, Valhalla strikes me as one of the most legitimately Germanic things possible. What's even vaguely un-Germanic about being slain in battle, taken to Valhalla and spending the rest of eternity engaged in feasting, drinking and combat?

I don't understand how certain aspects of the Eddas are judged to be widely known and important (such as the supposed non-belief in a judgment in the afterlife, everyone simply sitting in Hel) whereas others are put aside as being virtually unknown among the common folk (such as your suggestion here about Valhalla).

You actually appear to be skeptical about any afterlife in the Heathen system. I think that a lot of people, especially among the neo-Heathen community, are reading whatever they want into Heathenry and then very reluctant to give up their views. After reading the essay, I actually wondered how many people would have their pet religion ruined by it, because I do think that the non-judgment aspect is attractive to many.


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Sorry that was long-winded. Great topic.

[Piparskeggr]

Heya;

I've read William's essays quite a bit over the years.

He is the leading proponent of the 19th century scholar Viktor Rydberg's interpretations of the Northern Lore.

While Mr Reaves and Dr Rydberg are part of my reading, neither is the be all and end all...

I believe that if I live a worthy life, I shall end up in the Yewdales with Uller. If I fall short, I will end up in Helheim, waiting to be reborn in my family line. If I live an unworthy life, I will end up in Niflheim...