In January 2017 Iceland's naming committee blocked a couple from naming their daughter Hel, judging the name too heavy a burden for a child. This episode asks why a figure from centuries-old Norse folklore still carries that much weight. Drawing on the 13th-century Prose Edda, ninth-century skaldic poetry, linguistic research and migration-era gold bracteates, it follows Hel from her secret childhood in Jotunheim as the daughter of Loki and the giantess Angrboda, alongside the wolf Fenrir and the serpent Jormungandr, to Odin's decision to hurl her into the mist of Niflheim.

The discussion covers her half-flesh, half-corpse appearance, her hall with its dish named Hunger, knife named Famine and bed named Sickbed, and the ransom of Baldr, where her demand that everything in the universe weep is read as a sovereign asserting jurisdiction rathe ...