"John Lindow states that most details about Hel, as a figure, are not found outside of Snorri's writing in "Gylfaginning", and says that when older skaldic poetry "says that people are 'in' rather than 'with' Hel, we are clearly dealing with a place rather than a person, and this is assumed to be the older conception," that the noun and place "Hel" likely originally simply meant "grave," and that "the personification came later.