Afterpants: Nether Regions Pt.12 (Helheim)

For anyone that bothered to notice, Nether Regions has been on hiatus for a couple of weeks. Yours truly was off in a far away place doing manual labor...

The next on Wiki's list is supposed to be Hedu Ka Misi...a Nether Region from a tribe in South America, but there was sadly...very little info...(again???) anyway. We're skipping to yet another biggy in the Nether Regions...HEL!

Why 'biggy?'...because so much has been written about it.

We'll start with some more obvious facts:

Hel is the name for both an afterlife of the Norse dead AND it's ruling power.

In Norse belief, the dead can go several places; the most desirable of which is Valhalla...where those slain battle live it up and party eternally.

Hel on the other hand is either for those who've died a less than heroic way (like old age or whatever) OR people who were considered "evil"

Where is Hel? I thought you'd never ask.

Right there...at the bottom....under one of the roots of the great world tree.

In underwear terms...Hel is like some dirty,black socks you haven't worn in years but forgot to throw out...where Midgard (the human world) is the green boxers (or briefs if you're a fan) that you wear everyday and Ljosslheim (also called Alfheim) is a t-shirt made of fairy silk that shimmers in moonlight and gives you magic powers.

There are a LOT of dead Norsemen in Hel(heim) I mean...as brave and warrior like as the culture was, not everyone can die in battle...in fact MOST ppl can't...then there's the modern context where The Swedes, the Danes etc...are mostly Christianized and think they're going to "heaven" but that's untrue....they're all going to Hel...good or bad...

Nothern Europe has simply run out of vikings...

I wanted to mention in closing that I found a curious little tidbit about the etymology. It seem that the word Hel is derived from the original, proto-indo-european word Kel...or Kol...

which...when one squints one's eyes, one can see that the word seems very similar to "Kar" of Sumerian fame...I do love languages...!

Anyway...Afterpants officially awards Hel with 4 out 5 Hellbriefs...for it's relative non-dichotomy and it's staying power!