NIFLHEIM
NIFLHEIM - Realm of Mists
Ever-cold is the land of Hel, daughter of Loki. The frozen lands of the primordial places became the lands of the dead for those who held to the Aesir, and those cold expanses were affi xed to the great prison of the Titans. Hel, the child of Loki and Angrboda, was made queen of this place and given the charge: "Let men reap in death the rewards they earned in life."
Those who come to this place without dying do so by clambering down the great expanse of Yggdrasil, the tree upon which the worlds of Nordic legend hang like fat fruit. Its lowest, northernmost roots descend into primordial frost, the source of all coldness that seeps into the lands of men. The bark here is rough and coarse, painful to the touch because of its brittle sharpness. Mists swirl around the roots, which are set into a great spring of cold water in which a black shape stirs.
HVERGELMIR: - The Black Waters
The great, twisted root of Yggdrasil, touched with rime, descends from a sky of mists and dips into a great wellspring: Hvergelmir. The black waters here are thick with corpses, for all bodies burnt with the proper funereal rites appear in the underworld of the Aesir in these waters. The freezing waters are also rife with poisonous serpents that crawl over, in and about the corpses, striking out at any that continue to move. This great wellspring is the source of all cold waters in Midgard (the Aesir term for the World), springing forth the Élivágar, the 11 great rivers that birthed the World.
More than simply corpses and serpents dwell in these waters, however. The terrible Nidhogg glides through their chill as well. The great dragon—whose kennings are Corpse-Sucker and Malice-Striker — gnaws at the root of Yggdrasil that dips into the Hvergelmir, venting his hate of all the worlds. A terrible beast, Nidhogg is no friend to the Gods. He is a creature of monstrous wrath and spite, seeking only to devour the root of the lands of men and Gods, and to keep consuming until there is nothing left.
When Nidhogg exhausts himself, he catches up corpses floating nearby and gnaws at them, trying vainly to get at the sweet souls within like a hound seeking the marrow of a bone. All his efforts are without purpose, however, for he cannot touch the stuff of souls. Indeed, he serves a valuable purpose to Niflheim, for his ministrations free the souls of the dead from the corpse- vessels in which they arrive.
He roars his frustration when the inevitable happens. He worries at a corpse long enough for the soul within to escape. It then slips past his wicked talons with a whisper and flees to the shore. Eventually, Nidhogg’s frustration builds, and the waters around him boil and his jaws drip with venom as he turns his hate once more on the much-scarred bark of Yggdrasil’s root.
NASTROND - Shore of the Dead
The waters of Hvergelmir lap at a black mud bank, the Náströnd, or Shore of the Dead. The Náströnd acts as the gateway into the rest of Helheim. The mud of this bank is thick with cold and thin sheets of ice that crack as one treads them, and in the chill black muck are impressed millions of footsteps, all overlapping. These are the impressions the dead make on their way through, for the living leave no tracks here.
