Talk:Hel (mythological being)

Hela

I know that she was actually known as "Hel" to the Norsemen and not "Hela", but given the prominence of "Hela" in modern sources ranging from Marvel Comics to the John Charles Dollman painting actually used as an illustration on this page something needs to be said about that form of the name somewhere on this page. --Khajidha (talk) 17:10, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

It would be Hella if anything. Hela is a mispelling and no one even in the Marvel universe pronounce it any other way than Hella. Though the closest you could get to that name academically is the Helja, but Hel is just more universally used.Carewolf (talk) 20:38, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Goddess Hel - the problem of semantics

I must express my surprise about the confusion about Hel not being categrorized or named a Goddess. This seem to be because she was not a part of the group asynja (modern Swedish spelling). It does seem a little odd. The asynja was simply the name of the goddesses belonging to the group of deities living in Asgard. Not all gods or goddesses lived in Asgard, but that does not mean that they where not gods or goddesses. To designate her as 'not a goddess' because she did not belong to the goddesses living in Asgard, and thus not having the title of asynja, is essentially the same thing as not categorizing Hades as a god because he did not reside in Olympus: true enough, Hades is not categorized as one of the Olympians for that reason, but that does not mean that he is not a god, not does anyone say he is not. Now, Hel is categorized as a "being", which is a little odd, as there is no true difference between being a "supernatural being" and being a goddess in this case, and she function as a goddess in all issues - beside for the fact, it seems, that she her place of residence disqualify her as such. All this seem to me to be a uneccessary semantic confusion, perhaps originally founded on a misunderstanding during translation, that a goddess need to live in Asgard and have the title asynja to be counted as a goddess. This is comparable to the Greek mythology, where many gods does not live in Olympus - or many other mythologies, for example, the goddess Ereshkigal, who like Hel are the queen of the underworld and the goddess of the death and have the same functions as Hel. This is uneccessary and creates unhelpful consequences for the readers and users of Wikipedia. To remove the categories "death goddesses" and so forth is not helpful to the reader, because she was a death goddess and functioned as such, and should be categorized with other "beings" with the same function rather than to be exclused because of a semantic designation. Indeed, Ereshkigal ias also a "supernatural being" - well, that is what a goddess is. --92.35.227.48 (talk) 15:56, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

We don't make any assumptions on Wikipedia, we stick to what scholarship says. The question of whether or not Hel was considered to be some kind of goddess or a jötunn remains entirely open-ended in the source material, which scholarship on the matter reflects. :bloodofox: (talk) 00:00, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

In Modern Culture

I am trying to add a modern culture section page and within it give instances in which Hel was depicted in several video games. Almost every god or goddess in one form or another has a modern culture section within their article that simply lists in which movies, tv shows, video games, or music the respective god is mentioned in. However my section, which is well referenced and contains the appropriate internal links, keeps being reverted and I was asked to gain a consensus regarding its inclusion, which is a little ridiculous in my opinion as this page is not frequently edited (I mean the last post to this talk page was two years ago). Regardless, I believe the more well-referenced and cited information on a a page the better, and adding an "In Popular Culture" section helps make the page more consistent with similar pages. Also in reality the vast majority of younger people only know Hel and many other gods and goddesses from mythology because of references in popular media, so including such a section is important. MrGoldenfold007 (talk) 15:56, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

This is just the use of the character in games and shows no impact of the use on culture. The cited references are simply documenting the games, with no intent or attempt to link the appearance of the god to any impact on culture. It's an excellent example of what WP:IPC warns about: " indiscriminate collections of trivia or cruft."

The section WP:IPCEXAMPLES provides more detailed guidance. Of the four suggested questions to ask there, #1 ("Has the subject (if a person or organization) acknowledged the existence of the reference?") is not applicable (subject is not a living human being). #s 3 ("Did any real-world event occur because of the cultural element covered by the reference?" & 4 ("Did the referencing material significantly depend on the specific subject?") are decidedly "no." Only #2 ("Have multiple reliable sources pointed out the reference?") comes anywhere close, but that's a simple artifact of documenting the game -- not because of any particular import of Hel the being.

This is the type of "sighting" that IPC disapproves. It's the sort of thing for which Wikipedia has been rightfully mocked. It gives no useful information to anyone researching Hel. TJRC (talk) 20:58, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

I'd argue that my added section provides useful information to a reader in showing that Hel is still being depicted at least somewhat in modern culture. Without an "In Modern Culture" section a reader has no way of knowing if Hel has been depicted in anything save the Hela in Marvel Comics, which has its own article. Additionally, if I create an "In Modern Culture" section from scratch of course it's not going to be very large and possibly be "trivial" in size and/or scope at first, I'm only one person and as with any article or section the hope is that it will grow over time, but it has to start somewhere. I am willing to do more research into depictions of Hel in popular culture, but I was only prepared to add to the article depictions of Hel I was familiar with. If every attempt to create an IMC section is shot down, it's never going to grow into anything.

Also again I want to reiterate that an IPC section, similar in structure to my own though usually larger because they're well established and not brand new, is present in almost every mythology article, so I believe there is already a general consensus supporting the presence of such sections among the editing and admin community at large, or else these sections would be taken down regularly. You might not like video games and that might be one reason you find my addition trivial, but I think it's important to understand that by and large younger generations learn about mythology largely through video games, fantasy literature, and movies. I can add additional instances of Hel being present in popular culture that I am less familiar with such as her being present in the Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard book series or being in episodes of the tv show Supernatural, which could help show that depictions of Hel are not present in any one form of media. Alone any of these mentions are not significant I agree with that, but if a lot of instances are mentioned it can better show the influence, or lack of influence, for a particular mythological deity in modern culture.

I think having a short paragraph about depictions of Hel in modern literature, video games, film, and televisions could be beneficial, and not ruin the integrity of the article. I realize long bulleted lists can be annoying at times which is why I purposefully did my edit within a paragraph, not bullet points. Take a look at the article for Thor, which is designated as a "good article," it has a fairly lengthy modern influence section but it's not in bullet point form, and it gets the idea across that Thor has had a big influence on modern culture, as he is depicted in a great variety of media. MrGoldenfold007 (talk) 01:53, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Also it looks like that Wikiproject page you posted that consensus discussion to regarding this article is even more dead than the article, I mean the last post to the Wikiproject page was in April and all the topics posted to the discussion page get no comments or interaction from what I've seen. The "consensus" is likely going to be 50/50, your vote and my vote, no one else, unless invited by you I guess, will voice any opinion on the matter.

I must say, the in culture section as written is quite promotional. Really, one only needs a single line that says "Hel is a character in the 20xx video game xxxx". All the rest is guff. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 00:34, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

I agree with including it. Just trim it a little @MrGoldenfold007: and format references. To really solidify it, it needs some secondary sources. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:56, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks all, I'm a newer editor so it's great to get some constructive feedback. I'll get on making those changes. MrGoldenfold007 (talk) 00:59, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

@MrGoldenfold007: "in popular culture" sections of articles are often a hotbed of conflict. In part because alot of them were haphazard unreferenced jumbles of trivia, but many editors frown on them and will wholesale revert even referenced material. Best thing is to reference everything with as good sources as possible. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:44, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 14 August 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved to Hel (mythological being). per discussion consensus. This was a difficult one, but consensus via compromise tells us that the close should incorporate all perspectives to the extent possible, and choose the result with the most common ground. It appears that is the case for this name, uniting most discussion participants as "acceptable" and still following PAGs. (non-admin closure) — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 14:44, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

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Hel (being) → ? – Don't know a good name for this article, but as mentioned in this RM from 2015, (being) is a strange/uncommon disambiguation. I would have proposed (mythology), but that seems to conflict with Hel (location). Natg 19 (talk) 00:42, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

@In ictu oculi, GregKaye, NinjaRobotPirate, Bloodofox, Egsan Bacon, Necrothesp, and Yngvadottir:, who participated in the previous RM. Natg 19 (talk) 00:45, 14 August 2021 (UTC) @LlywelynII, Kiyoweap, and Quinto Simmaco:, who also discussed afterwards. Natg 19 (talk) 00:49, 14 August 2021 (UTC) @Haukurth: Natg 19 (talk) 00:59, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

• No move. I still cannot think of a better disambiguator. She is not described as a deity in the sources, and scholars disagree on whether she ever was one, with the dominant view appearing to be that she was not. An unusual disambiguator is not such a problematic thing that we should title the article inaccurately. Hel (entity) would be as good, but would be as unusual as "being" and probably a smidgen clearer to some readers and a smidgen less clear to others. In a previous discussion, someone compared the situation with the articles on Hades (the god), with Hades (place) redirecting to Greek underworld, but Hel is the reverse of that case, with Hel (place) and "death" representing most uses of the word in the written sources, so I think we do better to have both at disambiguated titles rather than moving either to Hel. (Furthermore in popular usage, I believe "Hades" more often refers to the place than to the god.) Yngvadottir (talk) 03:22, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

• move the disambiguator "being" is clearly "strange/uncommon" or awkward, and I would prefer these dabs be changed to "mythical being" "mythical place", though I realize the "mythical" isn't necessary to distinguish the two, and the MOS on dabs may call for as much succinctness as possible.

I was initially persuaded by some formal classification argument that the dab "goddess" should be changed to "being", however, when the issue resurfaced in regards to categorization, my opinion was that it was too ridiculous refuse to place Hel into a goddess/deity category, and place her instead in some other finely parsed box, because that would not serve the Category instruments function of navigating.

Besides, the label "goddess (of death)" is justifiable by virtue of its use among WP:RS scholars, e.g., Hilda R. E. Davidson,[1] and Carolyne Larrington in her translation of the Poetic Edda, p.293 (note to p. 240), as I mentioned in the past thread. --Kiyoweap (talk) 04:45, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Except that Hilda Ellis Davidson is saying on that page that there is no evidence Hel was ever regarded as a goddess, but rather that Snorri's description is a personification and that is also the best way to describe mentions of her by some skaldic poets, such as Egill. The citation, and the preponderance of scholarly treatments of the issue, do not support labeling her a goddess, and accuracy is more important than consistency. Yngvadottir (talk) 06:37, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

• I would prefer to avoid a 'goddess' designation which might mislead readers. If 'being' is felt to be weird then maybe we could go with Hel (daughter of Loki)? Cpr. e.g. Aegiale (daughter of Helios). Haukur (talk) 09:56, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

• Merge with Hel (location), into a new article, as the two concepts are intrinsically related.--Berig (talk) 10:21, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

• Hel (goddess) Dictionaries call her goddess of death, Britannica calls her goddess / Norse deity. Encyclopedia of Ancient deities, Dictionary of Gods and Goddesses calls her goddess of underworld. Encyclopedia of World Mythology, Myths and Legends of the World, Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable her goddess of the dead/ goddess who rule underworld. Calling her a being or entity is definitely strange, when many references call her a goddess. Inviting GA nominator @Bloodofox:; dictionaries referred in the references can be good sources to arrive at the correct word. Redtigerxyz ^Talk 12:08, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Please stick to works from specialists in the field, like the article does. Generalists tertiary sources on these topics tend to be full of errors. The issue is this: Hel doesn't appear in any goddess lists in the corpus, is never referred to as a goddess in the corpus, and her 'status' is extremely unclear throughout the corpus, which overflows with 'types' of 'beings'. In turn, scholars who have pursued the question of Hel, like Davidson, are similarly cautious: It's quite unclear if she was considered a goddess, a jötunn, both, or neither. The disambiguation is simply there to disambiguiate her from the location with which she shares a name. :bloodofox: (talk) 01:41, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

• No move This disambiguation works fine. It is simple a clear. ~`—¿philoserf? (talk)
• oppose - this is a unique situation, and the current split of the being and the location is appropriate. -- Netoholic @ 14:47, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

• Move to Hel (mythological being) or, in the alternative, to Hel (mythological entity). Both "being" and "entity" carry so little meaning that it's worth having the additional qualifier "mythological". We're just not used to seeing it because most nouns (such as "goddess", which we all seem to agree does not apply here) are sufficiently overloaded with meaning to make an additional qualifier like "mythological" superfluous; but that's not true of "being" or "entity".

There's plenty of precedent for this, e.g., Ashtar (extraterrestrial being) & Transformer (spirit-being); Seat (legal entity), Reserve (territorial entity), Neutral zone (territorial entity) & Bpifrance (public entity); tons if you count redirects (e.g., Abyss (Cosmic being), Azhdahak (Armenian mythical being)).

We certainly shouldn't merge it with Hel (location) merely to avoid an awkward article name. TJRC (talk) 19:40, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

• No move: The current title is clear and accurately reflects the situation. Being differentiate the entity from the location of the same name (Hel (location)). It offers no further implications. This reflects the scholastic discussion surrounding the personified (?) figure from Old Norse folklore.

To be perfectly clear, Hel is never referred to as a goddess in the corpus, a corpus which contains many goddesses, many of them explicitly identified as such by way of lists. She's also never referred to as a jötunn, a dwarf, an elf, or categorically anything 'else'. We're not here to make assumptions, nor to take sides among scholars, and that's exactly what we'd be doing with the misleading Hel (goddess). This is further complicated by the fact that an entity named Helreginn ('Hel-ruler') appears in a list of jötnar names and scholars like Simek have stated that she may be a personification in skaldic poetry, etc., which would make Hel (personification) more correct than Hel (goddess) if we decided to take Simek et al.'s side in the discussion.

Nonetheless, some editors appear to be hel-bent on essentially hammering a square peg into a circular hole here and just pushing for Hel (goddess). That is not serving the reader.

As always, we report on what the sources say and their scholastic reception. The article currently quite neutrally contains extensive discussion from scholars on this topic—exactly what we want—and we can always add more. :bloodofox: (talk) 01:41, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Bloodofox, I think that by the scholarly fine testing you want to apply almost no mythology article title would pass. (being) is wrong as she isn't. The layman's sources such as Britannia are good enough for titling purposes. In ictu oculi (talk) 12:39, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

All you have to do is look to sources from scholars. Britannia is a poor source for Norse myth and shouldn't be used on any of our articles: It's full of bizarre statements and odd theories presented as fact. Fortunately, there's no shortage of discussion on these topics from scholars, including scholastic tertiary handbooks, such as Lindow's and Simek's in English, which we use throughout our coverage of these topics on Wikipedia. There's also Orchard's handbook. The same goes for any other myth body (or other folklore topics more widely)—it just so happens that our coverage of Germanic myth-related topics is much better than other bodies on the site, unfortunately. :bloodofox: (talk) 03:43, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

• Support almost any move current title is unacceptable. Best supported is evidently Hel (goddess) despite scholarly fine-tuning. In ictu oculi (talk) 12:37, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
• Move to Hel (mythological being). "Being" alone is rather ambiguous and also implies actual existence. I would also not oppose Hel (goddess), as she is certainly often referred to as one. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:31, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
• Move to Hel (mythological being) or Hel (goddess). Even if she wasn't always considered a goddess at the time, it's still clear disambiguation and not confusing to modern readers. As said above, "being" by itself is vague and seems to imply that she actually existed. MClay1 (talk) 12:48, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
• Move back to Hel (goddess). In common English, she is a goddess. The page was created as a sub-stub at Hel (godess) in 2001 and developed happily at this title until December 2005, when all hell broke loose. See here or the page history of Hel (godess) from which that was copied, and various discussions at Talk:Hel (being)/Archive 1 and above. Hopefully this RM will bring stability, whatever the outcome. Andrewa (talk) 15:07, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Goddess in the Norse culture, "being" in the English language?

Why is Hel referred to as a "being" in English language Wikipedia? Is this an issue of English language scholarship? She is referred to as a goddess in Swedish scholarship. Would the term goddess be accepted about her if a reference is added describing this in Swedish language sholarship, or is she referred to as a being her simply because this is the preferred term about her in English language books? It seems an odd thing to sort her as a being, if this is only about the term ascribed for her in the English language. Would it not be more correct to follow the term described for her in the culture she originated? --Aciram (talk) 01:10, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

We'e discussed scholastic reception of Hel above quite a lot (see above). The issue is that the corpus does not designate her as a goddess (ásynja), a jötunn, or anything else, which is unusual. Some scholars have even argued that she was essentially a late personification, and was not considered a goddess at all. We have significant discussion from scholars in the article on this, and we're not here to take a stance on the matter one way or another. :bloodofox: (talk) 07:35, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Non-English scholarship is still scholarship, and this article greatly overrepresents the proportion of good scholarship in which she is considered a goddess. The section which talks about the controversy in the article has virtually no input from academics who would describe her as such. Scholarship is always changing, though, so previous discussions don't necessarily put anything to bed. AnandaBliss (talk) 02:16, 26 September 2024 (UTC)