#70: Niflheim

Spud and PC return for some springtime musings on the Norse land of ice.  Stories this week feature a Hunter-S-Thompsony encounter with a box; memories of a college trip; the opposite of seasonal affective disorder; and a few nuclear apocalypses. From The Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend, 1949 ed. Niffheim In Teutonic mythology, the region of eternal cold, mist, and darkness, north of Midgard across the river Gjol. Into this region Odin banished Hel to rule over the “nine unlighted worlds” of the dead. Here Hel presided, with her dark red bird and her rake. Here was the inexhaustible, seething spring called Hvergelmir inhabited by the dragon Nidhug; here was the deepest root of Yggdrasil; here lived Uller, god of winter, during the summer months; and from edge to edge of Niflheim arched the Bifrost bridge. Niflheim and Nifihel are sometimes synonymous; but Niflhel is more often synonymous with Hel, as a subterranean region entered through the Gnipa cave, and later regarded as a place of punishment, where the dead undergo a second death. Stories begin around the 11 minute mark.Like this weeks episode and wish you could read as well as listen? Subscribe to our Substack for a summary of our opening discussion, a story from the episode, and a writing prompt!  Be sure to follow us on Instagram (if that's your sort of thing). Please do send us an email with your story if you write along, which we hope you will do. Episodes of Radio FreeWrite are protected by a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license. All Stories remain the property of their respective authors.