Corresponding to Proserpine as goddess of the dead is the old Norse goddess Hel (Gothic Halja), whom Saxo Grammaticus calls Proserpine.
He was the offspring of Loki and the giantess Angurboda, who bore two other children, Midgard the serpent, and Hel the goddess of death.
Beside this belief, however, we find another which seems hardly to be compatible with it, viz., that the souls of the dead passed to the realm of Hel, who in Northern mythology is represented as the daughter of Loki.
In the German mythology the army of darkness is led by Hel, the personification of twilight, sunk to the goddess who enchains the dead and terrifies the living, and Loki, originally the god of fire, but afterwards "looked upon as the father of the evil powers, who strips the goddess of earth of her adornments, who robs Thor of his fertilizing hammer, and causes the death of Balder the beneficent sun."
