WHO IS HEL?

Hel, the goddess of death, was in fact a giantess, a child of Loki, the giant trickster that lived among the Aesir gods, and Angrboda, a fearsome giantess.
This made Hel the sister of the monsters Fenrir, the mighty Norse wolf, and Jormungandr, the Midgard Serpent. The Aesir gods feared these three children due to their monstrous parentage, and prophecies of the chaos that they would wreak on the Norse cosmos.
In order to contain the problem, Odin sent each of the children to the place where they could do the least harm. In the case of Hel, he sent her to Niflheim, one of the Norse lands of the dead, and gave her jurisdiction over the realm.
As the goddess of the underworld, she had responsibility for hosting the souls that found themselves there.
The small serpent Jormungandr was thrown into the waters surrounding Midgard, where he grew to such a great size that he could encircle the entire world and hold his own tail in his mouth. Fenrir was tricked into be chained up on a deserted island by magical ribbon made by the dwarves.
The goddess of death is described in the sources as half black and half flesh-coloured, which some scholars has interpreted as her being half living being and half corpse. Hel is also said to have had a downcast and fearsome look.
Her name, which means “hidden” in Old Norse, is probably a reference to the fact that the underworld was hidden from the realm of the living.