Who Is Hela?
Hel, or Hela, the Goddess of the Underworld, is the eldest child of Angrboda and Loki. She is also the Goddess of Death in the cosmology of the Nine Worlds, and the Keeper of the Underworld. She is one of the most powerful - some might say the most powerful - of all the Jotun deities.
She usually appears in her half-rotted or half-skeletal form, divided down the middle vertically. Her hair is usually pale and long on her living side, although sometimes it is black. Sometimes she has appeared living above the waist and rotting below it; sometimes as a pale white woman who merely smells of rot. (In fact, the rot smell is always present with her, and it is a good way to know that you are actually speaking with Hela. The general coldness of the atmostphere around her is another tip-off.) Part of her insistence on keeping these shapes rather than a "normal", unrotted form is to force the understanding of Death onto people. She does not hold with any kind of denial around Death; she requires that it be seen and respected as the natural process that it is, and not euphemized or buried or prettied up.
Hela is tall, generally clad only in a long, simple robe of black or grey, and does not stand on ceremony. She has been described by several people as having a low, quiet "whiskey-and-cigarettes" voice, and She moves slowly and sometimes with a limp on her skeletal foot. Her great stillness is one of the things that people notice about Her. When She sits, She may move her hands some to gesture, but very little else; psychically She is like a great pool of black stillness. Every move is made with graceful, ghostly slowness. It is said that She moves fast only when she is angry, and then you're in too much trouble to notice.
If She holds out a hand for you to take, it will be Her skeletal one. This is a test. Remember that She was born in the Iron Wood, where showing your acceptance of the physical deformities of others is part of how you show respect and friendship. Take Her rotting, skeletal hand (which, as some people have reported, feels exactly like a dead limb except that it moves) and kiss it. If you can't bear to do such a thing, you have no business dealing with her. It is said that she only offers her living hand to the Dead, so you should be grateful for small favors.
