The Road to Hel: A Study of the Conception of the Dead in Old Norse Literature [Hardcover]

Hilda Roderick (Ellis Davidson (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Greenwood Press Reprint (August 31, 1968)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0837100704
• ISBN-13: 978-0837100708
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #883,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #100 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Scandinavian

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read for the serious scholar of ancient heathenry, May 13, 2011

By 

Erin Lale "Author and Artist" (Henderson (Green Valley)) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Road to Hel: A Study of the Conception of the Dead in Old Norse Literature (Hardcover)

Review based on PDF version.

The Road to Hel is a must-read for the serious scholar of heathen thought.

It's clear from the archeological evidence that there was no one funeral custom practiced by all heathen peoples in all time periods. Further, the favored type of funeral custom, particularly burial vs. cremation, seemed to have followed a fashion, with cremation being more popular during the period of the Roman Empire than either before or after. Ship-burials and solar symbols were often found together, but the ships buried in the ground with apparent grave goods often had no human remains in them, and had instead a basin buried on top of it in which to receive libations; these were clearly sacrifices, not inhumations. The line between burial customs and sacrifices was a fuzzy one, pointing toward a cult of the dead.

The ancient heathens practiced ship burials, ship burial style sacrifices without human remains in them, ship cremations on the water, burials in the howe, and open air funeral pyres on land. Suttee was not unknown, although it was often not the actual wife who accompanied a king or earl to his next life; often it was a slave. Sacrifices of animals and multiple slaves also occurred. There was also a tradition about what would happen to someone who went into a burial or cremation alive. Those cremated alive, as in suttee, went on to the next world, but those who went into the mound alive became dangerous undead who had to be fought and slain.

The mound and the mound dead were connected to the Vanir and Freyr, and cremation with Odhinn. The mound dead could be fearsome undead or they could be helpful and give gifts such as a gift of poetry. Sacrifices were made to mound dwellers and to the mound itself as a gateway to the land of the dead. The dead were sometimes said to live in mountains or other high places in the earth rather than in man-made mounds. Kings and shepherds sat on mounds and communicated with the dead. Sitting on howes was facilitated by a stone bench seat on top or at its base. The howe dweller could be an inhumation burial or could have been cremated and then placed in the mound. Cremains could be kept separate from any burned offerings made with it, or commingled.

The line between mound-dead and elf was a blurry one, but so was the line between elf and god. The burial mound and the elf hill might be one, but so might the realm of the dead and the bright halls of the gods. Sacrifices of milk poured into naturally occurring "elf cups" could be made to the earth or to the dead.

Cremation is connected with sending the soul to the afterworld in the land of the dead, and the howe burial to remaining in the earth to be reborn in human form, a process that can be assured by naming a child after the dead one. Undead draugr last until the soul is reborn in a new body, which is caused by the naming of a child after the dead person; alternately, the undread draugr lasts until grave robbers slay it, at which point the dead one's soul is released for rebirth in the body of a child named after him or her.

Reading in this book about tales of necromancy that show the dead were believed to have knowledge of the past and future they did not have in life, it occured to me that this showed the dead were not bound to time.

There are many accounts of journeys to the land of the dead that seem to describe a burial mound, full of darkness, bad odors, unmoving corpses, and treasure-- but the corpses come alive and attack when the 'hero' tries to rob the treasure. Also the land of the dead is seen as reached not only through a wall of fire but also a dragon's mouth leading down into darkness, and fire was the sign of a mound inhabited by undead. The land of the dead is reached by a journey down into the earth through darkness across a bridge over a river. There is a high wall, over which the guide throws a slain rooster which crows from the other side. The emphasis is not on where the dead go, but how they get there: the magical horse, the funeral boat. The journey, not the destination.

In those stories that show the mound-dead, when there is a guardian that must be passed to get in, the guardian is a giant, not a god. The realm where the dead live in an afterlife with the gods belongs to the other tradition.

It's tempting to draw a straight line down these traditions and say, rather than believing in a multipartite soul as most heathen scholars say the ancient heathens did, they simply had two competing traditions, Aesiric and Vanic. The Aesiric tradition of pyres and suttee arrived with the Indo-Europeans, and the Vanic tradition began with those most ancient Europeans who buried their dead and sprinkled red powders over them at burial to give them the appearance of life. The Aesiric tradition had an afterlife with the gods reached by cremation, and the Vanic tradition had a belief in a brief afterlife in the mound followed by rebirth in human form. But the author resists this temptation toward oversimplification, showing that the description of Valhalla pulls from both traditions: both the tradition of an afterlife for the soul in another world with a god (Odhinn) and the tradition of the mound-dead who constantly engage in battle in the darkness and keep having their bodies re-animated in undead fashion.

The ancient heathens had a smorgasbord of funerary customs and beliefs which coexisted, among all folks and all times, and the lines between different beliefs and different other-than-human entities were not drawn as strongly and neatly as modern categorizers like. The heathen view of death was not one perspective, but many, side by side.

I highly recommend this book. It's a keeper.

Review by Erin Lale, author of Asatru For Beginners

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Do not get this edition, April 2, 2011

By 

nicole - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Road to Hel: A Study of the Conception of the Dead in Old Norse Literature (Hardcover)

Do not purchase this edition of 'the road to hel' you are better off finding the PDF and downloading it and printing it. This book is a complete waste of money. It is not hardcover (which was a lie), and the print is so fuzzy it is hard to read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Probably her best book!, September 23, 2010

By 

Christopher R. Travers "Einhverfr" (Chelan, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Road to Hel: A Study of the Conception of the Dead in Old Norse Literature (Hardcover)

This book is a classic and for good reason. Dr Ellis carefully examines archaeology and textual sources in turn, looking at a wide range of topics regarding burial practices and views of the afterlife. Her discussion of funerary human sacrifice is very important, as is her discussion of cremation vs burial. While her book leaves a lot of avenues for further research (for example concerning Valkyries, or Norse views of necromancy), Dr Ellis has shown herself to be a giant on whose shoulders every future scholar in this area will have to stand.

This book however covers a great deal more than just death and the afterlife. Discussions of how elf and dis relate to these topics are included as are problems in the sources (such as the elf-woman in the Saga of Hrolf Kraki).

All in all, I would highly recommend this work to anyone interested in this or related topics.