Hel, the Norse goddess of death

Hel (1889) by Johannes Gehrts

In Norse mythology, Hel is a being who presides over a realm of the same name, where she receives a portion of the dead. Hel is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. In addition, she is mentioned in poems recorded in Heimskringla and Egils saga that date from the 9th and 10th centuries, respectively. An episode in the Latin work Gesta Danorum, written in the 12th century by Saxo Grammaticus, is generally considered to refer to Hel, and Hel may appear on various Migration Period bracteates. In the Poetic Edda, Prose Edda, and Heimskringla, Hel is referred to as a daughter of Loki, and to "go to Hel" is to die. In the Prose Edda book Gylfaginning, Hel is described as having been appointed by the god Odin as ruler of a realm of the same name, located in Niflheim. In the same source, her appearance is described as half black and half flesh-coloured and further as having a gloomy, downcast appearance. The Prose Edda details that Hel rules over vast mansions with many servants in her underworld realm and plays a key role in the attempted resurrection of the god Baldr.

Hel by Karl Ehrenberg (1882)

 Loki's brood; Hel, Fenrir and Jörmungandr.
The figure in the background is presumably Angrboða.
(1905) by Emil Doepler

Goddesses of the North_Hel by ansfhd

"Norse goddess Hel" by Tara Ryzebol

http://www.thaliatook.com/index.html

Hel by Trishkell

Hel In Red by Medusa1893

Hel the goddess of hell-Cd cover by Asgrimson

Hel - Der Tod und Das Madchen by WintersKnight

Fall of Icarus

Hans Bol (1534-1593)

The ancient greek myth of Icarus is one of the most infuential, not only in art, but in the whole Western culture, because it represents not only the human dream of flying but also the dangers of a new condition that is beyond the biological human abilities and the consequent nessecity of a wise and prudent management of the new power. It also represents the consequenses of son's disobedience to father's authority and wise advice

Joos de Momper (1564-1635)

The two above paintings were inspired by Ovid's roman poemMetamorphoses : Daedalus and Icarus (verses 338-343):
Beneath their flight, 
the fisherman while casting his long rod, 
or the tired shepherd leaning on his crook, 
or the rough plowman as he raised his eyes, 
astonished might observe them on the wing, 
and worship them as Gods.

Peter Bruegel the elder (1558)

Bruegel's painting seems to be sarcastic to the romantic epic description of Ovid's verses and the above paintings. The Flight and Fall of Icarus seems to be not a cosmic event at all, but an unimportant and unnoticed event in medieval minds of simple men who are devoted to their works, giving no damn to what is happening around them.

From Bruegel's painting, the poet Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973) inspired his poem «Musee des Beaux Arts» (the Belgian museum where Bruegel's paining is in) noticing the human indifference, relating this painting with the "Massacre of the Innocents" also painted by Bruegel, where the animals seem indifferent for the human suffer:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood.
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
for the miraculous birth, there always must be
children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
on a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
that even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: 
how everything turns away quite leisurely from the disaster; 
the ploughman may have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water; 
and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen something amazing, 
a boy falling out of the sky, 
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Rubens Peter Paul Rubens (1636)

17th century

 Herbert James Draper (1898)

William Rimmer ( 1869)

 Galileo Chini (1907)

Henri Matisse (1944)

Henri Matisse (1943)

Marc Chagall (1975)

Label of Swan Song, inspired from William Rimmer's above painting

single cover art

Bruce Dickinson modified the original Icarus tale to make it an allegory of teenage rebellion against adult authority, which caused the death of Icarus in this case.

The song does a creative violation of the original narration and a reversal of its moral in order to become an allegory for the teenager’s demand for independence from the parental bonds and authority, the last, feeling unbearable envy for such disobedience, sabotaged his son’s wings to send him to certain death.

We also notice that besides the reversal of the moral of the myth, there is also the presentation of the sun, not as a dangerous burning factor, (from the ancient perception of universe where the sun is only some thousands meters above us, completely false today, because the higher you fly, the colder you feel) but in fact as life supporter (first verse) and an imaginative object of desire (fly, touch the sun)

It worths mentioning another myth about Daedalus, where his envy for his very clever inventor nephew, named Perdix or Talos, prompted him to kill his nephew by pushing him off a very tall tower, but Goddess Athena saved the child by transforming him to the bird partridge.

So, Iron Maiden made a combination of these two myths of Deadalus in order to dramatize the teenagers’ disappointment for their wings of independence, nature has offered to them, being broken by their authorities (parents, teachers, state, etc)

Freyja

Arthur Rackham (1910)

In Norse mythology, Freyja (Old Norse the “Lady”) is a goddess associated with love, sexuality, beauty, fertility, gold, seiðr (sorcery), war, and death. Freyja is the owner of the necklace Brísingamen, rides a chariot driven by two cats, owns the boar Hildisvíni, possesses a cloak of falcon feathers, and, by her husband Óðr, is the mother of two daughters, Hnoss and Gersemi.

Lorenz Frølich (1820 – 1908)

John Bauer (1911)

J. Doyle Penrose (1913)

Freyja in her chariot (1901)

Helen Stratton , A Book of Myths (1915)

Frölich, Lorentz (1820-1908)

John Bauer (1882–1918)

Louis Huard (1813-1874) , Freyja in the dwarfs' cave

Ludwig Pietsch (1874)

Nils Blommér (1853-1919)

Arthur Rackham (1910)

W.G. Collingwood (1854 - 1932) Freyja awakes Hyndla

The ten thousand martyrs of Mount Ararat

Vittore Carpaccio (1515)

The ten thousand martyrs of Mount Ararat were, according to a medieval legend, Roman soldiers who, led by Saint Acacius, converted to Christianity and were crucified on Mount Ararat in Armenia by order of the Roman emperor. The story is attributed to the ninth century scholar Anastasius Bibliothecarius. In the Roman Catholic Church the martyrs are commemorated on March 18and June 22,according to entries in the Roman Martyrology. In the Greek Orthodox Church the Great Synaxaristes has a reference on June 1 for the "The Holy Ten Thousand Martyrs" in Antiochia, under the Roman Emperor Decius. Despite its questionable veracity, the event was extremely popular in Renaissance art, as seen for example in the painting 10,000 martyrs of Mount Ararat by the Venetian artist Vittore Carpaccio, or in the Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand by the German artist Albrecht Dürer.

The Grandes Heures of Anne of Brittany (1503-1508) illustrated by Jean Bourdichon

Albrecht Dürer (1508)

Sleep paralysis in art as demonic visitation

Nikolaj Abraham Abildgaard, Nightmare (1800)

Sleep paralysis is a phenomenon in which people who are either falling asleep or awakening from sleep temporarily experience a sense of inability to move. More formally, it is a transition state between wakefulness and rest characterized by complete muscle atonia (muscle weakness).

Henry Fuseli, the Nightmare (1781)

Henry Fuseli, the Nightmare (1790–91)

Henry Fuseli, The Incubus Leaving Two Sleeping Women (1793)

Hallucinations are symptoms commonly experienced during episodes of sleep paralysis. There are some main types of these hallucinations that can be linked to pathologic neurophysiology. These include the belief that there is an intruder in the room, the incubus, and vestibular motor sensations. Many people that experience sleep paralysis are struck with a deep sense of terror because they sense a menacing presence in the room while they are paralyzed which will hereafter be referred to as the intruder.

Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin (1809 – 1864)

unknown artist and date

Sensing a malignant presence in the room during an episode of sleep paralysis is believed to be the result of a hyper vigilant state that is created in the midbrain. More specifically it is believed that the emergency response is activated in the brain when individuals wake up paralyzed and feel extremely vulnerable to attack. This feeling of helplessness can intensify the effects of the threat response well above the level typically found in normal dreams; this could explain why the hallucinations experienced during sleep paralysis are so vivid.

Jean Pierre Simon, The Nightmare (1810)

Normally the threat activated vigilance system is a protective mechanism used by the body to differentiate between dangerous situations and to determine whether the fear response is appropriate. This threat vigilance system is evolutionarily biased to interpret ambiguous stimuli as dangerous because the survival of the organism is greatly increased if it is more likely to interpret situations as life-threatening. This could serve as an explanation as to why the presence sensed by those experiencing sleep paralysis is generally believed to be evil.

Eugène Thivier, The Nightmare (1894)

The incubus hallucination is associated with the belief by the individual experiencing sleep paralysis that an intruder is attempting to suffocate them, usually by means of strangulation. It is believed that the incubus hallucination is a combination of the threat vigilance activation system and the muscle paralysis associated with sleep paralysis that removes voluntary control of breathing.

Fritz Schwimbeck , The Nightmare (1915)

Vincenz Georg Kininger - The Dream of Eleanor (1795)

The original definition of sleep paralysis was codified by Samuel Johnson as "nightmare", a term that evolved into our modern definition. Sleep paralysis was widely considered to be the work of demons and more specifically incubi, which were thought to sit on the chests of sleepers. In Old English the name for these beings was mare or mære, hence comes the mare part in nightmare.

Ferdinand Hodler (1853 - 1918)

In Finnish and Swedish folklore, sleep paralysis is caused by a mare, a supernatural creature related to incubi and succubi. The mare is a damned woman, who is cursed and her body is carried mysteriously during sleep and without her noticing. In this state, she visits villagers to sit on their rib cages while they are asleep, causing them to experience nightmares.

wood engraving from J Cazotte's 1845 book, Le Diable Amoureux, entitled "The Nightmare"

Folk belief in Newfoundland, South Carolina and Georgia describe the negative figure of the hag who leaves her physical body at night, and sits on the chest of her victim. The victim usually wakes with a feeling of terror, has difficulty breathing because of a perceived heavy invisible weight on his or her chest, and is unable to move i.e., experiences sleep paralysis.

Olaf Gulbransson (1873 – 1958) 

Warren Criswell , Incubus

In Turkey, sleep paralysis is called karabasan, and is similar to other stories of demonic visitation during sleep. A demon, comes to the victim's room, holds him or her down hard enough not to allow any kind of movement, and starts to strangle the person. To get rid of the demonic creature, one needs to pray to Allah with certain lines from the Qur'an.

Dennis Culver

Andy Paciorek

Andy Paciorek