“Hel’s walls are exceeding high and her gates great. Her hall is called Sleet-Cold; her dish, Hunger; Famine is her knife; Idler, her thrall; Sloven, her maidservant; Pit of Stumbling, her threshold, by which one enters; Disease, her bed; Gleaming Bale, her bed-hangings. She is half blue-black and half flesh-color (by which she is easily recognized), and very lowering and fierce.” Prose Edda: Gylfaginning

This design was inspired by the amazing song “Abandoned” on the album “Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok” by Sassafrass. I love Ada Palmer’s take on Hel, bringing out her role as advocate for the dead who are abandoned by Odin and not brought into Valhalla. She is the one who accepts all, who welcomes the women who died in childbirth, who makes a space for those who did not die in battle. I’ve wanted to make a pattern based on this song for a long time, and I finally found the right colors and detail for it.

Requires 2 skeins of Leviathan Fibres DK in “Beyond the Wall of
Sleep,” 1 skein of Leviathan Fibres DK in “Binky,” 1 skein of Manos Del Uruguay in black, and a few yards of Leviathan Fibres DK in “Snake Plissken.”